Your Needs vs. Employer Needs

You need or want a new job, maybe a new direction involving a career change or an opportunity to advance in your profession. That’s what you’re after, but what about the employers you’re focusing on? More than likely, they don’t particularly care that you want to earn more money or move up the corporate ladder or whatever else your personal goal is.

So what do they care about or need? Probably one of the first items on their list is an employee who can contribute a lot more value than it will cost to hire and keep that person! In other words, someone who can contribute value from day one and quickly make a positive difference to the company’s success. That person might need a number of qualifications and qualities–motivating leader, enthusiastic team player, X number of years of solid experience in a given area, and so on.

The ultimate question still remains: Can you do the job that’s needed, do it well and (probably) quickly, in a way that validates the company’s initial decision to offer you the job?

How to Determine Your Value to Employers

I can’t begin to list here all the factors that could play into your value to employers, but the following is a small sampling:

• You have a realistic grasp of what you can bring to employers and are confident about your abilities in that regard. You don’t over-sell or under-sell yourself in interviews, for example.
• You do your homework ahead of time with regard to your competition and the market for your skills, expertise and knowledge-base. Among other things, that means you take the time to research what’s “out there” and honestly evaluate how you stack up against the competition. What do you have that they don’t?
• You also research the company you’re targeting, as well as its industry and its competitors. Then you assess how your qualifications and strengths fit into that picture. What are likely to be your greatest advantages and how can you make the most of them?
• You understand that value isn’t only about money. Yes, you want to earn as much as you can and the company wants to maximize its profitability, but that’s not all there is to your value. For instance, can you get a team of people who don’t much like each other or are territorial to work together effectively on a critical project? Not everyone can do that, so if you can, you just might have an edge.
• You are willing and able to put out a great effort to help the company achieve its goals, rather than counting the minutes until 5:00 p.m. every day. At the same time, you don’t want to provide that degree of commitment and dedication to an employer that won’t appreciate or reward it appropriately.

Good salespeople know that it’s about benefits (value) versus features (laundry list). When you’re engaged in a job search, the benefits you can bring to your next employer are critically important.

Poor Speaking Skills can Hurt Your Career

That’s right. Your weak speaking skills could hurt you. You might ask: Could my voice quality and/or other elements of my oral presentation really be throwing a huge speed-bump in the path of my career? According to Shellenbarger’s article, the answer is very possibly yes. For example, if you need to be perceived as assertive, a strong leader and so on, a quiet vocal delivery of your messages might undermine the impression you need to make on your audience. If that audience consists of people who can decide whether or not to offer you a job or a promotion, you definitely want to consider what you can do to improve the situation!

This is also true in other aspects of a job search or ongoing career management, including interviewing. When you obscure the delivery of your message through poor speaking skills, you could fail to gain the support of colleagues for critical initiatives, lose the respect of the team you are expected to manage or discourage an interviewer from giving you a chance at second-round/multiple interviews. The potential repercussions of poor speaking skills could add up to a long list by the time you’re done!

Do You Know If You Have a Speaking “Problem”?

You might think you have reasonably good speaking skills and can’t imagine how anything about your vocal delivery could negatively affect your ability to land a job or advance in your career. However, it’s not necessarily safe to assume you don’t have an issue with it just because no one has told you that you do. Friends, family, colleagues–many people hesitate to raise such a sensitive subject with someone they know. They might be afraid of hurting your feelings or making you angry at them if they do. What can you do to ensure that how you speak isn’t standing in the way of your career success?

Here are just a few tips you can try:

• Record yourself speaking and listen to it with your eyes closed, so you’re not distracted by visual elements around you. As much as possible, eliminate auditory distractions as well (find a quiet place).
• Ask someone whose judgment you trust to listen to you delivering a short presentation and provide candid feedback. Then remember not to “shoot the messenger”!
• Consider finding and working with a speech coach/consultant, especially if you have an important interview or on-the-job presentation scheduled down the road, to make sure you’re delivering the message effectively. (Don’t wait too long to do this, however; it can take time and practice.)

Importance of Non-Vocal Presentation Skills

In college, I had an instructor who frequently stroked his goatee while he was speaking to the class. This mannerism was so distracting that I had to avoid looking at him if I wanted to absorb the information he was presenting! I never had the nerve to mention it to him, and I don’t know if anyone else ever did, but I hope so.

Visual gestures can be a bad habit you’re unaware of. Try recording a video of yourself doing a presentation and watch it as objectively as you can to see if you’re using distracting gestures. You might just be glad you did!

To quote a well-known celebrity: “Energy is the essence of life. Every day you decide how you’re going to use it by knowing what you want and what it takes to reach that goal, and by maintaining focus.” (Oprah Winfrey, O Magazine, July 2003)

Career Success: Choose One Thing

A recent post on Quartz by Vickie Elmer, titled “Forget the long to-do lists and choose one thing to be good at,” indicates that focus is critical to success. She mentions a new book called The One Thing, by Gary Keller (of Keller Williams Real Estate) and Jay Papasan, and cites three principles contained in the book:

1. Success is sequential, not simultaneous. [Keller] would ask [people] the focusing question: “What’s the one thing I can do such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”
2. Nail your “one thing” by lunch. Make the most of your best productive time. Then you can look back at what you’ve accomplished and feel happy about it.
3. Everyone blows it. The authors started out with a 400-page manuscript and whittled it down to about half–after being put on the spot by their publisher to “walk their talk.”

How Do You Sharpen Your Focus?

The above list gives a few clues. Here are a few more tips for job search and career success:

• Identify possible or probable interruptions, time-sucks, etc., and plan to avoid or postpone them as long as possible. If the likely culprit is a person, you might need to get creative about how you do this!
• Be realistic. If you’re at all like me, you start out with a list that you know (if you’re being honest with yourself), you’ll never get done in one day. That’s not only likely to be nonproductive (as Keller’s work indicates) but also to set you up for failure, which is a demotivating factor.
• Work on better prioritizing. If you know you can’t do it all, take a few minutes to decide what’s most critical. Move along to the less critical only when you’ve accomplished the highest-priority item.

Then reward yourself by acknowledging your successes and avoid beating yourself up for the times when you fall short of the target.

When I started publishing this blog (which I think was in late 2011), I “planned” to do a blog post three times a week. I’d been reading that daily posts were even better, and some people were publishing multiple times in one day, but I knew I’d never hit that target! I figured three posts a week should be do-able–and so it was…some of the time.

Unfortunately, sometimes life got in the way, and there were entire weeks when I didn’t publish ONE post (last week being one of them). Gasp! Ah, well, super-blogger I’m obviously not.

Plan Job Searches with Some Slack

My take from all of this is that it’s not only okay but actually desirable to cut yourself some slack now and then in your job search and career management planning. You’ll probably run into days or even weeks when you’re up to your eyes in problems, unexpected demands on your time and energy, and so on.

Instead of kicking yourself because you fell down on the job and didn’t put things in motion that you’d planned to, take a step back and gain a longer-term perspective. Did you miss out on a dream job because you failed to do whatever it was? Unless your inaction cost you a desirable job opportunity, it probably wasn’t the crime of the century.

It Could Be Worse!

If the worst that happened was that you felt guilty about not staying 100% on track, relax. After all, things could be worse. As Scottish poet Robert Burns once said:

The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men,
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
(Translation: The best laid schemes of Mice and Men
oft go awry,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!)

At least it’s not likely that your off-plan action (or inaction) will cause you “grief and pain”!

Basically, the important point to keep in mind is that a contact network doesn’t maintain itself. You have to do the work if you want it to stay healthy and beneficial to you in your next job search or career advancement campaign.

If you’re not able and willing to put a fair amount of effort into network maintenance over the long haul, you need to recognize that there’s no incentive to people in your network to be there for you when you need them. Why should they? They’re not your mother–or anyone else with a vested, familial interest in your career success!

Stay in Touch with Your Career Network

Okay, so I’ve said this before, a time or three, but it’s critical enough to repeat. The more you stay in meaningful touch with your network, the more likely those people are to think of you when something potentially helpful comes up or to be willing to provide some sage advice when you ask for it.

A recent article by Heather Huhman, titled “5 Ways to Stay in Touch with Your Professional Network,” is one of the items I’ve read over the past few months that touch on this important topic. As is often the case, much of what Huhman wrote is probably not earth-shakingly new, but it’s a decent presentation of some key points about maintaining your network in a job search. Briefly, these are the 5 ways she recommends using:

1. Social media: Don’t just add connections; make them “real” and valuable through your social media involvement.
2. Email: Share something they might be interested in, ask them for advice, etc.
3. Phone calls: Obviously, you can’t call 300+ people (or however many you have in your LinkedIn network, for example), but you can selectively use the personal touch a phone call provides to make direct contact, ask a relevant question, etc.
4. Greeting cards: For those of you familiar with e-cards, no, that’s not what Huhman means! a short, handwritten note on a businesslike but attractive card can be a good thank-you method or otherwise help you personalize your relationship with a contact.
5. Invitation to a meeting: Arranging a face-to-face meeting (lunch, coffee, whatever) allows you to get face-time with key contacts in your network. Just come prepared with a plan to make the most of it–ask pertinent questions to gain career advice, for example.

Network Maintenance–When to Do It

If you’re asking how much time to put into your network maintenance, the answer is, as much as you can manage! Seriously, whether or not you’re engaged in an active job search, periodic attention to key people in your network is critical. Those who are less “key” still could merit some attention; otherwise, why do you have them in your network in the first place?

You might spend some time in the near future looking at the people currently in your network and prioritizing them according to their level of value (or potential value) in your career management plan. Then build network maintenance time into your ongoing schedule to start working your way down the priority list as far as you think is worth the effort or as much as you can in a busy schedule.

If you approach the maintenance in a reasonably organized fashion like this, your effort is more likely to pay off than if you do it haphazardly or not at all.

I’d heard of Glassdoor, but Bright? Not in terms of job search or anything else along those lines. I followed the link to the Bright.com website. While I have to say I don’t yet know anyone personally who has used Bright.com in his or her job search, I thought it would be worthwhile to share some of what I found.

Bright Labs–New Job Search Trend?

It seems that in 2012, Bright.com launched something called Bright Labs. Here’s an excerpt from their press release:

“Bright Labs is a bi-weekly updated set of interactive tools, infographics, and analyses on the current employment landscape. Bright’s team of data scientists utilizes data from social networks, stock prices and volumes, real estate and construction, the Bureau of Labor and Statistics and a variety of other sources to create a holistic assessment of the employment market and to reveal trends and scientific findings. One of the cornerstones of Bright Labs is the Bright Employment Index, which tracks the overall job market and provides a monthly snapshot of fluctuations within any given industry.”

As if that didn’t sound impressive enough, here’s what the press release also says about a concept called The Bright Score, which the company came up with:

The company “has processed over 15 million job descriptions and more than two million resumes, all of which gives the site one of the most insightful and up-to-date perspectives on the jobs landscape. Bright.com has generated more than 20 million Bright Scores, used by job candidates to assess whether or not a job opening is the right fit and by talent recruiters and HR professionals to efficiently evaluate thousands of job applicants and find the most qualified candidates.”

Technology Taking Over Your Job Search?

I’m full of questions today and not much in the way of answers so far. But enough about Bright.com! What does this say about job search trends?

Some people would consider it just more evidence that technology is taking over job searching, and they might have a point. The Internet, social media and other technology trends have had a huge impact on the way many of you conduct your job search–not to mention how you perform your job once you actually land one. It has certainly become important–if not essential–that you develop a reasonable level of competency in using technology tools to manage your career and the various job changes you either have gone through or will go through during that career.

At the moment, however, one critical point about technology and your job search comes to my mind: Technical tools don’t hire other technical tools–people are what need to be hired, and once hired, they have to work with other people. So somewhere, at some point, people need to connect with people. Technology can’t do it all–and I suspect that some of what it can do is not as hugely superior to human interactions as its proponents would like to claim.

As I’ve said before, I’m definitely not anti-technology. I’d just like to see a better balance between it and the people it’s supposed to serve–especially when situations such as your job search are involved.

Selective Networking–What It Is and Is Not

Selective networking is my term for it. Here’s part of what Holtzclaw says about it:

“Remember six degrees of separation? With the introduction and widespread use of social media and other technologies, a study from 2012 shows that these days, it’s more like four degrees. The more people you know–really know–the more likely you are to make that important connection you need to take your career, company, or venture to the next level.”

According to Holtzclaw, self-described as an introvert, it’s important to start by considering what you might be able to do for the people you meet that would be valuable to them. He believes there’s no point to collecting business cards by the gross if it doesn’t produce any useful results or constantly increasing the number of your LinkedIn connections “unless you can establish a meaningful relationship with these new connections.”

Networking with Prospects & Non-Prospects

Often the advice will be to focus your attention on spending time with people who are clearly in a position to do something useful for you. However, besides sounding more than a little self-serving and self-obsessed, this approach could cause you to miss a good opportunity to connect indirectly with someone who could add value to your job search. As Holtzclaw puts it, “A non-prospect may be just as important to your future needs as a prospect because they may connect you with someone or something you need.”

The trick, probably, is to find out whether that possibility exists without spending an inordinate amount of time talking to people who don’t have the ability to offer value for your job search either directly or indirectly.

With regard to the quantity versus quality issue in networking, Holtzclaw believes that if he focuses on meeting and having “a meaningful conversation with only about five people at every event…or for each day of a conference,” he can line up sufficient new contacts to arrange for a day of meetings and “get to know each of them more deeply within a couple of weeks of the initial introduction.”

Follow-Up is Key to Networking Success

If you meet X number of people at a networking event and it’s a manageable number to get to know better, you still haven’t done all you need to do as a job seeker who’s serious about achieving a successful networking outcome. Holtzclaw cites Quinetha Frasier of First Born Group as firmly believing that if you don’t meet with someone within 10 days of the first contact, it wasn’t in the cards…not going to happen.

So you need to choose your number, network purposefully with those individuals and follow up to arrange a meeting in 10 days or less. Hopefully, that follow-up meeting will pave the way for a longer-term, mutually beneficial relationship that will show positive results for your job search.

Poor Communicators can Have Many “Faces”

Your boss might believe he/she is doing a good job of communicating but you’re not getting the message. That might be right–maybe you’re not listening as carefully as you should, not asking questions to clarify ambiguities, etc. However, if you’re a good listener and understand how to make sure you’re moving in the right direction if your boss gives you a reasonable idea of what that is, the problem might not lie with you. You might have a boss who is a poor communicator, especially with regard to expectations for your job performance. For example:

• Gives you “blanket” instructions on what he/she wants you to accomplish but omits one or more key points. This is like someone who gives you driving directions to a place they know well and forgets to tell you that one of the streets changes its name. The odds are that you’re not going to end up where you were supposed to–at least, not without having to retrace your steps.
• Avoids providing specifics because of a belief that you should somehow know what he/she has in mind and figure out the rest on your own. Sometimes this comes from a genuine belief that enough information has been provided and that someone at your level should be capable of working out the rest without having to be guided to it. Other times it could be that your boss is testing you to see whether you will either pin him/her down to get the information you need or find a way to proceed without doing that.
• Doesn’t even articulate in his/her own mind what a stated expectation involves, to make sure you “get it,” but thinks he/she has done that. For instance, he might say, “I’m not seeing from you what I expect to see from a vice president.” If you try to clarify what that expectation is and you get a vague answer that is really no answer, you might be stuck in an uncomfortable and ultimately untenable position. How can you hit a target you can’t see?

What Can You Do about a Boss Who’s a Poor Communicator?

If the boss is someone you want to continue working for, you can try to strengthen the lines of communication. One option is to request regular, short meetings to compare notes on performance goals your boss has approved and your progress toward those goals. As much as possible, avoid generalities and statements that might sound as if you’re on the defensive. Strive for facts and figures that can be backed up and that clearly indicate completion of or strong progress toward specific goals.

Anticipate comments about what hasn’t been done that was supposed to be and provide a reasonable explanation (again, without sounding defensive). Express your 100% commitment to making those things happen at the earliest possible moment. Communicate your dedication to meeting the needs of the company and link the actions you have taken and plan to take to the benefits they will bring to the company.

However, if the situation doesn’t yield to your efforts to achieve effective communication with your boss so you can do your job at the highest level of effectiveness and meet his/her stated goals, you might have limited options to choose from. Planning your exit strategy at that point could be the wisest choice you can make.


]]> http://asuccessfulcareer.wordpress.com/2013/03/30/is-your-boss-a-poor-communicator/feed/ 0 asuccessfulcareer http://asuccessfulcareer.wordpress.com/2013/03/27/performance-management-yours-or-your-teams/ http://asuccessfulcareer.wordpress.com/2013/03/27/performance-management-yours-or-your-teams/#comments Thu, 28 Mar 2013 00:53:28 +0000 asuccessfulcareer http://asuccessfulcareer.wordpress.com/?p=785 ]]> Performance management through open-minded learning has always made good sense to me. Along those lines, I always enjoy reading insightful communications from professionals I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with and getting to know at least a little. One of those is Saeed al Muntafiq, a senior executive in Dubai who has a view of the business world that transcends geographical boundaries.

Performance Management and Developing Leaders

Performance Management–Breeding Thoroughbred Leaders: As Saeed’s article makes clear, he believes performance management isn’t something that happens just once a year. It’s an ongoing process. He offers 5 points that he says are an essential part of that process:

1. It’s part of your culture – ….Performance management is a culture of transparency and openness that starts at the top.
2. Positive Reinforcement – …it is essential for a person’s performance to receive positive re-enforcement….Continuous negative feedback festers in people and diminishes output.
3. Real-time Feedback – …I do not recommend non-verbal channels such as email or SMS….Verbal still remains the best form of communication, as much as our increasingly-digital universe steers us against it.
4. There is no such thing as negative feedback – I much prefer the term ‘improvement feedback’…. Of course, you need to have a transparent company culture that welcomes critical feedback before real-time verbal performance management can work.
5. Have a party – Celebrate and reward success.

Saeed uses the analogy of breeding and training racehorses, but it’s clearly applicable to human beings in the workplace. If you are a manager/executive in a company, the points he raises are well worth considering. If you’re an employee who’s in the position of being managed, you could still take them to heart and benefit from them.

Whose Performance Management?

Assuming for the moment that you manage a team (or an entire organization), what are your goals for their performance? Some of those performance goals might be set by top-level management, in that they are expectations for your performance as the manager of that group. Others might be goals you believe are important that are not distinctly mandated from above.

Of course, you need to keep in mind the goals you will be expected to meet as a manager; however, you also need to consider that the goals you set for the members of your team must be clear and attainable. If you set expectations that require your team to stretch themselves, that’s likely to be a smart managerial move. On the other hand, if you establish goals that require them to leap over the moon, you could be setting them–and ultimately yourself–up for failure.

Considering performance management in the light in which Saeed presents it could help you make it work effectively and benefit both you and your team.


]]> http://asuccessfulcareer.wordpress.com/2013/03/27/performance-management-yours-or-your-teams/feed/ 0 asuccessfulcareer http://asuccessfulcareer.wordpress.com/2013/03/22/career-management-landing-a-promotion/ http://asuccessfulcareer.wordpress.com/2013/03/22/career-management-landing-a-promotion/#comments Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:14:14 +0000 asuccessfulcareer http://asuccessfulcareer.wordpress.com/?p=781 ]]> I doubt whether there’s a “user’s manual” for getting promoted, although I’m sure many books and articles have been written on the subject. It’s not necessarily an easy subject to pin down. However, you know that other people are getting promoted, so why not you? Whether you’re aiming for your first promotion into management or targeting your next move up the ladder, you probably know it won’t be a snap .

If landing a promotion is your goal, you definitely need to be prepared to work for it. As David Rockefeller once said, “Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you’re not frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever were.”

Your First Management Promotion

For those of you who are at the first step, I came across an article in Harvard Business Review that you might find interesting. Written by John Beeson, it’s titled “Getting that First Promotion.” He points out that the rate of promotions in many industries is a lot slower than it was before the recession, so a large number of talented people are eager to snag a promotion now. This increases the challenge for those of you who are either in that group or have recently decided you want to move up.

Beeson makes one very important point: “The first thing you must understand is that producing strong results in your current job won’t be enough. That’s just table stakes, the minimum needed to get you into consideration for a promotion. But finding out what else is required is tricky.”

Suggestions for Getting Promoted in Tough Situations

Beeson offers a few “rules of thumb” for you to implement:

• Be not only a problem finder but a solution seeker–someone who takes initiative to find new ways to add value and improve your group’s performance, then presents the boss with both the problem and a proposed solution. This also requires professional maturity–thinking outside your group, understanding how the solution might impact other areas and gaining support from those people for your plan.
• Demonstrate the interpersonal skills necessary to manage potential direct reports, who can vary greatly in their skills, problems and receptivity to motivation. For those of you not currently managing staff, this could mean showing how you interact with and influence others on group projects.
• Seek out opportunities to show that you can anticipate and gather resources necessary for successful implementation of an important project.

First Promotion or Next Management Role

Again, although Beeson’s article focuses on first-time promotion, it contains truths that are valid for those of you who are already in management and want to advance. If you understand the challenges and are ready to put some mental muscle into career management action plans that can help open the door to a promotion, you’ve taken the first important step. As Beeson comments, “those who emerge from the pack will be the ones willing to go the extra mile to distinguish themselves from other talented people.”

Tip: Take a good look at where you are now and where you want to go. Ruthlessly evaluate your qualifications to determine whether you meet the essential requirements and have what it takes to handle that promotion if you get it–fooling yourself by cherishing unrealistic expectations will do you no favors! Even if you somehow talk your way into a promotion you aren’t well prepared for, when crunch-time arrives–and it’s going to–it will become painfully clear that you have set yourself up for a dismal, possibly career-damaging failure.

If you don’t have what’s needed yet, your short-term goal becomes doing whatever is necessary to prepare yourself to pursue the promotion you want and be ready for it. That could include actions such as increasing your expertise and building or strengthening your “political capital” with influencers in your network. Find out what you need to do and then DO it.


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