Don't just get through it, get into it!

I went to a birthday party recently for a 5 year old and it was at 2:30 in the afternoon at a bowling alley on a gorgeous sunny Sunday in August...in Seattle!  The wrongness of this appointment transcends so many levels, but surely if you've lived in Seattle for more than one summer you'll understand most of my angst.  I'd already made up my mind that we had a hard stop after an hour, even though the party was scheduled to last until 4:30.  In my head I had my "to-do" list (both personal and professional) and in order to hit those milestones and wring the last little bit of enjoyment out of my weekend (reiterating the sunny and warm part)...

Any of this sound familiar? 

I was so busy checking things off of my list that I'd inadvertently decided I wasn't going to enjoy spending time with other parents (who probably felt the same as I did) or get a couple of hours of enjoyment watching my kids having a good time with other kids.  I caught myself getting all spun-up on the drive to the bowling alley and quickly decided that for my part, that would be a suck way to spend two hours of my life.  With less difficulty than I  had imagined I committed to engaging with other parents, enjoying my wife and kids and PRESTO!, we were there for the duration, had a good time and were still able to do what I wanted afterward. 

Fast forward and now it's Monday.  I'm looking around and I see people scurrying around their offices looking as busy with their "lists" as I felt at the bowling alley the day before with mine. "Have to; Got to; must finish by EOD or else" are all lead-ins I heard throughout the day.  Curiously absent were, "Want to; Get to; can't wait to finish and show my client" etc.  It dawned on me that a lot of us are confusing activity with productivity.  As my wife will occasionally ask, "is your journey satisfying, or are you just arriving at your destination?"  Do you spend your energy rushing through your list of daily chores such that you feel tired but unsatisfied at the end of the day? Are you so focused on getting to the next thing on your list that you fail to appreciate the quality required of you and necessary for the task at hand?  Do you ever imagine that any of the world's great successes in business, art or science subscribed to that model? 

I know, a lot of questions.  At the risk of going all Zen with my suggestion, maybe take an extra moment to focus on doing well anything you're doing (month-end reports, job hunting, sales calls, code reviews, being a parent at a bowling-birthday-party-for-kids, etc) and hold yourself accountable.  I'm suggesting you really plug yourself into the equation.  Get completely into it as opposed to just getting through it and then, whether at work, play or some destination in between, occasionally ask yourself, " is this journey satisfying?"  vinny

Your degree is BS in what?

So you made the choice to spend a lot of money and commit years of your life toward getting a degree?  Good, now get your money's worth and be prepared to discuss and demonstrate some of the specifics of what you learned with the people interviewing you. That or prepare to be passed over.

Used to be not everyone had the time, money or inclination to go to college after completing high school and in those times just having a degree would elevate and set you apart from others competing for the same job. Things started changing in the 80's and then the 90's came with a huge push in all things technical and financial.  Industry screamed for a more educated talent pool, immigration caps were raised, government offered more student loans, schools started offering more degreed programs; all combining to create an economic landscape that today is bursting with new college grads and MBA's that are having a hard time finding jobs.  "Why is that?" you ask.

I submit that the difficulty for more than a few is because they're having a hard time explaining what they learned, why they learned it and more importantly, how both will positively impact their prospective employer.  Nobody cares if you were in the top 3% of your class if you can't answer a basic question in your chosen field of study, or worse, are offended by being asked a 101 question that you don't deem pertinent to the job.  (By the way, do expect to be asked how many were in the class and what criteria determined the percentages if you choose to go this route.)

If your degree is in education, computer science, accounting, or whatever, be prepared to have an intelligent, repeat, intelligent conversation about why you chose your field, what you learned that changed your life, and how making that choice can positively change other lives.  Can you talk about the theories of Freud and Jung, or what's really included in COGS so your month end reports are accurate?  Do you really believe Fibonacci is important and why would you use the big O notation in the analysis of an algorithm?

Almost anyone can obtain a degree today by paying tuition, showing up, passing the tests and meeting the minimum graduation qualifications; none of which is necessarily a guarantee of higher intelligence, just additional education.  Proof of education won't set you apart in today's job market, proof of intelligence will set you apart in any job market.

No degree?  I'll be talking about how to leap that hurdle in an upcoming post.

Feel free to follow me, use the 'share' toolbar below to send to a friend, recommend, comment and/or send me mail by going to www.otbcoaching.com...vinny

If you want to drive your career development you'll need to take the wheel...

Got the job, like the job, good at the job...NICE!  Now sit tight, don't do anything goofy and wait for your annual review.  Oh yeah, and hope it's good. 

Years I'm hearing and seeing people using exactly this "go along to get along" formula only to be grossly disappointed (or worse) once their reviews are done.

Does your boss have performance expectations of you and if so, do you know what they are?  Do you have any performance expectations of yourself and if so, does your boss know what they are?  Are you above, behind or on track to satisfy all of the above expectations (aka, objectives, milestones, goals, commitments) and once achieved where will that leave you in the pack?  Do you meet with her/him on a regular basis to track performance to date and determine what may have changed up or down and the commensurate impact these up's and down's will have on your career trajectory? 

These are just some of the questions you should have answers for to determine what your contribution is and how it will stack up against your contemporaries.

"My boss has canceled the last few 1:1's because of scheduling conflicts but if there was a problem I'd have heard about it."  Unacceptable is my reply to that.  You may be doing just enough to not be a pain point, wind up on a performance improvement plan or get fired but significantly less than those getting the top raises and promotions.  NEWS FLASH:  Your boss doesn't have the same personal investment in your career as you do, nor should s/he! This isn't about promoting paranoia, this is about taking control of your professional development and creating mutual, agreed-upon goals so that you can manage toward achieving and exceeding those goals.

In these uncertain times it's good to have a job, but are you guilty of being so busy trying to keep your job that you're not doing your job?  If so don't expect a great review...vinny

See me at www.otbcoaching.com if you want to talk

Connect the Dots

"What do you really want to do?", I'll ask my coaching clients, and the response is almost as pre-programmed as the "just looking" most of us mutter to a retail sales person when asked, "how are you?"  The usual reply is something along the lines of, "Well I'm really good at x, y and z."   Not what I asked but while we're on the subject, who told you that you are really good at x, y and z?  Yourself, your boss, your brother, your spouse?  Think on it and I'll come back to this in a bit.

Try asking a child (that hasn't yet succumbed to parental/societal pressure) what they want to do, and they'll likely have several answers in the time it takes you to blink.  "Go swimming, ride bikes, eat chocolate, play with dolls/dinosaurs, etc" are just some of the replies I've heard from kids.  Interestingly enough, they seem to do all of them well.  I believe it's because they pour their time and energy into doing them well so that they can enjoy them more!  Our self esteem likely started out as high before we learned to argue for our limitations and then started doing what we thought we were supposed to do. 

Before someone told you this is "what you do well" or "this is what you should do", what is it you enjoyed doing?  Was it reading books or doing research? Do you groove on helping others solve complicated problems?  Is it  math, music, building, breaking or growing things that motivates you?  Doesn't matter but I suggest creating a list to see what they are as a means of seeing who you are.

Now that we have a list of things we like to do let's get back to what you're good at doing; the list you already have in the front of your brain.  Have you figured out how you learned you were good at them?  Don't sweat it if you don't know, but can you draw lines between what you like and what you do well?  In this sense, can you connect the dots in such a way that you create a visual of how your next career move might look?  If not, I encourage you to give a more honest look at your two lists to see what you might add or subtract to help complete your picture.

I'll leave you with this to consider.  Are you really good at the x, y and z things on your list or did you simply out-perform others who cared less about them than you do?   Imagine taking the things you're really good at and re-purposing them for doing things that you truly enjoy so that you enjoy the time you spend doing them more...vinny

What will the people you worked with REALLY say about you?

"...it's all good and besides, my reason for termination wasn't performance-related, they even said so."  Or maybe this, "...they can't say anything bad about me because that's defamation.  All they can legally do is confirm my title and dates of employment."

Well, in my experience very rarely are things "all good" and that absolutely applies to employment reference checks.  As for the second statement,  depending on the laws of the state in which you are/were employed, your previous employer may safely be able to say anything about you that is true as long as it meets the following criteria:

• Job related
• Based upon credible evidence, and
• Made without malice

So it's completely realistic, again depending on state law,  to expect a former employer to say that a former employee "had a history of being late which negatively impacted the project", or that "they were verbally abusive to co-workers as documented in their employee file", or anything else that meets the above criteria.

While many companies, especially those with structured HR departments, will refrain from giving detailed reference checks opting instead for Employment Verification, that may not prevent Steve in Marketing (at your prospective employer) from calling his friend Janice in Marketing (at your former employer) to see what she "thinks" about you and if she knows why you're available.  Social Media/Networking is so pervasive it's only realistic to assume that people will leverage their social networks for professional purposes too.   

Now try answering my original question, "What will the PEOPLE you worked with REALLY say about you?" Don't know or don't like but want to change, see me at www.otbcoaching.com and we can talk.

BTW and just so you know, people in HR usually don't even bring up the phrase "performance-related" unless on some level it was...vinny

Take a deep breath and count to whatever it takes...

Years ago I was trying to get a client of mine to interview an excellent candidate of mine for her open position, but she said she was fairly certain she already had the role filled with someone she was meeting the next day at 10am.

The following morning she called me at around 10:30 asking if my candidate was still available and I answered, "yes, but what happened to the candidate you met with at 10?"

She explained that she'd been running about 15 minutes late due to a traffic snarl on her way in and then went on to share the details of her commuting adventure.  Seems that in an attempt to be on time she'd inadvertently cut off another driver with an abrupt lane change.  Realizing her gaffe, she instantly waved her apology to the other motorist; appreciating that it wasn't enough yet not knowing what else she could possibly do.

The other driver sped up beside her making inappropriate hand gestures while honking, then pulled in front of her and intentionally slowed down before ultimately speeding away.

Shaken but mostly irritated by the way her morning was starting, and the fact that she was running late for an interview, she parked her car and ran into her office building for her appointment.

Both hiring manager and candidate were surprised that they'd already met on the road, but not that the interview was over...vinny

The best answer to the question may be Yours!

We used to joke that if you put two hiring authorities in a room, regardless of industry or discipline, you could get three opinions on almost any topic.  Doesn't matter what the question is, the important thing is that individuals will have an opinion as to what answers are right. 

Correct is good and what most interviewers expect, but breaking down a problem and detailing your approach to solving each individual part is even better.  In this vein do not skip past what you might consider to be the 101 parts of the question/answer, because it's conceivable that that is exactly what they expect you to do.  Forgetting or omitting fundamentals is not being clever and will say a lot about the value you place on what you've learned.  I've had candidates who understood and could articulate the fundamentals still give incorrect answers, but be rewarded with job offers anyway because they were able to combine what they knew with either an unconventional or bold or creative approach to solving the problem. 

Out in the world the other day, I'm riding an elevator around lunch-time and four tech types are heatedly discussing a computer science question that one of them had just posed to a job candidate during an interview.  While he was passionately explaining his optimal answer, the others were busy tearing his solution apart and offering what they described as more elegant alternatives and effective work-arounds. 

All of them worked for the same company (same badges), each had an opinion, no two were alike, yet all of them got hired...vinny

JOB SEEKERS BEWARE of these 3 little letters...ATS

The letters stand for Applicant Tracking System and companies build/buy them to record candidates applying for jobs.  Depending on how feature-rich the ATS is, it's possible for it to store millions of candidate records/resumes over many years, including phone screen and interview notes, time-stamping each submittal for each job at said company.  Why should you care and why am I still talking about it? Well,  if an internal recruiter sees a candidate applying for multiple jobs spanning multiple disciplines over a short period of time, and you haven't been promoted, changed companies or added educational credentials to your resume, how seriously do you expect to be taken?  "But I have a broad range of interests and skills," you say.  Great!!  Pick the top 2 jobs (max 3, if they are similar) that you're most qualified for, apply for them explaining why you are qualified and interested, and then safely assume that unless something about your skill set changes substantially, you're done for awhile. 

I don't mean for this to sound discouraging but mass-submitting (flooding, jamming, spamming, etc) won't help your cause.  At best the person reviewing resumes will overlook the fact that you've applied to every job opening they have and give you the call if you're resume suggests you are the absolute PERFECT person for the role.  At worst, they may move past the PERFECT resume and  jump to the conclusion that the human capital attached to it isn't specialized enough or lacks in decisiveness and self-awareness. 


My encouragement is to apply only to positions that map to both your professional qualifications and your interests, remembering that throwing anything 'at the fence and hoping it sticks' smells desperate.  Play to your strengths...vinny

  

One or Two Page resume? Depends...

This question has been kicked around for as long as I've been looking at resumes and I'll be candid, if you don't have something compelling on your resume to share with a prospective employer it really doesn't matter.

If you're a recent grad and have no industry experience one page should do and even that might be challenging to fill unless you have a list of special projects. Don't be afraid of two if you have enough professional breadth and depth but in both cases, you have between 10 and 30 seconds to get the reader interested.  If you lose them you'll likely also lose any opportunity with the company. 

What are you currently doing, how will it benefit your next employer, what relevant tools/technologies were involved, who have you worked for, in what capacity and how long were the engagements?  These and education are what they're really interested in seeing.  With respect to education, my suggestion is within a year of graduation, (BS/BA, MS, MBA, PhD) list it near the top of your resume and after you've been out a year move it to the bottom.

As for formatting stick with chronological over functional because functional makes it harder to connect the dots and see what you did, when and where. 

Start with your name and contact information, add a few modest career 'highlight' bullets to give a sense of your achievements (do go easy on the fluff), follow with company names, employment dates, titles you held and a brief one-paragraph description of what you actually did during your time there including any significant contributions, tools and/or technologies used.  This is the 'meat' of your resume and what most hiring authorities are focused on, so make sure it accurately reflects your work and accomplishments.  Sure, some people are into pedigrees and big name shops but even satisfying those won't get you the nod if the work you did or the tools/processes you used aren't transferable.

When you're finished do NOT forget to proof read it, checking your grammar, spelling and punctuation.  Spell check won't catch 'to' and 'you' even though you mean 'too' and 'your' but the person reading your resume probably will...vinny

Why would you hire You?

"I've improved year-over-year revenues by 120%" or "the processes I put into place enabled the company to realize performance gains of...blah, blah, blah."

I don't want to sound critical or diminish the accomplishments you've had, but what if anything does this mean to me as your future employer?  While past successes can be deemed predictors of future performance, please make a point of demonstrating how these accomplishments will apply specifically to me. More simply, if you were interviewing You, would your answers compel you toward giving yourself a 'hire' vote or just leave you with additional questions?

I encourage my coaching clients to think in terms I call differentiators.  I'm not talking about buzz words that can be found on your resume but real-world examples describing how you've addressed similar situations and turned them into 'wins'.

I worked recently with a senior executive and in her words, not unlike your math teacher in school, "you need to show your work" for me to understand what it is you do and how that relates to what I need done.

Clearly, before you can do that you need to do your homework and understand what your prospective employer does, what the role they need filled does and then be able to succinctly explain why hiring you is the solution they're seeking to do it better. 

I touched on this briefly in an earlier post but to recap, mentally switch chairs with the interviewer and ask yourself, "if I were interviewing Me what answer(s) would I need to hear?"

Do be prepared for some text book questions depending on the discipline (Project Management, Computer Science, Accounting, etc...), but beyond that they're probably more interested in hearing why you believe yourself to be the best candidate.  Answers that illustrate your unique and individual offerings with respect to logic and problem-solving will give a future employer an idea of how you use the skill set you've acquired.

"interesting that you ask that Ms/Mr hiring authority. When I was with ABC company we were faced with a similar set of challenges and I was able to leverage the existing resources and knowledge base to create an effective solution..."

Use your own verbiage, plug in the relative data points to build your story and now you've given a prospective employer a short essay as opposed to a multiple-choice answer in defining you and what you do.

Respectfully, don't expect to be singled out in a good way if you show up to the party bringing the same chips and dip that everyone else does...vinny

9243...

Is how many M&M's I had in a jar in my office (don't ask how I know that ;).  As a problem-solving exercise for PM's and Software Engineers, I'd ask job seekers (in this case RainMan) the obvious question, to which he replied, "9243"... yep, just like that.  No preamble, no qualifying questions regarding volume measures, whether I'd hidden a golf ball inside, nothing at all.  I was amazed and impressed at the fact that he knew the answer (frankly still am even though I was disappointed he didn't suggest it was "three minutes to Wapner.") ...right up until I asked him how he got it.
 
"I don't know", is what he said.
"What do you mean you 'don't know'?"
"It's 'right' though, isn't it?" he countered
"Yes, the answer is 9243, but how did you know?"
"Doesn't matter, just as long as I'm correct" was how he left it.

Do you want to work with someone like this or are you someone like this?

Working with someone like this is akin to getting in a car with a driver willing to take you to NYC, knows that it is your destination but doesn't have a map, doesn't ask any questions and can't give you any specifics on  how they're getting you there from where you are.

Do yourself and everyone you interview with a favor by asking good qualifying questions and then talking through your solutions.  It speaks to effective communication, will give them an idea of how you process information and how you'll work in a collaborative environment ...vinny

"right answer, right solution...same thing..."

Actually heard this from a candidate I was prepping for a Microsoft interview.  I nicknamed him 9243 or Rain Man but I'll get back to that later.  I asked if he actually believed that a 'right' answer and a 'right' solution were the same and he answered..."yes".  At that point I asked him how many ways he could drive to work from his house and he offered "four" as his answer.  Then I asked him which way was right and he looked at me like I had twelve heads.
"They're all right" he said. 
"How can that be?" I asked.  "How can you have more than one right answer?" 
He looked at me and started his sentence with, "because it depends..." at which point I stopped him.
 
The 'depends' is what separates the correct answer from the correct solution.  The solution can be comprised of multiple 'right' answers to counter the 'depends' part, and what kind of value-add might you be to an organization if your solution has answers more correct than what a hiring manager is expecting?

If you only have a correct answer and a 'depends' happens (budgets get slashed, functional spec's get re-written, teams get whacked...) your 'right' answer isn't 'right' any longer, but I'm guessing you get my point.

I'll share the 9243 reference in a later post...vinny

"If you just get me the interview I'll get the job!"

As a recruiter I actually stopped counting the number of times I've heard this from job seekers and while I applaud their confidence, it's usually not a true statement.

How can someone possibly know this for certain if they don't know the people interviewing them, the specific competencies being measured, the caliber of the other candidates competing for the same position or what kinds of questions they will be asked? You can't.

I don't suggest being pessimistic, I actually encourage going in with confidence since you probably wouldn't be getting an in-person interview if someone at some level didn't think you capable of doing the job. In a dozen years of coaching job seekers I've found a little nugget of truth I'll share and that most job candidates have never heard before...hiring managers want to hire, most just don't like interviewing. Go in focused on demonstrating your ability to do the job during the course of the interview and you'll likely be the one coming out of it with the offer.

Don't think of it as an interview, interrogation or inquisition although it may feel like all three. Instead, pretend it's your first day on the job as a consultant meeting with a hiring team on how to help them solve their problem. Clearly they have problems or they wouldn't need to hire you, so be sure to ask good qualifying questions before offering up answers.

I'll end this post with a question. What answers would you give during an interview if the hiring team was paying you for them? vinny

Everyone you've ever met has interviewed you...

Now so are people whom you've never met!

That's the new way of life thanks largely to social networking and the whole 2.0 wave. What isn't new is that you still never get a second chance to make a good first impression. So before you hit 'send' on that resume submission for that perfect job, first ask yourself if there is anything on your Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. pages that could be misinterpreted or misconstrued and potentially cost you an interview or job offer.

The power of these social networking sites can definitely work for you but, as with most things, can have an equal and opposite effect. Your friends and family are looking at your profile but so are prospective employers. The humor points you lose with your buddies by having that un-expressed thought or not posting the compromising photo of you and your friends may help advance your career.

We're considerably past 1984 but I assure you people are definitely watching how you go about claiming your 15 minutes...vinny

Are you as relevant as you should be?

I read a recent post that talked about how ageism was being widely practiced and that the percentage of over 40's was the target. The participants went on to discuss how at recurring networking events the age of attendees visibly under age 40 was minuscule, and this seemed to support their position. While I'm sure age discrimination is occurring in many places across the country, I also propose that the relevance people feel they have might actually be on the wane. "We have all these valuable skills" I hear people say; but are these skills really prized by the new leaders of companies today? Are you giving your employer the skills they want/need or are you giving them what you think they need? Much like professional sports, no matter how many championship titles you've helped your team win, regardless of how many Superbowl rings you have in your possession, as soon as someone that can deliver more for less, and for longer, is available, they'll likely take your starting spot. I submit that as a work-force we're becoming victims more of consumerism than ageism. To support this theory with a fairly commonplace example, it can be more cost effective in many cases to replace an average-performing piece of equipment with something that is newer, faster, and with more bells and whistles (not to mention more memory) than to spend the money upgrading what you have for potentially zero ROI. Not coincidentally we're either becoming (or have become) the "older" people we used to talk about replacing, and the only way to avoid being categorized as obsolete and expendable is to be as current and relevant (redundancy intended) as the people who want your job.

I don't mean to drone on about relevance, but how relevant are you? Take for example the 20-something CEO of Facebook; 15 years ago he would have been a gross anomaly, but the leaders that were his age in the dot-com days are now in their mid to late 30's and for them networking doesn't necessarily mean spending an hour or more (plus travel time) to be somewhere in-person for the sake of networking. IM chat, Email, text messaging, social networking sites, Second life, smart phones, iPads...these are the venues for the new networking meetings taking place and, with the technically saavy, they can all be occurring simultaneously! I'll occasionally hear derisive comments regarding this multi-tasking, labeling it instead as A.D.D., an obvious lack of focus, or something similar, but these are the skills that current leadership seems more likely to purchase and promote, so my encouragement is STOP labeling and START LISTENING to what your employer/client is telling you is important to them, even if they're not telling you directly!

I'm not suggesting you give up on what you do well or that you try to be other than who you are but, on a regular basis, you should at the very least be asking yourself if you're connected to what you employer wants or if instead you're offering what you want them to have or feel they need. If it's the latter...you run the risk of failing the relevance test. To personalize this further, if you purchased something expensive and it had all the features you needed at the time, but then the time came you no longer needed all these options (wanting other or different options) and could find them in a newer model for less than the cost of an upgrade, what would you choose to do? ...vinny

Light at the End of the Tunnel...it's HERE!

I wrote this in March of 2009 but wanted to re-post for those of you who may have missed it:

So if you're one of the recently unemployed, are you out there pounding the pavement, scouring the job boards, maybe spending way too much time on Facebook and at pity-party lunches while simultaneously trying to figure out where your next mortgage payment will come from? Give yourself permission to...STOP! Having been both a Corporate and Agency recruiter for a dozen years and having prepped, coached and counseled hundreds of job seekers through the dot-carnage, I believe good will ultimately come from this mess too. Companies doing business will continue to hire new employees, just maybe not at the rate to which we grew accustomed, and the World probably isn't coming to an end any day soon...if it is, unemployment should be the least of your worries. Leverage your network of personal and professional contacts, put pride aside and let everyone you know that you're actively looking for your next engagement. Try not to look or sound desperate, regardless of how you may actually be feeling because, well, because you know how that will be received. Chances are good that you were good at what you were doing, else you wouldn't have been hired in the first place, so keep your optimism alive and open your eyes wide to what may be around you. (oh, but if you weren't good at your last job, start thinking about why that was and then take steps to either make changes or choose a different path!) Ask people close to you what they see as being your strengths and I repeat, keep your optimism alive! The hardest question for most people to answer (in any economy) is, "what do I want to do?" You might start by listing things you have a passion for doing and then listing the the things you're good at doing (e.g. listening, writing, building, coaching, training, working with children, writing software applications, etc.). Can you connect the dots? When you're passionate about what you do, you simply do it better, regardless of how difficult or easy it may be. People will frequently confuse what they've done for years with what they're "good at doing", and that may not actually be the case. Find your passion and pull out all the stops to see where that may take you. Clearly there's never been a better time than now to do this exercise and understand that you have all of the power necessary to change your own life. There is no "silver bullet" solution to the problems we face and neither magic nor the government is likely to deliver us from where we are, but know that YOU can be the "silver bullet" as well as the magician capable of delivering yourself from where you are to the where you want to be...vinny