Job Search for Executives
For C-level executives especially, a traditional resume might not be the ticket to the next rung up in the corporate world. Many executives are harnessing technology and using more direct methods to showcase themselves. Methods include developing a personal marketing website and using sophisticated direct mail campaigns that put their best foot forward and directly in front of decision-makers.
There are online companies that allow one to develop a personalized site using templates to add narrative, photos, work samples, video and audio content. Some, like www.visualcv.com, are free. Others cost thousands of dollars, but offer coaching and consulting to perfect your value proposition (What’s that? It’s critical. See my next post), identify a target market, develop the campaign and produce a perfectly crafted and quality-printed direct mail letter. But when you are worth a salary in the 6 or 7 digit backet, a few thousand dollars would, of course, be seen as a wise investment.
Do you want to find a consultant of this type? Contact me for referral to one I can recommend highly.
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Do You Really Even Need a Resume?
For years career specialists like myself have been emphatic that a resume is a must have for any respectable job search. And I still stand by the fact that every career-minded professional should have one ready, polished and updated at all times to be ready for the next opportunity that might present itself (whether actively searching or not).
HOWEVER, in some cases a resume may only be a part of the packaging of You, Inc. In the more rarified job search atmosphere, where executives are a high end commodity and over 46,000 C-level (CEO, CFO…) jobs are available but not publicized every single month, you just may not get there from two pages laser printed on ivory, 32 lb, 100% cotton.
In those upper echelons of job search there are more sophisticated protocols to follow. What are they? Watch for my next post.
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How to Retire—or Not
Being who I am, I have beyond a polite interest in what people do for a living and just how they got there. And people are always eager to share their stories. Some are a real inspiration to me. Take Jack for instance. I took a seat beside him in an intensive training geared mostly for small business owners who are current users of QuickBooks. As I sat down at a computer workstation, the gentleman beside me smiled broadly and immediately introduced himself. I couldn’t help but note that he was considerably older than most of the others in the room. It was hard to imagine that at his age he would have any comfort level around a computer, let alone be enhancing computer- based financial skills. Was I in for a surprise!
At age 70, Jack has been on a journey that has taken him through a number of careers and he’s not ready to get off the path yet! After 21 years in the Marine Corp he retired at a respectable rank and like many military men went back to work—but not just to a job. He became a “vetpreneur”, buying his own rig and contracting to haul with a local trucking company until 10 years down the road (literally) a physician ordered him to stop for health reasons. But that didn’t keep Jack-Be-Nimble down for long. Along the way he had finished his high school education (forgot to tell you he joined the Marines as a drop out), decided to enter a training program for law enforcement and then became a full-time special deputy for another 18 years. It was an exciting (I’d translate that stressful) career with one of his four sons as his boss, but finally it seemed time to slow down again and do more with his beloved wife of over 40 years. They got a camper to see some of the country, then traded that in on a motorcycle for their trekking (yep, she rode on back). Life was great, but the fun was short-lived. After she passed away, Jack decided he needed something to do again.
So here he was sitting beside me at the next computer, not just for fun, but as an employee of a local housing agency. Jack works in the financial office (always did love numbers!) about 20 hours a week on a flexible schedule, a job he’s had for almost a year now. “First job I ever really loved to come to work,” he beamed. “It gives me something to do and keeps my mind active, plus it’s nice to have the extra income for vacations.” Does Jack plan to “retire” again soon? “Why would you want to!” he asks incredulously.
I hope I can be as exhuberant and productive as Jack a few more years down the road.
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Defining Your USP: Marketing Yourself In Your Job Search
In the marketing world the term USP is often used. USP refers to the Unique Selling Point of the particular product or service being offered. Before a product is put “out there” the USP is defined and utililized to position the product in the market place, creating it’s niche.
When you embark on a job search you, too, are entering the world of marketing and must also begin to think in those terms. The product is of course YOU. Before you get “out there” you should define your unique assets and be prepared to sell them in relation to a specific job opportunity.
The question that may not be put directly to you, but the one in every hiring manager’s mind is “What makes you different from the other people being interviewed for this position?” To put it more simply “Why should this company invest in you?”. You see, you are a commodity that the company hopes will ultimately increase the bottom line by adding value in some way.
So how do you go about defining your USP? Well, everyone is unique in some way. Your strengths (abilities, skills, personal style) are like a fingerprint that differentiate you from the competition, No two people have exactly the same combination of success factors. So what’s unique about you? How can you benefit this organization you want to join in a way that no one else can? Put that into words and you have your USP.
Of course it may not be so easy to find those words for several reasons. We have becomed conditioned to think that to talk positively about ourselves is boasting. Another barrier could be that you don’t have the precise language needed to describe those assets. Beyond that, you could even have a blind spot regarding our attributes. Therefore, to be really successful in framing your USP you may want to take some specialized assessments like the Highlands Ability Battery and the DiSC Personal Profile assessments I offer on my website. With those tools you will have the words you need to shine in the interview and enable you to answer that unspoken question with clarity and confidence.
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Prime Resume´ Real Estate
A resume is an outline, not a detailed narrative. It’s purpose is to persuade the reader that you should be invited to an interview. There are a number of resume formats that are acceptable and sometimes a nontraditional approach may work, although most hiring managers don’t have time or patience for over-the-top attempts to gain attention. You should aim for a direct and easy to read document that will get to the point quickly. Remember you may only have a few seconds to pique the interest of the reader. 
Critical information should be laid out clearly and in a format that will give the big picture of who you are as succinctly as possibly. The optimal place to do this is right under your name and contact information header. You might consider that area as prime property that can be developed into the Boardwalk.
Unfortunately many resume writers treat that space more like Baltic Avenue and then wonder why they aren’t getting much income from it. You’re on Baltic Avenue if you have a Job Objective section occupying that corner. What a waste of prime real estate that is! Who cares what your job objective is but you? Obviously, you are applying for a specific job in a specific company. Hopefully your employment objective and that position opening are a potential match or you wouldn’t even be applying, so why waste valuable space and the hiring manager’s valuable time with that useless information?
You want to put your hotel on the Boardwalk! That is what you will be doing if you insert a Profile Summary as the first section of your resume. This lead-in statement serves as an executive summary and should be designed to capture the reader’s immediate attention. This section will tell the reader about your key qualifications without the need to abstract them from your resume.
The advantages of using a well-honed profile paragraph are that it provides the reader with a quick overview of your unique assets and that it allows you to bring key elements from your past to the top of the resume.
There are four elements you can include in the Profile Summary:
- Who you are as a professional
- Your key areas of competence
- Your greatest strengths
- General statement of your accomplishments
OK. This all sounds good, but how do you get it on paper? Some of us just draw a blank when it comes to describing ourselves. That’s where you may need to do a little introspection or even get help pulling those words out. If you get stuck contact us. We can help you develop a Profile Summary or an entire resume so that you can PASS GO AND COLLECT YOUR $200.
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Will You Pass the Seven Second Test?
A resume is a very important piece in any job search. It won’t get you a job–ultimately only you can sell yourself to the Hiring Manager. But it can play a great supporting role in your search by setting you apart from other job seekers.
Basically you have about 7 seconds to introduce yourself through your proxy. On the average that’s how long a busy hiring manager will take to glance at your resume and decide whether or not it’s a keeper. That means she or he may not even scan the entire thing before deciding what to do with it. In many ways the HM is looking more for ways to eliminate rather than consider you for an interview. An interview is a major commitment of time and that equals money in any company. Plus, much can be quickly gleaned about you through this writing sample. A resume with poor formatting and glaring grammatical errors loudly broadcasts a lack of commitment to quality. And what company wants to hire someone who doesn’t take pride in his or her workmanship! You may not be a graphic designer or a spelling champion, but there is no excuse for a resume with obvious shortcomings, given spell checker and the variety of resume templates included with most word processing software.
Now is your resume’s appearance alone going to get you an interview? No, but it will keep you in the running. And there’s something else that you can do to make those 7 seconds pay off for you. This is something that many resumes lack and including it will give you an edge. What is it? Stay tuned for my next post.
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Happy Resume´ Month!
You won’t find a special section of greeting cards in your local Hallmark Store to commemorate the occasion; nonetheless, September is recognized as National Resume Month. Now I don’t know how they come up with these “tributes”, but I will take the nudge and remind you to get out your resume and check to see if it is worthy of the honor.
You might wonder why you should bother since you are content with your present employer. But you must admit that you don’t know what the future holds and it’s possible to be out on the street faster than you can say “downsizing”. Or almost as sad, your real dream job could be posted and filled before you can locate and elongate your one-pager. If those scenarios aren’t reason enough to go immediately to the file cabinet and start searching, why not take a more strategic view for having a polished and ready resume?
Every worker is like a company, You, Inc., if you will. A resume then is a sales brochure for the product you are offering. It should be honest and forthright, but it should also highlight your best features and, along with the collateral cover letter, offer the potential “buyer” (hiring manager) a tailored solution to his problem. It won’t tell the whole story; but it must be enough to convince the buyer that this is a brand worth examining more closely.
So how effective is your current sales brochure? Looking at it from the “buyer’s” perspective, would you want to take a closer look at the product it promotes? If not, stay tuned for future posts in honor of National Resume Month and have better marketing material by the end of September.
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Mr. Mom Goes to School
There may be a trend in the making. Some young men are staying home with the children while the wife goes heigh ho, heigh ho each weekday morning. An interesting twist, this seems to be a workable solution for families in which the husband is in a non-traditional career like creative writing, has a technology job that can be performed on a flexible schedule from a home office, or is in career transition. A number of young men need to back out of their careers and start all over to become who they might have been. Online and evening educational programs make the Mr. Mom role especially attractive.
In my experience men seem particularly prone to bad career choices on the first round. Many young men just don’t give much thought to their future while in high school, or worse yet, harbor the unrealistic idea that they can become a pro athlete (you wouldn’t believe how many 12-17 year olds cling to that dream!) and then scramble quickly to land on a major in college. Often the major is one they think will bring monetary success without their having bothered to determine whether or not it fits their temperament and talents. Capability has been considered without regard for suitability. How often have I seen unhappy accountants, lawyers and engineers! Some suffer throughout an entire career.
Recently I became acquainted with a retired accountant, whom I could see was very knowledgable in his field and who had owned a very successful CPA firm a few years back until health problems arose. I marvelled that this man had remained so long in the field, because he has a personality and temperament that seem “out of character” for this profession. His mind races ahead with ideas that his speech can hardly keep up with (something I measure when clients work with me, because idea productivity is a real asset in some careers and a real drag in others). Howard’s a very gregarious fellow who enjoys enteracting with people and I imagine if he’d been an employee he would have been what I call an office prairie dog. You know, the worker who keeps popping up over his cubicle, much like a prairie dog pops up from his hole to look around. Some people just can’t work in isolation and I was incredulous that this guy had been able to focus to do the detailed, accurate work that accountants must be able to do throughout his professional life. Then I heard the rest of his story…..
Howard had married a woman, also an accountant, who said when he opened his business, “Just put me in a back room, send the work in and close the door.” Howard said she was such a highly productive worker, that allowed him to go out and do what he loved to do which was to bring in new business. Eventually he brought in so much he had to find more wives, er, clones of his wife, who were just as happy in the back office. Howard was really a salesman who spoke fluent accounting. It enabled him to use his education, but tailor it to his personality. And everyone lived happily ever after when he sold his business for a healthy profit.
Not every apparent career mismatch turns out this well. Some men can’t reinvent themselves and find a niche in the same industry. If that has happened to you, it might be time to admit that the career’s not working and go home to play with the children (a very worthwhile vocation in itself) while pursuing a more realistic path, one that fits you “just right” (you think as you read that fairy tale for the umpteenth time to little Brenton and Kaitlyn). The important thing is to be sure that you discover your true talents before taking making a hefty investment in time and money, because, hey, you’re the one paying for that degree this time!
What? You still aren’t sure what those talents are? Then your’re not very different from most everyone else, according to Peter Drucker. So get on the fast track and contact me to find out! We can set a time to work together by phone while the children are napping.
Most people think they know what they are good at. They are usually wrong. More often, people know what they are not good at—and even then more people are wrong than right.
~Peter F. Drucker
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Are You Tending Your Career Garden?
We’ve had a very hot summer this year in these parts with many days over 100. People lose their motivations in the heat and barely want to move out of air conditioned comfort. My friend, who’s entire yard is planted in beautiful perennial gardens that she has always lovingly tended, has let her plants just burn in the hot sun. “Not doin’ it, ” she says. “It’s just way too hot to get out there and water and weed in this heat! They’ll just have to fend for themselves. ” Well they didn’t. Plants that have thrived in her loving care for years are suddenly dried up to nothingness, somehow allowing me to feel smugly virtuous about not having ever started such foolishness. I’ve never planted or nurtured the earth (hey, I don’t even mow), but I’m not a plant killer, either! Perceived vindication sometimes takes strange forms.
Being the person I am, however, I soon began thinking about this in terms of our careers, and how they are really like gardens. There are a variety of plants within them, some native to the soil (talents)and other imported varieties (skill sets). Whatever we have in our career garden, it must be tended or it will wither and dry up. Talents are perennials but they will never take us anywhere if we don’t make the effort to identify, develop and employ them. Skill sets are annuals and only as good as the training we get to keep them updated.
What does your career garden look like? Are you planting it (getting education and training)? Are you taking time to identify all the varieties (natural talents) within it? Are you weeding and pruning, i.e. negotiating to trade job duties that aren’t your style for those where you can shine and produce more of a harvest for your employer?
There’s an old saying, ‘Bloom where you are planted.’ But plants don’t bloom without tender loving care.
If you want to get on track to become a master career gardener, contact me to begin today. There’s fertile soil awaiting.
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Will Your Career Make You One of the “Creative Class”?
We’d like to think that our work improves not only our personal financial picture, but has a positive impact on our region’s economy as well. Blogger Jason Keeling notes a group in West Virginia whose efforts to strengthen the state’s economy are directed toward developing its “Creative Class”. Coined by Author Richard Florida, this term refers to workers in areas like engineering, the arts, biotechnology, education, architecure and even small business ownership. Workers like these are going to drive our nation’s economy in the 21st century.
It’s an interesting point when considering what career to enter. Do you want to belong to the Creative Class and be one of the 40 million Americans who will, according to Florida, determine how the workplace is organized, what companies will prosper or go bankrupt, and even which cities will thrive or wither? West Virginia hopes you will!
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