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April 19, 2010

Tip of the Week – 4/19 – Reclaim Your Power

Filed under: Job Seekers, Tip of the Week, Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , — Kim B @ 1:14 pm

Tip of the Week – Reclaim Your Power

Reclaiming Your Power

I’ve had a lot of examples over the last 2 weeks where I have encountered people who are filled with what I call “headtrash”. They are so focused on the ways that the job search has failed them. They don’t believe that they are ever going to find work. They are scared and they are desperate. Some of you are in this position, some of you are not.

When people are laid off from companies, they feel like their whole identity has been stripped away from them. Their circle of friends were normally just the people who they worked with. Many people have sat at the exact same desk and gone to work at the exact same time for years and years. Everything about them was defined by the job that they used to do. Sometimes their job/industry has disappeared completely. When that job is gone, they feel empty, hurt and rejected.

The job search itself is a defeating process if you don’t address it correctly. You pin all your hopes and dreams on that little apply button. “I’m perfect for that job, I’m sure they will hire me”. People wait by the phone and nothing happens. You stir up all this momentum to sit and wait for something that will never happen.

Some people get into a state of “headtrash” even when they are still working for a company. They think that whatever it is that they are currently doing is the only thing that they know how to do. They hope and pray that they can just continue to collect a pay check and that they won’t be a casualty of a lay off.

To all of this headtrash – I say – BE GONE!

I was working with a particularly bad case of headtrash. A friend of mine (I’ll call her Sarah (not her real name)) has been looking for work for the last 18 months. Nothing Sarah has done has resulted in gainful employment. Her husband also lost his job at the same time and he frequents himself with deep thoughts of depression and suicide. Sarah has reached a very desperate point trying to figure out how she’s going to put food on the table for her family. This once very strong Director of Sales is always holding back tears.

Lately when I’ve been working with Sarah. I have been trying to get her to step back into a place of empowerment. I ask her to think about the days when she confidently walked into the office and stole the show. Back in her glorious days she was able to negotiate multi-million dollar deals with her eyes closed. I forced her to go back and sit in that space again. Feel what it felt like to have that kind of power.

At first she wasn’t so sure about this process that I was taking her down. But, as she closed her eyes and reached back in her memories her posture began to change, a smile spread across her face and her whole energy about her shifted. Even though the last 18 months have defeated her, she could still go back and sit in her place of power. No one can take that from her.

Not all of you are as bad off as my friend Sarah. Some of you are just slightly wounded souls. Some of you are even at a point where you are becoming fed up with your current situation.Some of you are just starting the job search process.

To each of you, this week, I encourage you to go back to a moment in your life where you were proud and confident. It can be work related or not. Close your eyes and remember every single detail you can about that moment. Sit quietly in that moment for as long as you can stand it. If you must, set the timer on your phone for 5 minutes (or more) and just give yourself permission to go there and relish in every tasty detail. How did you feel that morning when you woke up? How did you feel that night when you got home? What are the details surrounding that perfect moment? The more emotion you can muster, the better!

This moment is your POWER moment. When you start to feel a little beaten – reclaim your power moment. When you start to feel a little depressed – reclaim your power moment. When you start to feel a little hopeless – reclaim your power moment. When you start to feel frustrated – reclaim your power moment.

Every time you sit at your computer and send out an email to ask for a meeting – sit for 5 minutes in your power moment. Before every single interview (informational, phone screen, in person, whatever) sit for 5 minutes in your power moment. Any time you are about to make a big decision affecting your career, sit for 5 minutes in your power moment.

You are an EXPERT in something. Reclaim that power!

I am not a therapist or a counselor. I have no formal training at all. However, I promise you that if you take the time to feel your power again you WILL start to feel more powerful things begin to happen in your life.

Try that out this week and report back to me on the changes that you start to see. :)

The Job Seeker Tip of the Week is published Each Week in the Job Seeker Newsletter.

April 8, 2010

From the Hiring Managers Perspective – Guest Blog

Filed under: Job Seekers — Kim B @ 2:29 pm

Once I started hiring people, I was struck at how differently I perceived the process. As a job seeker, I was so focused on networking, making my resume perfect and doing practice salary negotiations that I never thought about it from the other side. So I have learned some things about this whole “getting a job” thing, having viewed it from the other side of the table, and I have some wisdom to impart.

Hiring is excruciatingly painful. I do not enjoy it; I don’t believe that anybody does, although some people might lie and claim that they do. I begin the hiring process when the pain of not having a person doing the needed work outweighs the unpleasantness of interrupting my “real work” with hiring activities. So by the time I meet with you, I really need someone.

For one position at HCI Training, I looked at over 50 resumes, asked for telephone screening interviews with 12 people and planned on interviewing 4. This makes me a lightweight. HCI was a very small company. Most companies would look at over 100 resumes but I just don’t have that kind of stamina. So a personal recommendation is huge. If you are recommended by someone who is going to have to work with you every day, and they already know you, then that provides a certain level of comfort and security to me.

Nobody really cares about the format of your resume, but your name should be clearly visible at the top and there should be no typos. I was not impressed by the guy who had extensive “manging” experience. Almost any job requires that you communicate in writing with someone and my assumption is that your resume reflects the gold standard; it’s never going to get any better than this. Have someone you trust review your resume and make sure there are no grammar or spelling errors.

Go to the company’s website and check them out. Read the job description and then edit your resume to reflect relevant experience. This isn’t cheating – a resume does not have to include every minute of your life. I care about the experiences that are relevant to me figuring out if you are a good fit for this job or if you are going to make my work life unpleasant. I do not care that you worked nights at Best Buy the summer after you graduated from college (assuming you have other, more recent and relevant job experience).

Do not waste space telling me about yourself. Your experience speaks for you. When I read, on your resume, that you are “responsible, independent, a quick study, an outstanding speaker and writer, motivated problem solver and results oriented” it makes me suspect you are none of those things. Why else would you have to tell me? And if you have no experience, then how can you know you are any of those things?

Tell me about your relevant work experience but don’t sweat it if you are not a perfect fit. If you worked an entire summer in Texas doing lawn care, then I know you want to work and have a certain amount of determination and grit. That’s great. Now I know you are responsible and motivated. If I’m looking for a ASP.NET programmer with five years of experience who can also yodel and you only have two years of ASP.NET but have amazing yodeling skills, then apply anyway. Enroll in an online class about ASP.NET and make sure to tell me about that class. It might not help, but it might. You have no way of knowing how important the ASP.NET skills are to me versus the yodeling.

I want to know some basics – will this person show up on time ready to work? Will this person do what they say they will do? Will they do it on time? Nobody is perfect, so if you are going to miss a deadline or are struggling in some way, will you tell us about it in time for someone to help you and fix the problem? Are you going to work well with everyone else? These are really important issues for me.

Understand that this is difficult for the hiring organization too. Nobody enjoys this process; it’s like a cross between doing your taxes and a blind date. If I could think of a better way of finding someone to take this job, I would go for it in a New York second. I am not having fun, either. I will admit that you are probably having less fun than I am, but not by much.

I’m willing to go through all this because the only thing worse than the hiring process is the firing process.

Mary Haskett is a cofounder of Tactical Information Systems and a serial entrepreneur. Her first experience with a start-up was a skydiving school she ran with her boyfriend then husband while she was an undergraduate student. That company was bootstrapped into a profitable operation that operated three airplanes and hosted a skydiving competition viewed on ESPN.  Her second company was HCI Training, an instructional design and development company that developed custom training solutions for large corporations and government agencies such as Dell, USAA and the US Army. HCI Training, also profitable, was acquired in 2007 by Ideal Innovations Inc., a defense contracting firm that has appeared on the INC list of fastest growing companies three years in a row. Tactical Information Systems (TIS) is a local start-up that provides hosted biometric matching services utilizing face, iris finger and palm biometrics.

Tip of the Week – 4/8 – Stop being Schizo

Filed under: Job Seekers, Tip of the Week, Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , — Kim B @ 1:12 pm

Tip of the Week – Stop being Schizo

I hear people tell me all the time “I have a wide variety of talents”, “I don’t fit into just one job title”, “Companies think I would get bored easily”, “Companies don’t know where to put me” or a wide variety of other sayings along that expression.

Anyone who has worked for a company for more than 5 years has had to take on many hats. Most of these hats do not belong to their job title.  To add further confusion, many people are at a point where they don’t want to go back to do what they used to do. Instead they would like to use their talents or interests to do something different.

UNFORTUNATELY, companies don’t typically hire someone who is a jack (or jackie) of all trades. They have one particular role they are trying to fill and they want to find a person who can fit that one particular role.

I was helping a company hire a Customer Support position. I had found them what I thought was the perfect candidate. I sent over the candidate’s resume with all the proper information and credentials. Unfortunately, the hiring manager saw that this candidate had worked in real estate for a little while while they were also working in tech support. The hiring manager didn’t want anything to do with this candidate because he thought that the candidate did not exhibit the behavior of a TRUE Tech Support person. I did my best to convince the hiring manager otherwise but they would not hear of it. In hindsight, I should have taken the real estate part out of the resume. However, I thought it added color and flair. Instead, it just ended up causing confusion.

That hiring manager was a little bit extreme in his thinking. However, it’s not that far from the reality of what happens when someone goes through a giant stack of resumes. If you compare two resumes side by side and one of them ONLY talks about why they are a perfect fit for the role and the other resume refers to how they are a fit but also how they can be a fit for other things, the hiring manager will pick the first resume every single time. It’s less work. It’s less confusing. And you do not have to waste time figuring out how that person might fit in your organization.  The only exception to this rule is when the Hiring Manager doesn’t really know what they want the role to be – in which case someone who can wear different hats is a benefit.

Then the question comes up – “What to do I do about Linked In” where anyone out there can read about me. My opinion – figure out what it is that you really WANT to do. Make sure that your profile reads that you are perfect for that role that you want. In the paragraph at the top you can explain your ideal role and also indicate that you are good at other things as well. Each job section should include why you are a fit for your “perfect” role and then have a subsection that indicates why you fit other roles as well.

When you are out networking, you should pick one hat to wear for each event that you are attending. Trying to explain the 100 roles that you previously filled just becomes tiresome for the person who is listening to you. It’s okay if one day you’re a Project Manager and the next day you are a Technical Sales guru. Just pick one person to be that day.

If you are STILL completely confused and don’t know where to even start to sort out your hats. Well, that’s where I suggest that you get involved with Austin Career Coaching (www.AustinCareerCoaching.com). That’s where we shine! We’ll help you figure out which hats to wear on which occassions and how to showcase each of your hats in the best light.  I know that was a gratuitious plug for one of my other hats. However, I really don’t have time to explain the whole process in a blog. :)

The Job Seeker Tip of the Week is published each week in the Job Seeker Newsletter.

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