We all like to think that we are in control of our professions to some degree. After all, for the most part, we did choose the type of work that we do (although maybe it wasn’t our first choice), we are in charge of whether we quit or stay (although really maybe it is life circumstances that are controlling us), and we can always decide to do something else (although again it might not seem that way) or find ways to grow in our field.
On the surface, then, it certainly sounds like we are in control.
(But that’s the problem, isn’t it? At the end of the day, it’s really only on the surface.)
Start a conversation with just about anyone about how they earn their income, and you will either hear or find underpinnings of phrases like, “I am a professional so-and-so,” “my career management strategy is XX,” “I have all the right credentials,” “my job development path is XX,” etc. But if you delve a little deeper, to find out what truly motivates them, it won’t take long to find a startling truth:
Most of us are basically just workers, not really investors.
We’ve found a place to go to each day that provides us with an income, maybe even a nice one, and we’re pretty good at keeping up with the latest in our field, but no matter what title we receive or how much salary we earn, we’re really just hanging on to the hope that we don’t lose that great job or become obsolete to the marketplace. In other words, we’re pretty vulnerable because we haven’t learned a key life lesson when it comes to “career management.”
And that lesson is how to transition from being a worker into being an investor.
An investor is someone who knows how to take something and make it grow. He or she understands that the income received from the day-to-day job does not really lead to financial security. Sure, it buys things…maybe lots of things. But it only lasts as long as the job lasts because it is mainly being used for spending on consumer goods, not for generating real capital…capital that doesn’t rely on an employer’s whim or cannot sustain an economic downturn.
After watching client after client, from C-level execs to entry-level grads, get hit with the reality that all their hard work only secured them a job, not financial security, it has caused us here at ITtechExec, a small startup business, to think about what we consider “success.”
I mean, is success the income earned from work, or is it the investment made off of the income? Does it make sense to build a career path that fails to consider a financial investment strategy (and I am not talking about “saving” for retirement)?
After all, what is the goal? To work, work, work and hope you never lose that job and have just enough in retirement when you are ready for it? Or is to find a way to take those earnings and make them grow, allowing you the opportunity to make different choices and to implement that career management strategy you always wanted to pursue?
Now, I am not talking about whether you ever become rich. If you like being poor or middle class or upper middle class, great. I am talking about how to make sure you stay that way by getting out from under the desperate clinging to a job. This doesn’t mean you won’t continue to work or that you will retire at 40. It simply means you took your worker-bee earnings and turned them into investments that grew and generated a different form of income. And that income is the one you live off of. It is the one sustaining you, not the employer, and it is the one you really are in control over because you are the owner of that investment. The job could go away, but you would still have the investment income…
But I guess it all depends on how you define “security” and where you are expecting it to come from.
One thing is certain: Hope is not a strategy.
It might be a nice feeling. It might even seem like faith, but faith is certainty in the things hoped for and in the things not seen. Faith is not a wish.
I was recently asked by CIO.com senior writer Rich Hein to put together some thoughts regarding the importance of doing research on a prospective employer to prepare for an interview. Rich wrote a nice piece on the topic. I highly recommend that you check it out at on the CIO.com site at Top 8 Sites for Researching Your Next Employer.
I’m very excited to be presenting at the 2013 Career Thought Leaders Conference. My topic is “How to Write Technology Resumes” and will be hosted online on the Resume Training Day on Tuesday March 19th. You can register for just the day and save. Check it out at http://conference2013.careerthoughtleaders.com/.
The presentation will cover client engagement strategies, personal branding, resume writing, and benefit statement development.
Our Tech Career Forum panel discussed the topic of cloud computing and how it is impacting and will impact the IT job market. We held a twitter chat on Wed 2/27 at 3pm ET (#TCFchat). By the way, love the comic here showing Moses as an early adopter of cloud technology =)
Our discussion highlighted the explosive growth predicted in the cloud computing space. We talked about the expected growth of certain types of roles in cloud administration, security, enterprise architecture, etc. We also opined on the cloud-related certification programs that are currently available.
The Cloud…that magical place where technology “just happens.” Well, that’s what most non-techies think of the cloud based on their impression from those Microsoft Windows 7 commercials a few years back…the one where, to solve a problem, they just “go to the cloud!”
We’re going to talk about the cloud..not the pretend magical one, but the real-life one…and how it is expected to impact the tech industry and job market as a whole over the several years. So please join us in our Tech Career Forum twitter chat on Wed 2/27 at 3pm ET (#TCFchat).
Here are the discussion points:
1) What is the projected growth of the IT Cloud market over the next few years?
2) What types of cloud-based jobs and related offshoots are expected to be in strong demand?
3) Where do cloud certifications fit in? What credentials are out there and how do employers feel about them?
4) What strategies can an IT professional keep in sight to stay “fresh” in this fast-changing area?
Outsourcing of business processes (BPO), including IT services and support, has been going on for many years. Our panel discussed the short-term and long-term impact to the US job market. Of course, this discussion extends beyond simply the number of jobs to the quality of the jobs and the ability to cultivate the tech talent here at home to satisfactorily fill those high-level IT positions. You can review the recap of our Tech Career Forum twitter chat that we held on Wed 2/13 at 3pm ET (#TCFchat) on Storify or at the Tech Career Forum LinkedIn Page. You’re welcome to post comments here as well.
Viewed as a boon to the company bottom line, offshore outsourcing in the tech industry has been seen in a negative light by IT workers and many others. In our Tech Career Forum twitter chat on Wed 2/13 at 3pm ET (#TCFchat), we’ll chat about the state of IT outsourcing and the impact on jobs here in the US, so be sure to join us.
Here are the discussion points:
1) What is the current state of offshore outsourcing in the IT and technology fields?
2) Does outsourcing actually help or hurt the IT job market?
3) What types of positions does globalization of the IT job market put at risk?
4) What new opportunities does the IT outsourcing market create here in the US?
A lot of people are speculating as to what type of job market growth we are going to see in 2013. Most predictions coming out of the U.S. Department of Labor Statistics show some reason for optimism across most sectors. In the tech arena our company works in, projections generally seem good, even showing rapid growth in certain areas such as big data (of course, companies still have to find the right talent for these positions, and this talent may not be here in the United States).
Although I see these predictions of at least short-term spurts across the U.S. job market, I still can’t help but warn our clients to be cautious. (Our motto for ITtechExec is “Let’s Be Real.” We want to see our clients be successful, and the best way to do that is to paint the most realistic picture of the markets they serve.)
For although everyone is hung up on quantitative data when it comes to job creation numbers, there is a looming qualitative issue that I believe we are going to have to face sooner or later.
And it isn’t necessarily the quality of the jobs created. It is the quality of life we are going to have here in America.
If you listen to the news at all, or are even mildly paying attention, you should have some idea (I hope) that the U.S. federal government speaks about spending and deficit in terms of trillions of dollars. In 2012 alone, our government overspent its earnings by $1.1 trillion, leaving us with a national debt of more than $16.4 trillion. Now, in 2013, the federal government is projected to continue to overspend, this time by slightly less than $1 trillion, which if you’re keeping up, means our national debt will grow.
Now, as I heard a TV commentator somewhat stupidly say the other day, “that’s a very big number.” (I should say so.)
It is not my intention here to get into a political debate about who’s to blame. Both sides are crazy, in my opinion. Let’s face it: anyone who can look the American people in the eye and say that overspending by $1 trillion in one calendar year is good for us is just nuts. (If you don’t believe me, do a small-scale test with your own finances; keep on overspending and then pretend it’s good for you. Eventually reality will come knocking.) And anyone who thinks it is bad for us, but keeps on voting to do it anyway, well, he or she is even more nuts.
(Furthermore, I think we are way past arguing about Keynes versus Hayek. Neither one of them imagined this amount of spending and this amount of debt.)
My main concern is the lack of understanding of what $1 trillion means.
It is certainly more than just a “big” number. And it is way more than just an IOU that we have to China and Japan.
Here’s an illustration I’ve heard tossed around that offers some perspective:
If you owned a company starting in 1 AD, and that company lost $1 million a day, what year would it be when your company finally lost $1 trillion?
Answer: The year 2737 or 2738…give or take.
And that’s only $1 trillion. Our country owes 16 times that amount….
That means we are now living in a time when we will never see our national debt be paid off. Sure, we might pay it down a little, but it is more likely we will continue to see it grow.
Why? Because the qualitative understanding of what a trillion means is lost on our culture.
A talk show radio host I heard the other day was all upset about our children and grandchildren, and the debt we are leaving them, but I think he needs to check his math. This debt will go many more generations past our grandchildren and even great-grandchildren.
And yet here we are with hope in our eyes that the 2013 job market is going to have some miraculous turnaround, spurring on an economy with high growth. The problem is that we are better served by preparing ourselves for job markets and economies that are backed by a nation with a debt it most likely will never pay back (and backed by a dollar that is losing its significance, not just its value, but more importantly, its significance).
We can certainly have moments of temporary prosperity, sectors that show stability for a time, and businesses that boom for a season, but behind it looms an economy that’s way past overspent.
And just like with our personal finances, eventually reality must show up.
Now, whether it comes in 2013, who knows. But I do think there will be some type of reckoning, depression/rapid inflation (take your pick), and it’s not likely that far off, especially considering that $1 trillion is just a “big” number to us now.
So what does this mean for job seekers? It means you need to get real. Be vigilant about the industry/market you are in. Get better at reading the tea leaves, so to speak. Stop being shocked when companies lay off one minute and hire the next.
Expect some instability in your career. Even more than what you’ve seen so far.
I know that this may not be the most upbeat message, certainly not at the beginning of a year when many analysts are predicting some growth (jobs, housing, etc.). I also know that it sounds a bit fatalistic, and it is. Again, it isn’t to say that some brighter skies might shine here and there, but we live in an age where we expect nothing to ever change. In the United States, in particular, we suffer from a normalcy bias (the idea that bad things don’t happen here) that we need to snap out of.
For the truth is that change is inevitable (you know, that whole death and taxes thing?), and if we want to maneuver through the days ahead, we need to expect it.
The modern-day CTO role is somewhat different from 20 years ago. As more companies become tech-based organizations, the need to a CTO has expanded. Some companies now blur the lines between the CIO and CTO. So our panel tweeted about these distinctions and about how a CTO candidate should position themselves in today’s job market.
To review a recap of the #TCFchat, you can go to the Storify page. Or you can view the recap directly on the Tech Career Forum LinkedIn discussion page.
Feel free to share your own thoughts and comments here or on the Tech Career Forum LinkedIn group, which you are welcome to join!
The role of CTO has changed over the years. As a result, companies are looking for different skill sets today compared with 15 or 20 years ago when recruiting a new CTO.
Join us to discuss this topic in our next Tech Career Forum twitter chat on Wednesday 2/6 at 3pm Eastern by using the hashtag #TCFchat.
Here are the discussion points:
1) What is the role of the CTO today, and how is it different from 20 years ago?
2) What skill sets are companies and recruiters looking for in a CTO?
3) How much emphasis should a CTO candidate place on technology? On business leadership?
4) Are there any qualifications that can really help to differentiate a CTO candidate in today’s market?
On Wednesday 1/30 at 3pm ET, we’re talked about working with a technical recruiter for this year. This included some things that really turn recruiters off when reviewing a resume and when conducting an interview. It also included things that get recruiters excited.
For some candidates, particularly in the IT and technical fields, recruiting is a mystery. They are not sure what to make of the process, the people involved, and the expected outcomes. But the most common questions surround what to do and what not to do when engaging a recruiter. So on Wednesday 1/30 at 3pm ET, we’re going to talk tech recruiting on #TCFchat on twitter.
Here are the discussion points:
1) What are the biggest resume No-No’s that turn off a recruiter?
2) What types of things on a resume really deliver a strong, positive impact to a recruiter?
3) What are the biggest phone screen or interview No-No’s with a recruiter?
4) What are some things a candidate can verbalize in a phone screen or interview to get a recruiter excited?
Who cares about the cover letter, right? I mean, with all the online posting these days, there’s not a whole lot of opportunity to provide a cover letter. And, besides, no one reads them anyway…
Fact?
Myth?
Somewhere in between?
Share your thoughts on #TCFchat this Wednesday 1/23 at 3pm ET on just this topic.
We’ll chat about these topics:
1) Should a candidate even bother with a cover letter today?
2) If you’re going to write a cover letter, what approach should you take?
In a recent post, A Career Without Regrets? What’s That?, I talked about the quest to live a regret-free life. Essentially, I said that although it is a noble goal, and one we certainly would all like to achieve, in my mind, it is pretty unattainable because, well, we’re all fallible. Therefore, you are bound to make a mistake, at some point along the way, and have a regret. Essentially, I’ve yet to meet someone who isn’t perfect.
But, boy, do most people these days work so hard to make you think they are! (I know because I used to suffer from this disease myself.)
The road to a cure for me, however, has been my work as a freelance technical copy editor (my second venture outside of the resume work I do). Nothing makes you realize the fallibility of all of us more than when you must perform a job with the sole purpose of finding and correcting people’s mistakes (and telling them, hopefully delicately, about them) while trying to avoid making some of your own. It humbles you. Or at least it should. (I am always amazed by my snooty grammarian colleagues who act as though they never make them, especially when the whole reason for our existence is to acknowledge that everyone does eventually and we’re here to help cover it up! But then again, they’re probably just victims of the same predicament that seems to be running rampant these days.)
Another avenue in my road to a cure was when as a parent, I realized that I was installing in my daughter a fear of, or refusal to admit, her imperfections. Somewhere along the way I inadvertently gave her the impression that being wrong was, well, something to hide. Ouch. How’s that for a wakeup call?
The funny thing is that I have never thought I was infallible. I’m too much of a perfectionist for that. I’ve always been aware of my limitations and mistakes. Acutely aware. I just wanted to hide them as much as I could…you know, to make it look good.
The solace I take in all of this is that to varying degrees, the world around me seems to have the same problem (misery loves company and all).
It’s fallible, and it doesn’t want to admit it.
And for good reason…we’re in love with the presentation, the performance, the pretending!
I see this all the time in business. As a copy editor, I cannot tell you how many hours have been wasted on projects because of debates with authors who just don’t want to admit that their sentence or word choice or typo was wrong. I’ve even had authors make up words and then try to tell me that it really is a word just because they heard “someone else” use it!
And boy do they love to cause a raucous if they should discover I made a mistake. I had one author who put together a journal article that was so poorly written, it was almost illegible (so much for peer review). I spent days working on this document, trying to get it into something that could be read (and understood) by his highly esteemed audience. I was so proud that I could offer that to him. But instead of being grateful and seeing my role as a support to him, he became defensive because apparently he felt “exposed” for what he really was…a pretty poor writer.
So, then, when it was discovered that I had misplaced one comma in the whole document (caught by our proofreader well before publication…you know, the very reason for proofreading and all…), he became so upset, he went complaining to the publisher, who then promptly scolded me to be more careful and not to make “mistakes.”
Not make mistakes? Really? How do I guarantee that promise, particularly in a market that wants faster and faster turnarounds and less and less proofreading?
Is that what I am…the sum of my mistakes?
Or could it just be that we don’t know how to deal with our own imperfections, so we chastise others for theirs?
In my other hat as a resume writer, the quest to present the illusion of perfection has never been stronger. Candidates are under so much pressure to seem like more than they are. Companies get in a huff about lying on resumes, but then they set hiring standards that have been drummed up in some fantasy imagination. They know what they are looking for is almost certainly not out there, but they are going to pretend it exists by taking the candidate who does the best job of seemingly fulfilling the illusion.
Sigh.
You know, I hear people say all the time “nobody’s perfect,” but I’ve come to believe that most people actually don’t believe that. At least they certainly don’t act like they do because here they are covering up all their peccadilloes, hoping no one will see that they actually aren’t perfect.
It’s exhausting, really, and counterproductive.
No wonder very few team-oriented projects succeed.
And yet, the technical marketplace (you know, the one that is actually hiring these days?) is full of team-oriented projects.
Listen. Setting high standards is great. Important even. But setting them and forgetting that people are fallible is a recipe for disaster.
Certainly there are plenty of instances where we seem to suffer from a complacency of diminished expectations (our government would be one example; if it could just succeed at one thing, we would all be overjoyed as we have come to expect nothing but failure in that area). But in our world where Donald Trump (whom I’m pretty sure has had plenty of business/personal failures of his own) fires anyone on TV who makes a mistake while playing his anything-but-reality “reality game show” (or who doesn’t shout and scream and carry-on in the boardroom the loudest), we tend to forget there is a world out there that we actually live in.
And yet, we still go around with our famous quip of “nobody’s perfect.”
Maybe it should be “nobody’s perfect but let’s pretend they are.”
For oh how we seem to like to pretend! Too bad for us, though, that it’s reality that always wins…
(PS: Can you believe that when I first went through this post that I actually misspelled “fallibility” as “fallability”? Maybe I was onto something, though, and should have left the misspelling…but then again, I wouldn’t want the irony to get lost on anyone!)
One of the breakout trends in the IT industry in 2012, which is expected to continue throughout 2013, is Big Data. So the Tech Career Forum’s own Jennifer Hay (@ITresumeexpert) will be hosting the #TCFchat this Wednesday 1/16 at 3pm ET on just this topic.
We’ll chat about these topics:
1) What do we mean by ‘big data?’ Is this just a marketing term?
2) Who uses big data? How do they use it and why do they use it?
3) What jobs are available using big data?
4) What qualifications and background are needed to work in big data?
I was listening to the typical end-of-year, New Year’s-type speech the other day, which is meant to make us take stock of our lives and realize that time is tick, tick, ticking away so we better get moving and go after those goals. As is also typical in this type of motivational speech, the speaker was discussing regrets and how we don’t want to wake up when we are 92 with regrets.
Overall, it was a rousing speech that certainly did make me think about all the things that I still have left to do in life, much less in my career, but the whole issue of regret did give me some pause.
Now, before I state my position, let me just say that I get what he meant. It’s what every Hallmark, Pinterest, life-affirming quote always means. Carpe diem! Go for it! Charge ahead with your goals before it’s too late!
I mean, after all, it’s probably the most noncontroversial thing you can say to someone: Live with no regrets! Who doesn’t want that?
The problem, in my mind anyway, is that it is a pretty unrealistic goal. No regrets, none, really?
I understand that certain things might be easier to ascertain than others…certain moral standards, etc. (If I do X illegal thing, then I will likely go to jail and regret it, comes to mind.) But when it comes to many things in our lives, careers being one of them, it is not always easy to know which decisions will and will not cause you to have regret.
And, let’s face it, you are bound to make mistakes.
So to me, it’s somewhat unavoidable.
First of all, whenever we have to make a decision between two things, it is easy to wonder afterward whether we made the right choice, no matter which path we followed. So we just might have to spend the rest of our lives wondering “what if?” we hadn’t made this decision. But had we chosen the opposite way, then we probably would be doing the same thing anyway (wondering…)! So what did we gain? Sigh. We’re left, at 92, with “what if?” either way!
If you think about it, this whole thing about regret implies you have some insight into the future, that you can predict outcomes and other people’s behaviors, and that you even know how you are going to look at life when you’re older (say 92). Also, it assumes that everything you want right now (Carpe Diem!) is, well, right for you.
Also, is all regret bad?
Some of my biggest mistakes (career and otherwise) have been my biggest learning curves. So in that sense, although I regret them, I’m also a bit grateful for them…how sticky is that?
Furthermore, the whole concept could be either pretty paralyzing or pretty damaging. If regret is your motivator, you will either be more afraid than ever to make a decision (even though it is meant to have the opposite effect) or end up charging out into the world with reckless abandon because it is all about you and your fear of regrets. (How many parents make sacrifices for their kids that might cause them to miss out on some important things? Sure, they regret they didn’t get to do such and such, but sometimes we make sacrifices for the ones we love even if it means we have some regret about what we missed. We can make the “right” decision and still have regret, after all.)
I know. I know. I’m crushing the Hallmark, Pinterest, life-affirming image! (It sounds so good!)
I have a friend who says she has no regrets, but what she really means is that she just chooses not to acknowledge her mistakes or missed opportunities as regrets. Some people call this healthy. I call it her way of coping. Either way, she still has things in her life she wished had turned out differently, some she could control and some she couldn’t. She just isn’t beating herself up over them…at least not yet…who knows how she’ll feel when she’s 92 and has more time to sit around and think about them!
My point is that although we like to have goals that we actually meet and bucket lists that we actually fulfill, we need to be careful about being motivated solely by the fear of future regret. Fear can be a powerful igniter, but it rarely sustains us in any positive way (certainly in any way that keeps us rational). To me, necessity is the best motivator, not fear or guilt.
I’m going to be 40 this year. Of course, I would like to limit the number of regrets I have (now and when I’m 92) as much as the next person. But I also know my mind likes to play tricks on me. It likes to make me sit around and stew on this or that regret and wonder what future ones I will certainly have. As I embark on 2013, though, I would rather think about what is and is not necessary in my life/career, how to live/move with a necessary purpose, and how to think more about leaving a necessary legacy that doesn’t get bogged down in the minutiae. After all, time is tick, tick, ticking!
I want to focus on the necessity of leaving my mark,
no matter how small, not because it is something I might regret not doing later on but because it is something I need to do (not just for me but for those around me) right now. And I don’t want to be consumed about all the things I have yet to do right; instead, I want to be OK with my inevitable imperfection. I mean, there are just so many things about me I cannot seem to fix!
And most of all, I really don’t want to think about being 92; gosh, it’s hard enough to contemplate turning 40.
With fiscal crisis looming and the weak-kneed politicians in “control” of how it gets resolvedhandled pushed off on future generations, who knows what’s going to happen with the U.S. and world economies. Some people apparently believe we can continue down this path (See the CNN Money article from Dec. 2012) and all will be well. Others are predicting a rough financial road for the near future (See the Wells Fargo Economic Report).
But the question for you and your family relates to your employment security. We all know–at least I hope we all know this by now–that true job security is a myth. However, there are things you can do actively to position you for security in an overall employment sense. And, no, I’m not talking about getting unending amounts of unemployment pay. We’ll chat about these topics:
1. What is employment security?
2. How do you prepare for employment security at home?
3. How do you position yourself at work?
4. What other things, outside of work, should you be doing?
Join the discussion and hear expert opinions this Wednesday 1/9 at 3pm ET on twitter at #TCFchat. You can start by posting comments here or on the Tech Career Forum LinkedIn Group page. Please feel free to share any experiences you may have had.
OK, so you might be thinking this is a nonsensical question. I mean, after all, it’s pretty simple, right? We all want to go to work and like what we do.
But if it were that easy to accomplish, everyone would achieve it. The problem, as usual, lies in the application.
Everyone knows what they want (or what they don’t); they just don’t know how to get it.
Spend a minute, if you will, in my shoes…a resume writer/career coach who works with job seeker after job seeker, all essentially in the same quest: to like their job. The mantra is always the same: “I just want to like my job.” They are clear as day on that. No bones about it.
But when you ask them what it means “to like your job,” it’s like you asked them what is the secret to happiness.
(Hey, maybe that is the real question here anyway!)
It’s a rare few who can really answer it much beyond the “I want the pit in my stomach to go away” or “I want to look forward to going there every work day.”
Yet when you press them to tell you what it would take to make that happen, most of the responses/issues they respond with are about circumstantial things, not necessarily about job-related things. For instance, for many people, it is co-worker stuff or boss stuff or commute and work-life stuff. It’s rare that it is the job itself.
Now, that isn’t to say that these issues aren’t important or real, but in my mind, there is a difference between the “job” and the circumstances that surround it. That may be splitting hairs for some, but to me, it is important to recognize in deciding whether you are making a reactive decision to leave or a proactive one, much less whether you need a complete career overhaul or just a change of venue (or maybe attitude!).
I’ve witnessed people make life-changing career changes over a bad boss. I’ve watched careers stagnant over an unwillingness to find a compromise with a co-worker. And none of it really had to do with whether they liked the specific job itself, but all of it shifted the person’s perception of his or her work situation.
In my mind, there’s a similarity here with the process of finding the “right” house. If you’ve watched even one episode of HGTV (House Hunters, Property Virgins, etc.), you know that there really is no such thing as the “perfect” home. Houses are a lot of work, no matter what your price point. Buy it new today; tomorrow it is old, etc. They all need maintenance. They all have locations or neighbors or taxes or environmental challenges that have to be overcome, and you as the purchaser must decide what you are willing to live with (or maybe more importantly, without). Jobs are no different.
And like jobs, you can bounce from house to house, trying to find the perfect one, but it is expensive and time-consuming, not to mention stressful and often counterproductive. No one likes to move, especially the older you get and the more you accumulate. Lugging all that baggage with you each time gets, well, tiring, and who’s to say really that the new place will provide that “like” factor you are looking for (or for how long)? How do you know you aren’t just swapping one problem for another?
So am I saying a person should never leave a job (or a house) just because he or she doesn’t like the circumstances around it?
No. Of course not. I am saying, though, that you need to find a way to assess what is really motivating you. Understanding that can help you to make a better first step in trying to overcome the problem.
The other issue you need to look at is what priorities you have placed on whether you like a job. Is it the job that really matters or the benefits? For instance, have you decided that security, health care options, commute time, work-life balance, etc. all matter more than whether you like the actual job itself? (I know…you want all of it…who doesn’t!) Again, I am not saying these things don’t matter, but to get to the root of your dissatisfaction, you need to understand what is motivating you to move on.
If you resolved just one or two of those circumstances, would that be enough to make you like what you do?
Maybe the bigger question is as follows: What if you couldn’t resolve any or most of the circumstantial issues surrounding your job? Are you just destined to hate it then?
When it comes down to it, a lot of what makes us like something has to do with the hope we have in it.
Do we see a future that looks promising? Can we see beyond the irritations of today to a longer term goal? Are we willing to look past the temporal to something more concrete (e.g., can we leave behind a legacy with the job that we do)? Focusing on these things, instead of on the here and now, that is what truly brings in the long-lasting like factor because it shifts from things we can’t control to things we can. In my opinion, whether a person likes his or her job often has more to do with how in control he or she feels about the future. (Ask yourself: Am I letting the circumstances control my job future…or am I calling the shots?)
But you have to be willing to shift that focus. Are you? After all, often we forget that having a job you love really starts with, well, you.
My husband and I used to have an inside joke: We were going to have 3 children: an electrician, a plumber, and a carpenter (all with business sense!). (As it turns out, we only have one child, a daughter, so we are letting her choose!)
The reason for our joke is that once we became homeowners, like so many others, we quickly discovered just how hard it is to find people who are good at their trades and can handle their businesses well. As a result, we have had to become much more versed in the trades than we really wanted to be. (We’re the type who would rather pay to see it done well [and right], so that we could devote our time to becoming better at our own respective trades.)
In the corporate tech world that our business runs in, we see a similar issue. Companies are all about finding “good talent,” so much so that they say there is a “war for talent.”
And everyone keeps asking, “where is all the talent?”
As an owner of two small businesses, much like hiring a tradesman to work on my home, I can say that finding this talent is tough and seems to be only getting tougher.
Why?
In a recent post, Not a Leader? Then Be a Multiplier, I talked about the obsession corporate America seems to have with everyone becoming a “leader,” and I mentioned that some people are more in love with the idea of developing a craft than they are with training/managing people. Unfortunately, though, in this quest to create an environment full of leaders, what often gets lost are the craftsmen (I’m sorry, but “crafts persons” just does not sound right; you can understand that I am talking inclusively when I say “craftsmen,” right?), people who are dedicated to building a specific skill set and to doing it better than your average person does. Companies say they want more innovation, but then they spend all their time/resources on developing more and more management professionals, not on craftsmen.
Colleges aren’t much help either. Back when I came out of high school, so many of my generation (the 30-heading-into-and maybe-already-into-40 somethings) dutifully marched off to collegiate institutions because, hey, a bachelor’s degree was your ticket to career success. But it left an interesting hole in the idea of developing a craft, not just in the trades, like electricians, plumbers, and carpenters, but in other fields as well. The reason is because the college educations we were receiving were not geared toward preparing us for apprenticeships but more concerned with how well rounded we became. I mean, “diversity” and “well-roundedness” were the buzzwords of our hour. I can remember spending countless college hours studying things that would have virtually nothing to do with my future profession (and I am one of the minority who actually “uses” my major for a living).
Is this all bad? I suppose not. There is an argument for overcoming ignorance, something we all pay for.
But there has to be a line between the quest for well-roundedness and receiving a useful education.
For I certainly became well rounded, so well rounded, in fact, that I wasn’t really prepared for anything specific.
It’s true that sometimes we have to try out a few things first, but it’s more true that the reality is that most of us graduate high school and go to college having very little sense of who we are and what interests we have. So our colleges then spend the next four or more years helping us figure that out by giving us more and more options to “discover” ourselves. In fact, the options are so endless and the “necessity” to choose something so low that we pretty much spend that time just figuring out what we DON’T want to do. (Hey, isn’t necessity the mother of all…invention? If so, why do we spend so much time making sure our kids never know what necessity feels like? But I digress….) So by the time we receive that bachelor’s degree, we realize we’re still not qualified for much. Thus, we go back for another two or three years, this time maybe honing in a little more (and getting in to more debt)…all the while still not really developing a craft, just the theoretical idea of one.
Before we know it, we’re 25 (and probably still living at home), and we’re just drifting, really. And although we may have the aptitude for a particular field, we don’t become “good talent” just because we show up and are interested (and have the paper degrees to prove it). Becoming a craftsman takes time, talent, and dedication. It doesn’t mean you have all the answers, certainly right from the start, but it does mean that you start somewhere and you keep honing in on where your speciality in that area lies. Most importantly, it turns you into a contributor, someone who has a special expertise to offer that not everyone has (in other words, you are no longer a dime a dozen).
I feel badly for my generation who is now reaching middle age and has had to backtrack and scramble to carve out a craft having lost out when we were in our 20s and free from other life cares and obligations. I feel more badly for the next generation who has been told to be more worried about work-life balance and about whether companies offer the most progressive benefits packages than about becoming true specialists. As you can see, they are not fitting the bill in the “war for talent.”
It’s time we get back to what it means to be a “master craftsman” in whatever field we practice and to valuing talent for what it is…talent!
Let’s face it. No one ever wins an award for being well rounded.
2012 has been an interesting year for the IT and tech industry. We are going to review some of the highlights…and lowlights… and discuss how these events may shape the year to come. We’ll also review what the events of 2012 mean to active and passive job seekers going into 2013.
Join the discussion and hear expert opinions this Wednesday 12/19 at 3pm ET on twitter at #TCFchat. You can start by posting comments here or on the Tech Career Forum LinkedIn Group page.
The discussion topics include:
1. What were some of the major tech layoffs in 2012? What does that mean for 2013?
2. Offshore outsourcing or insourcing? Which way is the US tech market headed and why?
3. How has the unemployment rate for the general market impacted the IT and tech markets? Are you optimistic about 2013?
4. What are some technologies and/or skills that are in high demand as we get ready to begin 2013?
5. What are the most important takeaways from the events of 2012 to help better position you as a candidate in 2013?
Discussions about corporate and small business leadership abound. If you hang out in LinkedIn groups or sit in on a work-related Twitter chat, you are bound to participate in some dialogue about leadership. By all accounts, it seems to be the holy grail of professional existence.
I mean, it is what we are all working for, to be a good leader, right?
Well, what if you’re not a leader? And you don’t really want to be?
I know…shock and awe, right? But some people don’t really consider themselves leaders, and they actually don’t want to spend their careers working toward that.
I know because I would be one of those people, and many of the techies that I work with are in the same boat. So does that make us…bad? Destined to low-level grunt work? Mean-spirited because we don’t have aspirations of parting the corporate Red Sea and leading whining people out of Egypt?
Honestly, it took me a long time to realize that I wasn’t a leader. I tried really hard to play the leadership game. I really did. I took the seminars. I read the books. I coveted the titles. But at the end of the day, I’m kind of, well, a loner. I like having a job that I can run with, create, experiment, fail, succeed. That doesn’t mean I am not willing to collaborate; in fact, I usually welcome that. But I don’t want to have to motivate you…dude…and I don’t want you to have to motivate me either. Let’s just, well, do our respective jobs!
What I have discovered along the way, however, is that although I may not be a leader, I can be a multiplier. Yes, a multiplier.
A multiplier is someone who:
Improves the atmosphere.
We are the glue that makes the project work, so to speak. Without us, the project is probably struggling. We come in and make it better, and ultimately, we make the people around us want to do better too. Not because we trained them or led them, but because we influenced them by how we work. People pay attention to those who make things successful. You don’t have to give training seminars for them to notice.
Is referrable.
We’re the person you want to tell others about. We’ve become dedicated to our craft and are excelling in it. And we’ve built our reputation on it. So pretty soon our network reach multiplies, not because of the throngs of followers we are leading around but because we stand out for the problems we solve that others cannot or won’t.
Brings the entrepreneurial spirit.
I hear many companies talk about wanting this quality in their top talent, but very few are structured in such a way to appreciate it. They think that by looking for a bunch of leaders, they are going to find it, but actually they usually just end up with a lot of people jockeying for position. The reason is that the entrepreneurial spirit has less to do with titles and management and more to do with a willingness to take risks, risks that put you out there all by yourself on a limb. Some might call that a form of leadership, but really the entrepreneur is going to progress at all costs, not looking back to see who’s following and how many.
See, when I thought all my career would come down to is 1) climbing a corporate ladder, 2) managing people, and/or 3) counting success by the amount of people who report to me, I was…depressed…because I was in love with my craft of writing and editing. My techie candidates are often the same way. They are in love with what they do and want to stay close to their technical roots. Yet, in many company cultures, it’s move up the chain to management or stay down where you are.
To recruit top tech talent, more companies need to understand that for most hard-core techies, the lure of management is not that appealing and that this breed needs a different track. That doesn’t make them less valuable; in fact, it just might make them more so. After all, just how many chiefs do you need?
In a recent blog post, I posed the question, Is LinkedIn Too Stuffy? In that article, I shared some thoughts from a colleague of mine who liked the more corporate feel that LinkedIn provides while giving some of my own thoughts on the issue. Overall, I felt that LinkedIn has some great features and opportunities, especially from the career networking and social recruiting side, but it generally wasn’t an enjoyable place to hang out, kind of like a never-ending meeting, if you will. You might learn something, even meet some helpful people, but it isn’t somewhere you really like to be or are comfortable in. In other words, you find yourself asking, “Is it 5 o’clock yet?”
I had several responses to this post, which not surprisingly varied from one end of the spectrum “I hate LinkedIn” to the other “I love LinkedIn”.
At the end of the day, I was reminded that LinkedIn is just one social media tool, a very popular one for sure (many people who don’t really “do” social media at least have LI profiles these days), which has its advantages and disadvantages like any other.
I was also reminded that there is a certain comfort to be found in the atmosphere.
Because it does mimic a real-life corporate event, the “rules” are easier to pick up. And most of your workplace etiquette can be applied there.
So, is that a bad thing? Of course not.
Many of the people who commented on my article, either here on the blog or on Twitter, certainly did not think so. They like that structure because they know it so well, whereas Twitter and Facebook are not so “corporate” and thus leave a lot of gray area in terms of interaction and etiquette.
But even still, I can’t help it.
I just don’t like feeling like I am stuck in a cubicle when I am engaging in social media.
I don’t want all my discussions to sound like corporate mixers and mini informational interviews. I don’t want to listen to people pontificate, and I don’t want to pontificate.
And I predict that as people become more comfortable with social media, they won’t want to put up with it as much either.
Companies don’t hire during the holidays, right? Or do they? In our Tech Career Forum (#TCFchat) chat on Twitter 12/5, we discussed (dispelled really) this myth. We also covered a few ways that candidates can approach the job search during this time of year.
You can view the Storify recap of the live twitter chat. Feel free to post comments here or on the Tech Career Forum LinkedIn Group page. Please feel free to share any experiences you may have had conducting a job search of your own during the holidays.
Every year I hear about how bad the job market is between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. No one is hiring and nothing happens…is that really true? After all, some people have to conduct a job search, and some companies have to fill openings. So let’s talk the who, what, when where, why, and how of a December job search.
Join the discussion and hear expert opinions this Wednesday 12/5 at 3pm ET on twitter at #TCFchat. You can start by posting comments here or on the Tech Career Forum LinkedIn Group page. Please feel free to share any experiences you may have had in interview with or working for a start-up tech company. We’ll be sure to include them in our chat.
Join the discussion (Wednesday 12/5 on Twitter at 3pm Eastern). Simply follow and use the hashtag #TCFchat to be a part of it all.
Tech start-ups were the topic of discussion on Wednesday 11/28 on our Tech Career Forum twitter chat.
We covered issues like what type of worker is a good fit for a start-up company, what are the pros and cons of working at a start-up company, and what are some signs to watch for.
View the Storify recap of the discussion. You can also post comments here or on the Tech Career Forum LinkedIn Group page. Please feel free to share any experiences you may have had. We’d love to hear from you!
What type of worker are you? Do you like to take some risks? Or are you totally averse to any kind of risk and fully focused on the security of your tech job?
We’ll be talking about start-ups and early-stage opportunities in the tech field. They aren’t for everyone, but in the right situation, you can hit a home run by getting in early.
Join the discussion and hear expert opinions this Wednesday 11/28 at 3pm ET on twitter at #TCFchat. You can start by posting comments here or on the Tech Career Forum LinkedIn Group page. Please feel free to share any experiences you may have had in interview with or working for a start-up tech company. We’ll be sure to include them in our chat.
Join the discussion (Wednesday 11/28 on Twitter at 3pm Eastern). Simply follow and use the hashtag #TCFchat to be a part of it all.
Now, I hope no one will get offended by what is clearly meant to be somewhat tongue and cheek with a bit of truth mixed in. The truth part is that our beloved, hardcore techie geeks are not known on a general level for being the most, well, likeable. And by likeable, I mean engaging, charismatic, and socially aware. In other words, I am talking about its usage in the modern social media realm. (I know because I grew up with one, whom I adore, but he does take some getting used to. Consider Saturday morning conversations at the breakfast table with me trying to relay some teenage angst issue while my dad programs code in his head, even jumping up from the table shouting, “That’s it! That will work!” while he runs off to fix whatever dilemma he has been stewing on and I am left in midsentence.)
It isn’t so much that they are mean-spirited or trying to be rude.
It is just very difficult for them to observe what is going on outside of their brains, especially when they are stewing on the latest technical problem, which is, let’s face it, all the time.
In times past, generally, techies and their likeability factor was not much of an issue. When companies were racing to integrate technology into their landscape, they didn’t care if the geniuses huddled in the back corner in their cubicles were all that social. They just wanted to get up and running before the competition even if leadership had no idea what their techies were talking about. (I can remember when at my first job after college, my boss told me, “Just do whatever IT tells you to do. You don’t want to upset them. Their smarter than us.”)
Today, however, although that scenario can still be somewhat true, technology as a concept is no longer all that new or mysterious (even if the details still are) and leadership is looking to communicate more with IT. It wants more of a dialogue, and honestly, the rest of the corporate staff no longer want to tiptoe around the IT department, afraid of upsetting the apple cart. For now, many larger size corporations have brought in intermediaries, the “non-techie techies” who can act as liaisons, the softer side of IT, if you will. These chameleons go around using their various personas to keep the peace. And although it seems to be having decent results in these arenas, it also has the effect of simply creating a stronger barrier between the rest of the world and the geek.
The other side of this issue is social media. Surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly, many hardcore techies stay away from social media. Or if they do use it, they only converse with their “kind.” As companies begin to encourage social media use as a way of pushing their corporate brand, however, techies might find themselves being forced out of their comfort zones.
So what is a poor, “unlikeable” techie to do?
Although I don’t believe people will likely suddenly become something they are not, we can make an effort to work on some skills (after all, I have spent years honing my ability to report a technical issue to desktop support [read the exact error message received, make sure the computer is actually plugged in and turned on, and prepare to endure long silences and huffs on the other end, which are meant to let me know how dumb I am] even though I really didn’t want to).
Below is a list of “likeability” skills that every techie should work on if they want to have more success in the office that can be adapted to the social media world as well. (Not to worry none of these will require attendance at cocktail parties or HR love fests. In fact, you might find them quite…logical.):
1. Improve response time and consider your tone.
Now, I know that response time is a common issue with most tech departments, one that is constantly being considered and looked into. In this context, I am referring to you as an individual. Do your best to decrease the amount of time it takes you to acknowledge a person’s e-mail, phone call, social media message, etc. This does not mean that you are going to resolve whatever issue he or she has at that moment, but at least acknowledge you received the person’s request. And when you acknowledge, think about the tone you are using.
One good tip is to have a standard acknowledgment statement at the ready that you can copy and paste and make slight adjustments to as needed. Create it when you aren’t under the gun, and ask someone you trust to evaluate the tone of it. This way when someone contacts you, right at the busiest time of the day, you already have a response prepared. Although you don’t want to sound canned, you do want to sound like you recognize that person’s existence and do plan to help him or her.
2. Keep your promises.
Now, if you are going to acknowledge a person’s interaction with you, you need to follow through on what you said you would do. In the tech world, fires pop up all day long. So you don’t want to make promises that are difficult for you to keep. My suggestion would be to give people a range of time for when you will be responding to them so that you aren’t locked in to tomorrow at 2pm or something. Then you need to track that range in your calendar app. Hold yourself accountable. If something does still come up, and your calendar alerts you that you still need to respond to this person, then send him or her a quick note acknowledging that you will need more time. Again, you can have a prepared statement already ready to paste in, customize, and send out.
(I understand you get hundreds of e-mails a day; so do I. It’s life.)
3. Be congruent.
Congruent means to be in harmony with or conforming to the circumstances or requirements of a situation. In other words, make sure that you are working toward creating harmony in the sense that your actions and words move the project forward and not let it stall in the blame-game arena. Also, make sure that your reactions stick to the issue at hand. Don’t vomit out info the user cannot understand anyway or that is way beyond the current situation.
You are probably right. No. Let’s face it. You are right. But if no one understands what that has to do with the current situation, they think you are missing the point. In other words, get to the bottom line.
Learning to be more likeable in the world of work or on social media really doesn’t require an advanced certification, and it really doesn’t require you to burst into the extrovert that you are likely not. But taking a more service-oriented approach can go far for both you and your colleagues.
Overall, people really do respect your skills and expertise; they just aren’t sure how best to approach you.
This was the question I found myself asking not too long ago after participating in a discussion group on LinkedIn, where some of my colleagues were acting as though we were negotiating some type of high-end corporate merger instead of “discussing” (more like vying for the microphone) the finer points of career transition. After attempting to make a comment to lighten up the conversation (nothing off-color, I assure you) and to engage instead of one-up, one of my counterparts basically reprimanded me!
Now, if this had been the first time I had come across this scenario on LinkedIn, I would have just chalked it up to that, but it turns out to be somewhat the norm when it comes to that environment.
Certainly, it is true that different social media sites have different “cultures,” but exactly what the “rules” are for each culture are still a little murky, if you ask me.
A colleague and I were chatting recently about the LinkedIn versus Twitter culture, and he was telling me why he did not like the Twitter “vibe.” Basically, he felt Twitter was too loose of a forum. Anyone could just participate in a Twitter chat (instead of gaining acceptance into a group, like on LinkedIn), and he felt like from a techie front, it was mostly inexperienced people or posers trying to sound “techie.” On the other hand, he found LinkedIn made more sense to him because it had a more “corporate” feel to him, random streams weren’t whizzing by, and he could take his time to craft a well-written response. Plus, he could look up a person’s profile and get a better sense of his or her experience and background. Basically, he liked knowing who he was talking to, and he liked that it was a more formal discussion, especially if he were looking for advice or direction on a particular project or subject.
When I pointed out to him that some people lie or stretch their credentials on their LinkedIn profiles (see my recent article “Who Says LinkedIn Profiles Are Truthful?“), he still was not deterred. Overall, he felt like it was a more trustworthy environment and that more “experts” hung out over there.
He could be right. I certainly think he brings up some valid points.
In my mind, however, I still find the LinkedIn culture, well, stuffy.
And from a longevity standpoint, I’m not sure how well that will continue to play out as more people become comfortable with social media.
As someone who hangs out in both Twitter and LinkedIn groups, I find Twitter to be more cutting edge, frankly. It is true that it takes some time to get familiar with how things work there. And finding the right mix of followers and people you want to follow can be more time consuming for sure. But whether it is #TCFchat, a Twitter chat hosted by the Tech Career Forum on Wednesdays at 3pm East, or #tchat, hosted by Talent Culture, on Wednesdays at 7pm East, generally I find the discussion, well, more of a discussion.
For all of my LinkedIn discussion groups, I find them more of a lecture, where each participant is trying to impress me with his or her knowledgebase (so I can score them on the “best” answer). I’m not sure how that is engaging exactly…? Especially when it feels like we are constantly in interview mode, 3-piece suits and all.
Now it could just be my rebel entrepreneurial bias showing through, but generally, I am usually in favor of a more structured approach to things. And certainly there is a lot of silliness that goes on with Twitter (even if it is avoidable). However, in the case of LinkedIn, honestly, I just don’t find it an interesting place to be (it’s like one of those jobs where I’m stuck in an endless meeting, wondering ”is it 5 o’clock yet?”). Now, if like my co-worker, I want a good lecture and some advice (although I rarely see the quality of the advice as any better, just longer winded), I can see the value, and it certainly is becoming the place to be for social recruiting, but the air is certainly thicker (and you might want to change out of your PJs before logging on).
But whatever you do, and I say this with all earnestness, don’t try and be funny!
John Jantsch wrote a book called The Referral Engine that has been a great resource for us here at ITtechExec. Not only does it highlight how to tap into any business’s dream, happy customers who refer you to other potential customers (and thus save you loads of precious marketing dollars), but in the end, it helps you build a company that does more than just “sell” a product, hoping to trick someone into buying it; it gives you the satisfaction of knowing that you built a company full of clients who actually look forward to referring you.
As I was reviewing Jantsch’s book again recently, I began thinking about how corporate professionals could and should apply many of these same principles to their career moves…well before they even start considering their next job search.
One of the biggest issues for most professionals, particularly those a few years into their careers, is learning how to transform from their corporate mindset, which frankly tends to lull us into a stupor, into a more entrepreneurial one, for managing an effective career is really akin to launching your own business with you as the product.
So, let’s look at some principles that Jantsch lays out in his book:
1. Becoming “referrable:
For those of you who find the concept of sales distasteful, then this is the approach for you. The idea is that you position yourself within your company, industry, Google+ circle, LinkedIn group, association network, and so on, as a person people want to refer. In other words, they want to work with you, and they want to do so for the following reasons:
a. You’re consistent.
b. You’re trustworthy.
c. You’re interesting.
d. You know your stuff.
e. You focus on service instead of on achievement.
In my mind, this is really the essence of networking…not meeting tons of people, wowing them with your charisma, and hoping something sticks. Instead, it is recognizing that you are a problem solver, that you have something people need, and that you are the real deal. This “real deal” concept leads to principle #2.
2. Establishing a “core talkable difference”:
There really is nothing better from a professional standpoint than drawing people to you. As a small business owner, having people approach you already respecting the work that you do is like a breath of the freshest air compared with constantly trying to prove your worth, chasing after one potential client after another. The same is true even if you work in the corporate arena. Applying for a promotion and getting it is fine, but having leadership come to you and selecting you first is so much better.
To accomplish this goal, Jantsch suggests developing a “core talkable difference.” This is something, a skill, feature, uniqueness that gives you a competitive advantage because it makes those around you take notice. Again, it is not something you “brag” about per se, but it is something you can demonstrate that sets you apart from all the other software developers, desktop support staff, IT project managers, etc.
Furthermore, this also isn’t about being “nice” or working hard, which isn’t to say that those things aren’t valuable, but remember to think from a business perspective. What is a function you perform or problem that you solve that makes you stand out? It’s not necessary to reinvent the wheel here. Think about an improvement you bring to the environment or industry around you and showcase (talk less, show more) that in some way.
3. Understanding your higher purpose:
People are attracted to those who seem to understand their higher purpose, mostly because we crave that in ourselves. We want to be happy in our careers and to feel like we have a vision for why and what we are doing. For principles #1 and #2 to be genuine, you really need to have principle #3, and that’s where most of us get tripped up. We lack the passion to go with the skill sets that we have, and therefore, we aren’t all that referrable or different, no matter how talented we are.
Whenever I work with job seekers or those considering career transition, one of the toughest things to do is to get them to stop and think about what excites them. They are usually too consumed by fear and desperation to want to do that. Whatever is behind this career move rarely has much to do with finding satisfaction as it is about just getting out of the current situation. As a result, they end up in the “sea” of job seekers, hoping to differentiate themselves somehow, and fast. (Of course, sometimes I end up working with the other end of the spectrum…the dreamers…they have lots of ideas, hopes, and aspirations but often are unwilling to take the first step toward pursuing them. They are often driven by a different type of fear and desperation than the first group, essentially, but they all end up in the same place, out in that “sea.”)
Overall, Jantsch says that for a business to be successful (and for our purposes, a corporate professional), you must enjoy what you do and have a sense of purpose, you must be good at it, and you must be able to convince other people to pay you for it. If any one of these ingredients is lacking, then there’s a good chance the business of your career is stalled or stale, and that you are expending a lot of effort just trying to get noticed.
Get the recipe right, according to Jantsch, and the opportunities will start to come your way.
Our expert panel discussed the current job market and recruiting landscape for technical professionals and how making certifications a requirement impact the hiring process. This was based on reading an article on Dice.com by David Bolton called “What’s Better: Online IT Certifications or Advanced Degrees,” and I thought he raised a good point: Are U.S. employers missing out on a large pool of qualified candidates just because they are setting high expectations for IT certs/advanced degrees?
You can view the full recap of the Tech Career Forum (#TCFchat) discussion on Storify. You can also check comment here or on our Tech Career Forum LinkedIn Group page. By the way, you can comment right here on our blog as well.
Looking at stats from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, here is the latest outlook on the IT jobs sector in the United States:
Now, these stats that come out of the BLS should be taken with some level of skepticism; however, they are showing an increase across the IT sector for the third month in a row. Leading the charge is the computer systems, design, and services sector, which has increased 4.8 percent since October 2011, to 1.6 million jobs. Communications equipment businesses have not fared as well, however. The number of jobs in this sector has dropped 5.5 percent in the past year.
If you read career-related content today, you’re bound to see a lot of information out there hyping “personal branding” as the big thing. And indeed it is big! But what you don’t hear much about is how to plan the brand messaging strategy. For resumes and online profiles, it boils down to what you’re audience really wants in a candidate. You then need to objectively evaluate your personality, motivations, strengths, experience, and achievements to craft a brand message that’s unique to you and appealing to the audience.
So here are the scenarios we covered.
Candidate #1
Job Goal: Software Developer
Strengths: Dedicated, hardworking, team player, needs analysis, requirements gathering, problem resolution, quality
Collaborative problem solver that develops financial Web applications using existing code infrastructure to fuel business enablement
Software dev & rigorous tester loves to code in any language embraces agile methods to frequently deliver high quality software
Candidate #2
Job Goal: Manufacturing Engineering Manager
Strengths: Team leadership, process management, communications, strategy development, cost savings, production and quality increases, solution design
Focus: medical device/pharma manufacturing, FDA, ISO, cGMP standards
Achievements: increase yield thru reworking production setups and reducing equipment downtime
Brands:
Eng Mgr leads team to design strategic process mgmt solutions resulting in increased prod quality while simul. reducing manu cost
Propel throughput & product quality – Surpass ISO, FDA & cGMP standards – Optimize mfg teams & infrastructure configuration
Candidate #3
Job Goal: CIO
Strengths: IT strategy, team leadership, team development, mentoring, change leadership, IT infrastructure and applications, IT service delivery, total cost of ownership, Six Sigma
Achievements: IT ops outsourcing, cost savings, infrastructure redesign, new services via technology
Brands:
Building responsive IT organizations that enhance user experience through high-level strategic visioning and global planning
I might focus on things like #business#transformation, IT business model restructuring, and agility in user response
Bridging gap between operations and IT, working closely w/#HR to source talent
Check out the full discussion here on our Storify recap. You can start by posting comments here or on the Tech Career Forum LinkedIn Group page. Simply follow and use the hashtag #TCFchat to be a part of it all in the future.
Don’t get caught thinking that success in the job search is all luck like our friend in the comic strip here. For technical candidates, how they brand themselves can play a crucial role in landing those dream jobs and promotions. So, as part of this week’s twitter chat, we’ll be reviewing a few different scenarios by outlining key traits of different make-believe candidates to determine a branding theme and to craft a brand message tagline that will serve as the centerpiece of all the candidate’s job search documentation.
Candidate #1
Job Goal: Software Developer
Strengths: Dedicated, hardworking, team player, needs analysis, requirements gathering, problem resolution, quality
Candidate #2
Job Goal: Manufacturing Engineering Manager
Strengths: Team leadership, process management, communications, strategy development, cost savings, production and quality increases, solution design
Candidate #3
Job Goal: CIO
Strengths: IT strategy, team leadership, team development, mentoring, change leadership, IT infrastructure and applications, IT service delivery, total cost of ownership, Six Sigma
Join the discussion and hear expert opinions this Wednesday 11/7 at 3pm ET on twitter at #TCFchat. You can start by posting comments here or on the Tech Career Forum LinkedIn Group page. Simply follow and use the hashtag #TCFchat to be a part of it all.
I love social media. I especially love Twitter. As a small business person, it has opened up a whole new world of connections and opportunities for me.
However, there is one aspect of social media that, frankly, gets on my nerves, and that is all the smug people out there. If you’ve ever spent time on a Twitter chat or two or participated in a LinkedIn group, you’re bound to come across a couple. You know, those people who just love to rain on the parade with their higher understanding of the universe…? (Of course, these people exist in real life too; social media just has a way of bringing it out even more.)
Well, lately I have been coming across way too many smug characters who love to talk about social recruiting and how the resume is dead now that they have LinkedIn profiles. While I agree that LinkedIn profiles do provide a good outlet for social recruiting, I think the pronouncement that the LinkedIn profile is “good enough” is a bit premature.
(When I brought this up on a recent chat, one of my smug recruiter friends said, “Well, really good candidates don’t need any resume at all.” It’s something people love to say, but in reality, the very first thing any recruiter will ask you is whether you have a resume [or a bio or something; call it whatever you like...it's still basically a resume] even after they have read through your LinkedIn profile.)
My biggest reason for showing some caution with the LinkedIn profile is that as a resume writer, one of the biggest issues that hiring managers and recruiters complain about is lying.
Lying on your resume has become single-handedly the worst thing you can do. And companies are now spending big bucks verifying candidate information.
So my argument is, if you think you have a problem with people lying on their resumes (a document they “hand” over to you directly, essentially lying to your face), do you really think it is going to be any better with the LinkedIn profile, a document that candidates don’t yet feel as committed to?
Here’s an example:
When most clients come to me these days, they now have some type of LI profile in place. I will go through the profile as part of my intake process with the client, gathering info to determine the client’s personal branding strategy.
It is amazing to me how often when I start questioning items on the LinkedIn profile that clients will immediately begin backpedaling.
“Well, I’m not really sure it was $3M saved exactly.”
“I really need to go back and check those dates; I just kind of guessed when I filled in my profile.”
“I know I listed XXX technical expertise, but I wouldn’t say I am proficient in it.”
So what is a social recruiter to do? Hmmm. Ask for a resume and give the “please make sure all submitted documentation is accurate and truthful” speech, maybe? Of course.
Listen. If the resume is dead and the LinkedIn profile has replaced it, fine, but someone better tell candidates that they are going to be held accountable to it, much like they are the resume they submit.
And someone better tell recruiters that people still lie on LinkedIn profiles, perhaps even more than they do on resumes.
Study the corporate atmosphere for any amount of time these days, and you will hear endless dialogue about the need for “innovation.” It seems to be the great American battle cry these days. And for good reason.
As a career pro who works with technical candidates, the cry is especially loud.
Everyone wants to be the next Apple, and they are looking to their techie crowd to make that happen for them.
So, if you are so inclined, you can sit in on countless Twitter chats, participate in numerous LinkedIn groups, and take seminar after seminar on how to become more “innovative.” Some think it rests in having an entrepreneurial spirit (big corps need to act “smaller” and be more…loose), in having better technical skills, in combining technical with business background (more techie MBAs!), in having better people skills (aka engagement), and/or in having better vision (aka a good idea).
While these are all interesting discussions and have some merit to them, I believe they somewhat miss the mark of understanding what truly drives innovation (if they didn’t, then why aren’t we more innovative? I mean, just sit it on a Twitter chat for goodness’ sakes, and Poof! Innovation abounds, right?).
Because I am a word lover, I always like to start at looking not just at the meaning of the word but also at the history behind it.
Innovation as a word is traced back to the 15th century, primarily to the Renaissance (meaning “rebirth”).
And a well-known prime example of that era (and of embodying the newly minted word [but by no means new concept] “innovation”) is Leonardo da Vinci (a true Renaissance man if there ever was one!).
Not surprisingly, then, given its roots in the Renaissance and in da Vinci, the concept is closely aligned with the fields of art, philosophy, and religion. In many ways, scientific thought, and thus technological advancement, grew out of these realms. Imagination, which has always been tied in with art, philosophy, and religion, then put into action the thoughts and ideas spurred on by these fields, which led to scientific observation and to many, many attempts at invention. What resulted, then, from these metaphysical fields was innovation in other areas, like technology, science, and mathematics.
In today’s market, we like to lump everything into a “global” landscape, but then we segment out ourselves and each other by “subjects.” He’s a scientist. She’s a teacher. He’s a CIO. And then we hope and pray that each is an “out of the box” thinker in his or her respective subjects. (And the less we try to make the corporate world, corporate, the more corporate it becomes!)
But the innovative ideas brought forth with the Renaissance came out of inclusive thinking, the idea that you weren’t just a sculptor or teacher or whatever. Education in fundamentals like art, philosophy, religion, language, and mathematics was highly valued. In essence, it was at the core of spurring innovation. Today, we’re more worried about having business skills and leadership skills and big picture thinking as if they can be taught in “leadership” seminars . We want the innovation to burst out of mathematical manipulation or some concrete scientific process, but we don’t understand that productive imagination stems from an understanding of what has come before and of man and nature.
In other words, we need a deep well of knowledge to pull from, all of us, no matter what the primary occupation.
We just need, well, to be educated and in more than just programming languages and engineering calculus (and in leadership development taught by HR).
Nevertheless, corporations are going to have a hard time finding this type of talent. For one thing, the marketplace has spent many years now shunning the high-minded pursuits (I mean how many parents have lamented their son or daughter becoming a “philosophy” major because they knew companies didn’t care about it) and society is so addicted to gadgets and technology.
But something will have to give sooner or later. We are already desperate for leaders and visionaries.
So we can no longer afford to miss the forest for the virtual trees, so to speak.
What made Apple so innovative was a leader who had studied man and nature, who grasped behavior, and who could adapt what was already being developed to a shiny package that is too hard for many to refuse. He was more than just a one-dimensional person who loved technology (observe his time in India in search of spiritual enlightenment), and his education was anything but specific. Commenting on his college background, he said, “If I had never dropped in on that single calligraphy course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts.”
“Good ideas” and “technological innovation” don’t just happen because people are smart or presented with ideal teamwork conditions; there has to be more substance there. And too bad for us, more often than not, there’s isn’t.
With so many resume myths out there, how do you know what’s good and what’s bad? Well, we convened a live panel on Wednesday 10/24 as part of the Tech Career Forum twitter chat series at #TCFchat to discuss just this topic.
So many myths, so little time! Resume trends change over time and go through cycles, just like business does. Like many areas of life, old “rules” or opinions on resumes stick in people’s minds and influence the approach they take in preparing a resume for today’s job market. For some, this has proven fatal. For others, it may have hampered their search and extended it out longer than they would have liked. In either case, had they not held to these myths, they may have had better success!
Join the discussion and hear expert opinions this Wednesday 10/24 at 3pm ET on twitter at #TCFchat. You can start by posting comments here or on the Tech Career Forum LinkedIn Group page. Please tell us about the resume myths you have used or have seen others use most often. We’ll be sure to include them in our chat.
Join the discussion (Wednesday 10/24 on Twitter at 3pm Eastern). Simply follow and use the hashtag #TCFchat to be a part of it all.
It’s funny. I hear a lot of people talking about the importance of strong verbal communication skills these days, but I rarely hear much about written communication skills. I find that odd considering how much written communication the average person now does, from remote work, to documentation, to social media.
Not surprisingly, this same issue translates into our education system. When most people talk about curriculum reform, they talk about the need for more math, science, and technology in the classroom (and for good reason). Usually, the last thing they are thinking about is grammar and the importance of written communication. In fact, by and large, many efforts have been made to downgrade these skills as a side issue to something “larger” (big picture thinking). Sure, our kids still practice writing in their daybooks and journals, producing responses to endless essay questions, and so on. But often they are graded more on their critical thought process than they are on their actual writing ability.
In the age of social media, this is a concern.
I’ve been a remote worker since 1999, and my foundation is in freelance editing for scientific/technical/academic publishing houses. Because I am remote and because I work with documentation written by mostly technical folks, I can tell you that there are three main skill sets that are desparately missing when it comes to written communication these days:
Engaging personality.
Sometimes I think there is nothing more self-absorbing than e-mail. People rush them off with barely a consideration for how they might be perceived by the person at the other end of the communication. You are expected to understand them. Period.
My business partner and I have an inside joke. Every time we get some terse e-mail, when we follow it up with a phone call, our “lion” quickly turns into a “lamb.” Every time. Why? Because verbal communication tends to make us more engaging and less confrontational. We have a person right there we have to interact with, and unless we are really, really mad, we tend to want to make a connection with that person.
Writing, which should actually heighten this effect, more often than not misses that mark for most people. The reason? Because they are thinking more about themselves than they are about their audience. They forget about the other person who will be reading their diatribe.
Let’s face it. Selfish people are just not that engaging.
Grammar skills.
Now, I know that learning grammar was probably one of the least favorite subjects by most people in school, but do you know that today very few kids are even learning it? Sure, they get the basics (parts of a sentence), but they learn very little about the true meaning behind most words and how to craft more meaningful texts. Now, I understand not everyone wants to be Shakespeare, but I didn’t want to be Einstein either, and even I still had to learn basic physics. So whether it is fun or not, it is still your language. It would be nice to know more about it!
Let me be clear here. My point is not that people sometimes have typos (as far as I know, none of us is perfect). It’s not even that someone might have difficulty spelling (although it would be nice if they at least tried to use spellchecker from time to time). It’s the general lack of concern for how they present themselves and the embodiment of their work. You don’t have to be stuffy because you choose your words carefully and consider how they are arranged and what they mean. Some of the best wordsmiths are the most entertaining precisely because they have such a strong command of language.
Cohesiveness.
We seem to think that by teaching math and science, we are teaching logic, but that is not the whole picture. Crafting a well-written, cohesive document requires some of the strongest logic skills there are (after all, you are building something out of nothing). And I can tell, whether it is my engineers at Boeing or my PhDs at Harvard, the ability to write something that is logically cohesive is lacking. The reason is because the act of writing has become such a hurried, secondary, unimportant event in our lives; we no longer sit and really think through what it is we want to say and how we want to structure it (in fact, I have had many an author act as though it is beneath them…all this fuss over writing).
But it is not enough just to “know” something; you must be able to connect with your audience.
You know, there once was a time when people actually rated each other on their letter writing abilities, how well they engaged the reader, how proper the grammar, and how cohesive the letter. They didn’t want a list of bullet points, vomiting out what the other person knew. They wanted something that was on point and interesting to read. It meant the person was “educated!”
This all might sound “stuffy” to a “hear-and-now” (as well as a “here-and-now”) generation, but if the popularity of social media is any indication, now more than ever, people want to be heard. They have something to say.
Yet, unless you can communicate it well in writing, I promise you, no one will be listening.
Getting started on social media sites like twitter can be a daunting task, particularly if you do so at the same time you’re launching a job search. For technical candidates that tend to be more skeptical of these social forums, thinking they’re just plain silly, this can be a big challenge.
Well, on Wednesday 10/17 at 3pm ET on twitter at #TCFchat, a panel of job seekers, HR folks, recruiters, and career professionals convened to discuss just this topic. We covered whether a type “A” personality is truly required, the demeanor or persona the job seeker should assume (especially if they are new to twitter), and other strategies.
The major takeaways were that even loners can and should use social media for the job search. Being authentic is vital. Also, sage advice was offered to “Think twice. Click once.”
Most career professionals encourage job seekers to employ social media in the job search process. But for the candidate in IT, engineering, manufacturing, and other technical arenas, this can be a big challenge. Many of these technical folks have more of a “loner” mentality. So is social media–and twitter specifically–really for them? Join the discussion and hear expert opinions this Wednesday 10/17 at 3pm ET on twitter at #TCFchat.
Find out if a type “A” personality is truly required or if–and how–a techie can effectively use twitter for the job search.
Join the discussion (Wednesday 10/17 on Twitter at 3pm Eastern). Simply follow and use the hashtag #TCFchat to be a part of it all.
CIO.com IT Resume Makeover for an IT Asset Manager
I was recently asked by CIO.com to participate in their IT resume makeover series. Obviously, the company and the client shall remain nameless =)
After working with the extreme makeover participant, I was able to create a document that highlighted his achievements and communicated his story. The story was a key piece, as he had progressed from a field technician type of role into IT support. He then basically created a new role for himself in IT asset management and software licensing compliance by helping the company through a two-year licensing audit.
This was a fun project to work on. Please check out the full CIO.com article that has the before and after results.
Feel free to comment directly on the CIO.com site or here if you prefer. I’d love to hear your thoughts!
This was a great follow up to the TechRepublic.com resume makeover I did this Spring for an IT project manager.
Using social media as part of the job search process is becoming more and more prominent and exceedingly important. So on Wednesday 10/10 at 3pm ET on twitter at #TCFchat, we convened a panel of job seekers and career experts to discuss some social job search topics. The thrust was how a job seeker can effectively manage their time when on social media sites for their job search.
All of our participants agreed that using social media is important, but that it must fit in with a balanced overall search strategy. One of our technical professionals felt strongly that networking is still, by far, the best element of a job search…and no one disputed that claim.
Other discussion points surrounded the best social media sites to use for the job search, how much time one should spend, what to avoid, and other tools to benefit a social media job search.
Social media, like so many other elements of the job search, can be a great help. But it can be a big time trap too! Find out how to get the most our of the limited time you have to spend using social media tools in your job search. Join the discussion and hear expert opinions this Wednesday 10/10 at 3pm ET on twitter at #TCFchat.
Find out where the social media job search fits in compared with other job search methods. Also, we’ll be discussing traps to avoid and tips for optimizing your time in the social media job search.
Join the discussion (Wednesday 10/10 on Twitter at 3pm Eastern). Simply follow and use the hashtag #TCFchat to be a part of it all.
So it turns out that I have become somewhat obsessed with “The Voice.” You know that show on NBC where people from all walks of life who can sing undergo a blind audition to be on one of four celebrity judges’ teams?
If you haven’t seen it, contestants have to sing with the judges’ backs turned to them and hope/pray that one of them will push his or her button and turn around, granting them a sacred place on that judge’s team (and oh the sweet bliss if more than one judge turns around! Now they have to fight over you!). (Once the teams are full, the contestants then duke it out [musically, that is] to become that season’s “Voice”.)
My obsession with the show has to do with all the back stories they give you about some contestants during the blind auditions. They pick a few participants with each show (undoubtedly the ones with the saddest, most heart-wrenching tales to tell) to highlight BEFORE they go out to sing.
So taking a page right out of the Olympics (you know, right as the athletes are getting ready to compete, suddenly Bob Costas’s voice spurred on by some background music draws you into this back story of the athlete), The Voice does a good job of drawing you in, humanizing these people to the point where you just want to root for them (I mean, after all, this IS their moment, and they DESERVE it!).
Then, just like the Olympics, they go off to the audition to compete, and some make it and some don’t, offering you 60 minutes full of emotional triumphs and agonies (“The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat!”).
That is, of course, if you are a sucker for these back stories like I am
Like any junkie, however, I knew I had reached rock bottom when not that long ago I was watching with my husband and 8-year-old, and I found myself tearing up over some struggling artist who had moved to Nashville to make it big and had to park cars to get by, just believing that this was his big chance (sadly, though, no one pushed their button for him). He looked so forlorn when the realization hit that his days of parking cars were not quite over.
On the same show, another guy, who grew up on a pig farm and sang so high people often mistook him for a female, belted his falsetto heart out, just hoping for a chance to get away from those pigs, but alas, it also was not meant to be.
I have to admit that I was feeling pretty badly for both of these guys (sniffling, puffy eyes, and everything!) UNTIL I heard my 8-year-old say, “Oh mom, it’s not devastating or anything. They’ll be OK.”
I couldn’t help but smile because (1) she really does listen to me sometimes and (2) she understands what many people don’t: perspective.
As a career pro, I hear this word “devastating” a lot when job seekers are at the end of their rope with a job search. I also heard it several times during the Olympics when someone didn’t medal or didn’t win the gold they so expected.
But disappointment, not matter how severe, is not devastation.
Devastation is a complete wiping out of order, chaos, hopelessness, helplessness. It is complete and utter loss. It is most often associated with the ravages of war or earthquakes/tsunamis or death. Disappointment is, well, disappointing, a sadness that something did not work out as we had hoped. And disappointment, by the way, has many levels, from “ah shucks” to “I’m not getting out of bed for a year.”
It is important to understand the distinction here, especially when it comes to attitude and outlook.
We’ve become so casual in our use of the English language that we often use terms to describe things that are exaggerated and inaccurate (myself included!). And although we often think it is just a matter of semantics, the fact is that our words matter, especially when we reach a crossroads.
Whether it is the pig farmer on “The Voice” or the Olympic athlete who didn’t medal, in both cases, these people have experienced something so rare that many others could only dream about. They obviously have talents that they have been given the opportunity to nurture and develop, and the world has given them a stage to do their best to showcase these talents. For goodness sake’s, you don’t just go to the Olympics because you want to, and not everyone gets an invite to “The Voice.” You really do have to have the goods (not to mention all the competition leading up to this competition)! So although it is disappointing (extremely so) for them (and we can sympathize with them, tears and all) that they fell short of their expectations, it is certainly not devastating (especially when you think about all the things that really are, like war-torn countries, famine, death).
I mean, I wish I had one talent that was even half as good, much less a global venue to show it off! No one ever said to me, “Wow, you’ve got potential. Drop everything and devote yourself to this!” Just think about what a privilege that is! (Uh oh, if I’m not careful, I am going to start to feel “devastated!”)
Instead, like so many of us, I have had to carve a path that has brought wonderful surprises and deep disappointments. It’s just life. It doesn’t always cooperate, but then again, we also don’t always lose. Sometimes we even get amazing things we don’t deserve. (And sometimes, blessedly, we are protected from getting other things we do deserve.)
But once you mistake disappointment for devastation, you will miss all that for it will cloud every decision you make from there on.
I’ve seen too many job seekers go down this path from disappointment to devastation, and it really is, well, disappointing.
See devastation requires a complete rebuilding, if that is even possible, and nothing will every be completely healed because there has been irrevocable loss.
Disappointment, however, still has a chance. Things might have to change, the road might be different than you thought it was going to be, but the chance to salvage something out of it is still there.
Listen. It’s really awesome to dream big and to have high expectations and goals. We all want our children to do that, but disappointment is par for the course. Even if they meet one goal, another one might not work out. It just is what it is.
The difference comes in what you do with it when it comes. Are you prepared? In the end, that is what separates the winners from the losers…
If you’re confused about the whole recruiting scene, this will help provide a little clarity. On 10/3, David Graziano, technical recruiter for GE, joined us for a weekly #TCFchat on twitter at 3pm ET.
Dave and our panel discussed the difference between external recruiters and internal recruiters as well as internal recruiters and HR. We also chatted about how candidates should approach the resume and job search differently based on the type of recruiter that’s in place. In addition, much discussion centered around the role of social media in the recruiting process. This included the use of social media from the perspective of the job seeker as well as the technical recruiter.
I really do believe that sometimes we (meaning the collective human race in general and career pros in particular) just like to make things harder than they really are. And that is especially true when it comes to “personal branding.”
It’s no secret that I am not a big fan of the word, but then again, I am not a big fan of most buzz words. (And when it comes to the career industry, much like many other professions, we love our buzz words!) The reason for my frustration with the phrase is that for all the good we think we are doing by bombarding job seekers with these terms, it more often backfires than it does produce real good.
Here’s what I mean. You end up with two kinds of job seekers:
1. Ones who are obsessed with trying to unlock the personal branding puzzle. (They’ve been hearing all about this “new” concept, and they don’t want to miss out.)
2. Ones who are sick of hearing about it and reject it outright as just a ploy to sell them on more career services.
In both cases, it is a pity really because the idea behind personal branding is important and should not be rejected, but it isn’t all that new and it certainly isn’t a great mystery. What you have is a classic case of overselling, where you either set people up for disappoint or turn them off completely. Either way, it is not a good reflection on the career services industry, especially when I know that most career pros really do want to add value to a job seeker’s experience. They just fail to present it realistically.
It also doesn’t help that many job seekers are only interested in hearing what’s flashy, such as how social media is their savior and how personal branding will transform them into every prospective employer’s dream.
None of this should really come as a surprise as we find a similar issue with the terms “marketing” and “social media marketing,” in particular. As a small business owner, I am well aware of how obsessed you can become with these terms. We build these concepts up so much that we either chase after anyone who seems to grasp the mysteries behind them or run fleeing in the opposite direction just hoping our businesses will market themselves. And just like with “personal branding,” everybody loses (except the chosen few selling the online gimmicks).
Alas, however, like most things, once these buzz words enter the marketplace, they pull us all in. And they can’t be ignored because they do have some merit. The trick is in understanding just how much of the hype to believe and how much to throw out. That’s why I like to advise our clients to “keep it real.” We’re not looking for gimmicks but for real methods.
After all, we’re real people looking for real jobs with real companies run by other real people.
And although it might sound trite, that is really what personal branding is. It is understanding your place in that equation and articulating how you fit into it.
The best way to do that is good old-fashioned problem solving. Yes, problem solving.
The tools might be new (like LinkedIn or Twitter), the culture might be different (remote office, global teams), and the processes might be tedious (resume parsing systems), but the concept is still the same.
We hire people who can solve our problems.
That is exactly what an employer is looking for when he or she scans your resume. It’s not so much credentials (although they play a part); it’s whether you can solve the problem.
If you can anticipate and articulate that, then you understand your personal brand.
Likeability, background, cultural fit, age, and so on…for all our talk/worry about these issues…become less of an obstacle if you can convince an employer that you understand and know how to solve the problems he or she has.
Honestly, that’s all personal branding really is, and that is all that it will ever be. Polish or no polish. Introvert or extrovert.
If you have trouble understanding what role recruiters play in the job search, this is the forum for you. When it comes to recruiters, there are so many unanswered questions. Get the answers this Wednesday 10/3 at 3pm ET on twitter at #TCFchat. GE technical recruiter Dave Graziano will be our special guest star.
Dave will be talking about technical recruiting, resume, job search, interview, and other related topics.
Join the discussion (Wednesday 10/3 on Twitter at 3pm Eastern). Simply follow and use the hashtag #TCFchat to be a part of it all.
With all the hype out there regarding social media and its relevance to the job search, it is hard to believe there is so much disagreement about what a social media job search really entails. The reason is because there are many different approaches you can take, and social media is so new that everyone is still an amateur (no wonder how many LinkedIn connections they have or Facebook friends…in fact, those are the people you should probably be wary of).
At the very least a social media (or “SoMe”) job seeker is prepared in the following ways:
You paid to have the LinkedIn profile written (yes, paid)
You sweated over your personal branding statement
You set up your Twitter and Facebook info (and adctively use these sites)
Maybe you even built a website to showcase your resume or started a blog
The problem for most job seekers (and where the lack of consensus comes in) is what to do once you’ve established all that.
The challenge for the social media job seeker is how to determine what is worth doing and what isn’t.
In my mind, it becomes a matter of content versus conversation. Most people are usually good with one but not so good with another. And some aren’t too sure about either.
The other terms that are hard to miss are “content” and “conversation”. Over and over again you will hear “experts” talk about the importance of having “killer content” and “engaging conversation” as two key steps in gaining social media “influence.”
As a result, we now have a social media realm overloaded with info and, most likely, fake conversations. And while everyone is trying to be so casual about it, the truth is that there is nothing casual about social media marketing.
And a social media job search is another form of social media marketing.
So should you spend all your time retweeting and sending out links to blogs and articles (some from you and some from others), or should you strike up witty conversations all over the web?
Unless you plan to devote hundreds of hours to learning all the social media strategies out there, my advice is to keep it simple and to remember why you are there in the first place:
Play up to your personal branding statement.
The whole idea of a personal branding statement is to present yourself in a unique, consistent way across all forms of connection. So when you approach what to say on Twitter or what to discuss in that LinkedIn group, you want to be thinking about how to reinforce your personal brand. If you specialize in X, talk about X, share posts about X, engage with others who know about X.
Now, that isn’t to say that you should be a one-trick pony. If you are, you’ll drive everyone crazy, but you do want to make sure that your followers know what you’re there for. My favorite approach is through images. I like to use cartoons, casual office pics, infographics, etc. and pepper that content in with my overarching message or brand.
People want to feel like they “know” the human side of you.
Think of it in terms of a neighbor. Most of us are curious about what our neighbors do for a living. “Steve’s a CIO.” In fact, we often share that info with others. (“That’s my neighbor, Steve. He’s a CIO at XX, Inc.”) But what really makes us happy is not just to know that Steve is a CIO but also to know that Steve is a CIO who has to mow his lawn or walk his dog just like everyone else. We don’t want too much info about Steve, but we want to know he’s a regular guy like we are (something politicians pay big bucks to advisors to try and portray but rarely do well because, well, they often aren’t all that regular when it comes down to it).
Another good analogy is golf. As a female, I have heard for years that the golf course was the haven of the old boys’ network. And after learning how to play several years ago, and now participating in a weekly league, I can see why. Golf is just about the most humbling experience a person can have and yet somehow still have fun. After a round of golf with someone, it’s hard not to have some connection. It doesn’t mean you know each other’s intimate details, but you do know something about the other person’s character. And that’s the kind of person you want to help out back at the office, etc.
Social media is just another form of converting that network into opportunities.
So you want to use your time on it to make people feel like they understand the person behind the brand.
Over the past several years, more and more retirees are re-entering the workforce. Some are getting part-time jobs while others are attempting to get back into the field the left upon retiring. Boy how things have changes, and quickly too! Social media is now a major player in the job search and hiring process.
What Is Social Media?
Social media simply refers to online platforms that bring folks together on a wide range of issues. Some of the most popular social media sites include Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google+. However, there are hundreds more. But for the purposes of this discussion, let’s stick to the main social media players.
Are There Really Rules?
No. Social media sites don’t have “formal” rules that job seekers must follow. However, etiquette is important and following certain principles can make your time spent in the social world much more productive. A few key principles to keep in mind in the social media realm include:
Don’t get carried away by the hype
Just like your real-life network, it’s quality that trumps quantity
Consider the Golden Rule: do unto others…
People join these forums to connect with others, so don’t be shy
Don’t go into the process solely focused on what you can get out of it
What’s the Point?
OK. So we have listed out some of the “rules” when using social media sites. One of the rules was to not focus on what you can get out of it. Really? Then what is the point? Well, it’s simple. You’re looking to engage with your audience in an area of common interest.
I’ll offer an example of this in action with LinkedIn. If you were a manage of software engineers upon retirement and you’d like to get back into a similar role, how do you get started? On LinkedIn, you can join Groups, of which there are thousands. You’ll want to search on groups that match your interest in software development. Once you join, you’ll have an opportunity to connect with many others involved in or interested in the software development field. LinkedIn allows you to contact the person directly if you’re part of the same LinkedIn Group. You can also post content that can be viewed by everyone in the Group. Again, when you follow the principles, you’ll know not to post something like “Back in the game and looking for a software development leader position.” No! You’ll start out by “listening” to what others in the Group are saying and attempting to engage them directly. Once something is established, you can identify if an opportunity exists.
Resume Tips for Re-Entering the Workforce
For those trying to return to their former glory, check out the first article in this series regarding resume tips specifically for rejoining the workforce.
On Wednesday, 9/26 an “expert” panel convened on Twitter at #TCFchat to discuss the topic of IT leadership effectively motivating their technical teams.
We initially questioned the apparent ineffectiveness of “canned” HR programs with technical professionals. Why do these programs fall flat?
We also debated the role of HR, HR leadership, and the CIO in the ongoing motivation and performance of the IT team.
Finally, we talked about what strategies a CIO could employ to inspire his or her team. Missing were some of the convoluted incentives many corporate workers often hear about. The focus was centered on leaders being, well, leaders…setting a sound strategy, providing the teams with the proper tools and training, managing people firmly but fairly, and doing what they say they’re going to do. This isn’t revolutionary stuff here, but it may well be “innovative” in the sense that so few companies focus on these fundamentals.
I’ve always been aware of my limitations and mistakes. Acutely aware. I just wanted to hide them as much as I could…you know, to make it look good.
