Accelerate Your Search™ Now

“What you have to give is enough – if you give it with all your heart.”~ Chieko N. Okazaki

The quote above was shared with me by one of my mentors and I wanted to share it with you.  Enjoy it.

Every week, sometimes hundreds of times a week, I hear the questions Should I … or Do I need to … followed by: post my resume online, go back to school, retire, take less money, do a different job, change industries, change careers, quit my job, fire my boss, network with others, network online, and the list could go on and on.  Are you asking these questions?

What do you think my most common reply would be if you asked me one of these questions?  My reply would likely be to ask you the question – “What’s important to you?”

Yes, I know by the look on your face, you might be annoyed by my responding to your question with a question.  However usually that is the best place to start if you are asking yourself or someone else these types of questions about your job search or career transition.

First of all, may I remind you that unless, you lost your last job due to misconduct, or lack of your willingness to correct your work performance to meet your employer’s employment requirements, or your lack of willingness or ability to acquire a specific skill or skills your employer required, you were successful in your prior job.   Your experience, skills, knowledge and abilities are probably solid enough for you to be highly marketable and successful again in today’s job market.

Therefore, if you will spend a little time to reflect on your skills, experience and what is important to you before you jump in to a full blown marketing campaign and job search you will know what is important to you and you will be better prepared to accelerate your success.  If you test the market and determine that you do need help or are missing a skill to do what is important to you, you will be prepared to take the best action.

Be careful about using unanswered questions or other conditions as your excuse for inaction.  Are you using the economy, or not defining what’s important to you as an excuse not to move your job search forward?  You must get out into the job market in a BIG WAY!

Excuses, whatever they are can be a deep dark pit!  A costly pit and a pit filled with fear.    A job search can be scary.  You may feel hesitant as you first start to market yourself.  You may fear rejection, and you may fear making mistakes.  I get that – and by the way, you will be rejected and you will make mistakes!

Job searching has a learn-as-you-go component to it, the market place changes, things change, business needs change, and you change over time.  Get busy, get over having to learn everything before you start your job search, and marketing yourself for your next job.

Be willing to learn-as-you-go, to change what you are doing, or to stop doing the things that are not working for you.  Market YOU.  Get out there with who you are, what you have to offer, what makes you unique and different in the marketplace.

Stop using “Should I” or “Do I need to” questions as excuses.  Clarify what is important to you, stop making excuses, and communicate your value to the marketplace.

Excuses stop you dead in your tracks.  Stop making excuses.  Know what is important to you; communicate what you can do and how you are different.   You do have enough to give.

Will you give it with all your heart?

“Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.” ~ Elbert Hubbard

Hubbard’s words ring true for your job search too.  Be careful that you don’t take your job search to seriously or not seriously enough.  Either end of the scale can be fatal to your career.

I have worked with thousands of people engaged in a job search.  Some are not serious enough about the “job search” and others are so serious about the job search it consumes each minute of the day.

Both of these paths will impact your success.  If you are not serious enough you may lose focus, miss opportunities and often extend a search so long that the prolonged search causes damage to your finances, your career and earnings potential.  Being too serious about a job search can also result in lack of focus, damage to your relationships, lack of balance and tons of effort in the wrong direction.

Do you have the right balance in your job search?

What are you taking too seriously in your job search?

What in your job search should be more serious?

Is the job search you are conducting effective?

Don’t tell them about your warts –

“I have these big ugly warts on my feet.  I have had them for two months now.  Some are small and rough, some are growing together.”

WHAT?

That’s right you would not say that in public or to your friends.  Yet almost daily I hear professionals who are looking for their next gig and trying to connect with other professionals, to get referrals and introductions to the employers they want to work for say things about themselves and their job search that I call WARTS!

If you want to increase your connections and referrals, it is critical to educate your family, friends, and the people you meet so they can become your personal advocates.  Doing so helps you create a mini sales force.

If your friends, family and allies know you, know what you do, know about your experience and what type of work you are interested in doing, they can help you.  When you have a team of people who like you, trust you, know you, and can explain what you do.  It is super easy for them to refer you to possible employers, their friends and contacts,  and to help connect you with the best companies and the best positions for you.

Here is one secret so few people use.  The “update letter”.  Use this tool to connect with family, friends and allies.    Most people will be very happy to hear from you, to learn about what you are doing and most will be happy to help if you tell them how they can help you. Be specific.

This is not a WART LETTER – don’t say

Dear Friend:

Poor me, I lost my job, after all these years of toil and I need a job.  Do you have a job for me?

Signed, Mr. Big Wart.

Any letter, email or conversation like that is a burden on all who receive it.  Telling anyone about your WARTS will make them want to run away from you as fast as they can and/or avoid you now and in the future.

Tastefully done an update letter allows you to connect with your network, share key achievements you since you last connected.  It provides an opportunity for you to let friends and family know what you are doing and asking them to think of you if they overhear of or connect with a situation relating to your current interests.

An update letter also provides you with an opportunity to connect, catch up, and talk about business.  You can connect and discover what’s new and or different in life and in the business of your network contacts as well if there is a way that you can help them.

Does an “update letter” really get results?  Not always, but after four months of resisting the idea, here is what happened for one person who decided to send just 10 “update letters”.

One letter went to a former executive assistant, whom he had not seen in 8 years.  She called him after receiving the “update letter”, he took her to lunch, during lunch they talked about family, old friends, business in general and her new job.  In less than a week she called him to coordinate an appointment with the COO of her employer.   The result, an interesting conversation about a new project within a division of the organization scheduled to start in a few months.  What is next?  Another conversation, then who knows?  This grateful executive is glad he composed and sent an “update letter” and connected with someone in his network and is busy updating other advocates within his network.

Who should you send an “update letter” to?

When you compose your “update letter”?

Let me know about your results.

“Our words reveal our thoughts; our manners mirror our self-esteem; our actions reflect our character; our habits predict the future.”   ~  William Arthur Ward

This week I encountered one of those people who was so angry and so frustrated, he just had to tell everyone within earshot how he has been wronged due to his age.   The clash was over the top when this angry man shouted at two “millennials” about everything from their education, dress, type of cell phone, and ideas on what would be a dream job.

Just as I was stepping forward to ensure there was not an atomic blast, one of the young ladies this man was targeting with his angry spoke up.  Her words spoken with a slight quaver in her voice turned more than a few heads.  She shared that she thought ‘AGE’ was just an excuse.  Then she shared how that excuse had helped her justify for 18 months, what she wanted to do or say without looking at the impact or the result.

She disclosed how she figured out something very important – to get interviews she had to play up her unique attributes and connect those to the employer needs and follow that by downplaying her unique attributes, including her preferred manner of dress that clashed with employer wants and/or needs or she was going to remain without a job and become homeless.

Her message was that when she stopped blaming AGE and started to think of ways to leverage her differences to provide mutual benefit and stopped her personal “WAR” with older candidates, employer systems and the authority of hiring managers she began to get interviews.

Are you waging a war?

Is AGE a blind spot in your job search?

Are you a highly qualified candidate, struggling to prove your value to companies?

Would you benefit from leveraging your value, attributes and differences?

Are your perceptions and expectations about AGE helping you connect with employers or encouraging them to call ‘security’?

What perceptions should you examine this week?

What is your policy?

Most of you know my background is in Business Operations/Management and Human Resources and the systems and discipline learned over the years have served me and those I serve well.  One of those disciplines is to regularly review practices and policies to determine if they need updating and when there is a policy or acceptable pattern of behavior that needs updating to update it.  Times change and you must to this or your practices and policies get outdated.

Okay, before you say WHAT? – “I’m looking for my next gig and will worry about policy stuff when I land.”   Not looking at what you do and how you handle business and your search day in and day can be costly.  Your personal policies and practices drive your results and help you be effective.  Stop, think, and review at least one area a week, if you at not getting the results you want.  This week look at social media.  Think about and review what you doing.  Doing so should help you be more effective.

Social media is changing.  This week I am looking at my practices for LinkedIn and Twitter.  I would encourage you to do the same.  Here are some questions to help you.

Do you have a policy or a practice?

Do your practices (or habits) help ensure you are effective and use your social media time wisely?

How much time do you spent connecting via social media?

Is the time productive and focused?

What are your goals for using each type of social media?

Can you quickly explain how you use social media?

How is social media helping you reach the goals you set for your search?

Can you measure the results?

Now use your answers to review what you do, your habits and what, if anything you should change.

Not being a social media expert, I depend on experts to help me understand, learn and be effective with all the tools and systems I use.  Nancy Marmolejo is one of the experts I trust to help me with social media.  On January 11, Nancy posted a great tip where she talk about the “spin cycle” and shared great information.  Her tips are geared to business owners, but they also apply to job seekers.  After all you are the owner and marketer of your talent, skills and experience.  Read Social Media Tip: Go Micro, worth reading.

If you review your practices and need some help to refine how you use social media to accelerate your job search, do two things.  1) Leave a comment below about what you are doing that works and what you need help with or have questions about, and 2) contact me directly if you need help.

It amazes me that I forget the basics and no, it is not age! When reviewing my year end results I noticed that in some case I just stopped doing what I USED to do. The impact – POOR Results!

The kicker is it’s a phenomenon that happens to most people in business and in life from time to time. Many businesses I work with refine a process, train all, execute with gusto, then over time move on to other things assuming the basics are not that important day in and day out.

In the beginning, like with a new job, you learn the basics and you do them right every day. Taking a no-exceptions, no-excuses approach, then time go on and you stop executing on the basics, you rest on your laurels, get lazy, stop doing the things you need to do. Slowly things change and then you experience a slump.

If you stopped the basics and BANG! things changed in an instant you might return at once to the basics. It rarely works that way. How it works is you do the basics and get results, then build on those results.

If you stop doing the basics, you do at the start of your job search to generate leads and build your interview pipeline. If you stop networking, calling contacts and employers, slowly your results are impacted. The pipeline runs dry and the result is you don’t have interviews, without interviews, you won’t have offers and without offers no new job.

Then there are the lists of excuses such as “no one if hiring”, “jobs are go to China”, “no one calls me back”, “there are no openings in my field”. Slowly, fear, worry and lack of focus set in, and then you begin to reinvent the wheel and search of new things to do in lieu of executing the basics.

If you want solid results, go back to basics. Define you target job, and target the short list of companies you for whom you are interesting in working and get the interviews.

Ask yourself these questions:
What basics of your job search have you been UNWILLING to do recently to get interviews?

What have you stopped doing that you did regularly in the beginning of your job search?

What tasks have you gotten lazy at executing?

Are you willing to do what it takes to connect with potential employers?

If you are really ready to go to work and accelerate your search, then stop doing this and that and look at your marketing and job search plan. What parts of your plan are you implementing regularly? Where are you not being consistent with your marketing and in following your plan?

It’s time to go back to the basics. It’s time to recommit. The neat thing is, when you recommit and you start doing the basic things again, they WORK.

What happens is you start getting calls, finding opportunities, getting interviews and offers. Time and time again, opportunities starts pouring in, and you have many options. It always works.

If you missed Jason Alba’s December 29th blog post be sure to check it out and download the e-book referenced.

What a great gift! This is an e-book packed with wisdom and tips.

For my readers in New England you will recognize many of the names and faces who have shared 100 solid tips and job search resources. For those in the Merrimack Valley don’t miss page 11.

If you know Mitchell Schneir, you know the value of the information he shares to help others. If you have had the pleasure of hearing Mitchell Schneir speak, no doubt you have benefited from his tips and you will not be surprised by his wisdom or the wisdom shared by the company he keeps.

Download your copy of the book. Read it more than once, then pass it on.

“The reality of life is that your perceptions — right or wrong – influence everything else you do.
When you get a proper perspective of your perceptions, you may be surprised how many other
things fall into place.”~ Roger Birkman

Here is a question I am ask very often and it almost always starts with a statement – “I think I need a certification or training to get a job, what do you think?”

In most cases I want to say – “It does not matter what I think, your perception is you think you do need it, therefore you must.”

Of course that would not help most people. If you are asking the same question and attempting to determine if you do need a certification here are a few questions you can ask yourself. These should help you. After you ask the questions, if you want to discuss them with someone contact me and I will be happy to discuss them with you.

Why do I want a certification?

How will this certification help me do the job I want better?

How will this certification help me use the skills I love to use every day in my ideal job?

What is the cost of the certification over the 5 years?

What is my return on that investment over 5 years?

Merry Christmas!
Cindy

“Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.” ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Are you sabotaging your career and your future income?

Almost daily I hear, “The economy is so bad, no one is hiring and I’m waiting for things to improve to look for a job”. Or “Things are so bad, I’m discouraged, frustrated, sad and feel like I am wasting my time” or now a new favorite “It’s the holidays, no one is hiring”. That type of thinking may just be sabotaging your career and your future income.

First, December is always a busy time of the year for the search business in both good and poor economic times. It is the end of the year and many departments are attempting to get positions filled and all hands on deck for the coming year, and in today’s environments folks are trying not to potentially lose headcount due to an open spot.

Oh yes, if you didn’t hear, unemployment was down in November. The job market will still take time to turn around it always does. Many went back to work, doing what they enjoy and earning more than they had been earning, and others did not go back to work and continue to miss the opportunities right under their nose.

Is it okay for you to continue to have your job search cost you $400 a day? Yes, that is the cost of your job search if your salary is $100,000 annually. Can you afford that? Of course not!

Now is not the time to take a break. Stay connected, re-connect and stay focused. Believe it or not landing the job you want is not that complex, but it does require a process with two very critical steps, 1) making a decision and 2) doing what it takes. Most people don’t get clear on what they want and they aren’t clear on or committed to doing what it takes to land the job they want. The result is a prolonged search often with less than ideal results.

If you are stuck and need help get it now. Don’t wait till you get a call for an interview to call for help and get prepared. Don’t stop your “on brand”, authentic and compelling marketing and by all mean don’t take a break during the month of December.

If you have an idea or a hunch, do your due diligence and act on it. You will not be given the idea or opportunity without the resources to take advantage of the opportunity. That is the way the world works. Don’t look at the obstacles or make excuses, take action.

If you are not where you want to be in your job search, one of the major reasons is your lack of action. Yes, you have heard it and my say you know it, “To get different results, you must do things differently”, yes, I know you are nodding your head, and saying “I know that”.

Be careful that is one of the biggest “Self-Sabotaging” things you can do. Are you willing to DO what you haven’t done before? Or will you just continue to nod your head. Get clear on the options and opportunities all around you and right under your nose. Write down what you want.

This is not as simple as it sounds. If you are saying “I don’t need to write down what I want it is in my head”, think again that arrogance of thinking coupled with “I know that” are forms of self-sabotage and these may be the very things keeping you from moving forward. Yes, these are basic things. If you are not where you want to be it is time for the basics.

Knowing the basics and not acting on and executing the basics can cost you dearly. Just like the ball team that does not execute the most basic play can lose the game, failure to execute the basics can extend your job search and can impact your salary and long term earnings.

Write down the job you want, when you want to start working and describe the job you will be doing. Review the systems you are using to land the job. Now look at your résumé and your LinkedIn Profile, are these aligned with what you want? If not, why not?

Are you devoting time to networking, researching your ideal employer and contacting the employers and hiring managers that interest you? Or are you devoting hours to surfing the internet job board hoping for the job you want to appear?

What will you do different this week?

If you’re ready take action, speed up your search and land the job you want in record time, and have questions about your search, sign up on the right for my Q & A calls then join the next call to get your questions answered.

I will email you the information on the next call. Until then continue to move forward and accelerate your search.

All talented professionals and experts sometimes get stuck; the key to their success is that they know when to ask for help and where to look for the help and assistance they need to move forward. High achievers simply need information and to be pointed in the right direction. Given the “what to do” they dive in, apply their skills, and get the job done.

If so, you’ll be happy to know that the unemployment rate has dropped in some states in October. For example in Massachusetts, the drop marked the first monthly decline in the unemployment rate since June of 2007. To make that number more “REAL” several of the people working with me have accepted new positions in the last two weeks.

These are not just any positions, but the “right job” and at top salaries. One client contacted me to say his commitment to the “right job” over many months he had invested in a solid process of marketing his experience and identifying the job he wanted had netted a very good ROI. “This is a great new position doing what I love to do with an 18.5% increase in salary, what a great way to start the holiday season”.

This past weekend while shopping with a family member I was reminded, “if we are going shopping, we need to do it right”, and I must tell you I have some serious shoppers in my family. If a job is on your Holiday Shopping List, you may want to review the list below to ensure you get what you want.

All good shoppers (and job seekers) know finding the best items, bargains, or jobs are made easier when you:

1. Never shop without a list – make a list and know what you want and need.

2. Know where to find what you want and need, and do your homework to find out who has what you want and need.

3. Review other items, bargains and jobs to be sure you are selecting the best match for your wants/needs.

4. Shop before you buy, but don’t shop without items 1-3 on the list.

Happy Holiday shopping!