Archive for Career Development
Leverage the Social Web to Define Your Personal Brand
Posted by: | CommentsPersonal branding is absolutely essential in the world of the social Web. The first place potential employees look to learn about you (after reading your resume) is the Internet. Your Twitter stream, Facebook profile, LinkedIn profile, and so on all offer a glimpse into who you are as an employee and where you’re heading in your career. You need to be sure that your online persona is branded appropriately to help you reach your goals.
Branding yourself is just like branding a product line or business. The same principles that marketers use to create brands like Nike, Campbell’s, and Honda apply to personal branding. Consider women like Oprah Winfrey and Martha Stewart. Both of these women have defined their personal brands, created a brand image, message, and promise, and continually meet the world’s expectations related to their personal brands.
By branding yourself, perceptions are created about who you are and what you can do. Just as people have expectations for Oprah Winfrey’s behavior and business decisions, your colleagues, peers, superiors, clients, and potential employers will develop expectations for you based on the personal brand that you define and live.
Following are the three critical steps of building a brand that you should keep in mind as you develop your own unique persona that will be the foundation of your personal brand:
1. Consistency
Once you determine what your brand image, message and promise should be, you must consistently present yourself in the same way through every interaction, communication, and so on. Inconsistency leads to confusion. When you’re trying to build a career, consistency is essential.
2. Persistence
You need to relentlessly communicate your personal brand message, so it becomes the cornerstone of your online persona.
3. Patience
Understand that building a brand takes time. It’s a long term strategy that can help you establish yourself in the image and niche you wish to carve out for yourself throughout your career.
Power Up Your Networking With 3 Key Strategies
Posted by: | CommentsBy now you’ve gotten the message that networking is a crucial element of career success.
If you’re going to make it you’ve got to connect.
And you’ve read the rules – dress well, be sincere, be interested in the other person, follow-up to develop and build relationships, and so on.
Does it still sound intimidating? So much so that you’re still holding back?
Or maybe you’ve put a toe in the water to give it a try but feel like you’re still not quite getting the hang of it?
Try these three key strategies to make your networking efforts that much more successful.
Network In Your Own Way
It has been nearly 15 years, but I can still remember the amused, sideways glance a colleague shot in my direction when I asked whether he entertained clients socially on a regular basis. He was right to give me “the look.” A reserved introvert with a magnificent brain he was the opposite of a social butterfly and it should have been obvious that socializing with clients was not a priority for him. No doubt he would sooner have a root canal without anesthesia than entertain regularly. He did, however, maintain a wide professional network.
How did he do it?
By being true to himself.
That colleague picked situations which he found manageable, went to these however briefly, and was himself when he was there. He made connections. He maintained these connections by showing up again and again and also by having additional contacts in ways that were more comfortable for him– sending a personal note or making a quick phone call.
You can mimic this technique to carry out your networking within your own comfort zone.
Does going to a completely unfamiliar organization sound like a bit too much? Start your networking at an internal company event. Or at a community gathering at your gym or local school.
Do you hate the idea of going alone? Grab a friend and make a plan to attend jointly – not joined at the hip but in concert so you’ll have someone to talk to if it is slow.
Zero in on what it is that makes networking feel hard for you and see if you can do something to minimize the challenge. Count an event as a success if you go for just a short period of time; or give yourself a reward for staying longer or talking to more than one person.
Building some connections in this easier and more manageable way will give you confidence to reach out even more.
Take The Time To Develop Relationships In One Group Before Branching Out to Another
In the long run, networking is about the relationships you build and how they support your career and allow you to support others. Building relationships is central to making this happen.
Relationships aren’t built merely by introducing yourself with a memorable “elevator pitch” at a meet and greet event. They require a quantity of contact and a quality of dialogue. Once you’ve chosen to include a specific group in your networking program, make the effort to interact with its members:
- Attend meetings regularly
- Join a committee or take a volunteer post
- Add the group members you meet to your LinkedIn network, facebook tribe or Twitter feed, as appropriate.
- Make outside of meeting contact with people you want to get to know better – exchange information, tips or just a social wave to build community.
Applying these techniques consistently will take an investment of time. Your return will be a web of relationships within that group that will makes you feel as if you belong. When you feel comfortably settled on the path to create those relationships in one group you can devote a similar level of attention to another one. In other words, your network will grow and you can then grow it further.
Consider Creating Networking Goals
In some ways the broad mandate to “build a network” itself can feel overwhelming. Setting some networking goals is a good way to break the task down into manageable, more comfortable parts.
Let’s say you’ve decided you should expand your contacts amongst your professional peers. You know there are several ways you can do that. You might:
- join a local alumni association
- join the local chapter of a national professional organization
- attending an upcoming conference
- find ways to meet people with similar job descriptions in other nearby companies.
None of these options are leaping out at you and taken as a group they sound like an enormous chore.
Let’s say instead that you set a goal of expanding your peer group by 4 people per month for the next 3 months. At the end of 3 months you will have grown your network by at least 12 people. In the meantime, though, instead of focusing on the big task of broadening contacts with professional peers you can focus on the smaller, manageable task of meeting 1 new person each week.
You can use goals to break down other networking goals into more manageable tasks in a similar way. Once they’re resized, networking goals frequently become more attainable because they feel more less overwhelming.
Try applying these three techniques to your own networking efforts. And see if they make this important, ongoing task, a big more manageable for you over time.
Anne Clarke is an executive and personal coach specializing in supporting women in achieving their professional goals. For more information about her services visit her website www.setting-and-achieving-goals.com
What are you worth? The cost of branding you.
Posted by: | Comments“The cost of doing business” speaks for itself. You have to put money out to make money; feed the investment so that it grows becoming lucrative and prosperous. A fundamental basic that business leaders process regularly, right? Absolutely!
Why then do many business professionals treat themselves and their own career marketing tools with substandard expectations? As a career strategist and resume writer, pricing of services is one of the top #3 questions asked of clients. Certainly understandable and always welcome!
If you are willing to spend money on high end clothing, hair salon upkeep or high end handbags, perhaps you may want to redistribute where you are investing your hard earned dollars. Are you buying into someone else’s brand or are you taking care of your own?
While most professionals realize the time, complexity and strategic writing that goes into developing a solid and effective marketing tool, there are always a few folks who see their resumes as a typeset piece of paper tracking the basics of their work history asking, “Why does it cost so much”?
Top 5 Reasons Professionally Written Resumes Cost Money
You are paying for a customized marketing tool reflecting your most important commodity…YOU. Customized, one-on-one marketing takes time and a specialized set of skills from a writer who has the ability to dig deep into extracting your key skills and accomplishments.
- A behavioral based trained professional writer has a unique skill set in individualizing and interpreting your core competencies in writing. This takes credentialed training and years of practice which is more than just being a technical writer.
- Strategic writing and appropriately targeting a clients goal is factored into a professionally written resume. When I am asked to write a general resume, I educate potential clients that this is not a service that I offer. A general resume is as useful as trying to catch a variety of fish using one type of bait.
- Researching industry trends, verbiage and current job marketing opportunities takes time. Behind the scenes, a top notch resume writer is busy collaborating with industry peers, researching web sites and bringing forward new information to support the needs of the client.
- Credentials cost money. Most writers have a varied assortment of credentials, education and training to support their writing. For a writer who is continuing to learn, refine skills, seek out new credentials and advanced exposure to global assessment programs, know that the cost of doing business will be aligned according to skills being offered.
Lesson: Invest in your professional brand by having the appropriate tools. If you are going to drive a fancy car, wear high end heels or expensive jeans, become truly authentic and coveted by having a top notch resume in your tool kit.
Women Leaders and Male Partnership
Posted by: | CommentsIn any learning process, there is a tendency to go to extremes before finding middle ground. Take driving, for example. Most teens start by driving very, very slowly, learning when to accelerate and when to put the brakes on. Then there is a time when we all want to experiment with speed, until either fender hits fender, or a ticket is handed by an unsmiling policeman.
Most of us then find the safe space of the middle ground where fast and slow are dependent on the territory.
So it is with all relationships. Sometimes a hug is perfectly timed, in other situations a metaphorical “right to the jaw” is called for. In all partnerships, all life happenings, it is all in the timing.
Margaret Thatcher was a woman leader who had a great sense of timing. She was strong and gracious. She entered the territory of male domination early on and set the stage for women to follow, to learn the art of push and pull.
I am reminded of a Margaret Thatcher story: she was disappointed with her cabinet, one she felt was weak and unwilling to take stands. Her frustration came out at a dinner, so it has been told, when the waiter taking meal orders asked her “Chicken or Steak” to which she replied “Steak please”. Next question was “And what about the vegetables”. She looked up and said “Oh, they will have steak also”.
We are now in an era where the fine art of timing is even more important because the world is moving so fast. There is not the luxury to ponder, to hesitate. As women, we need to become experts in timing, when to hug and when to hit.
Patterns of behavior handed from generation to generation have kept many women in the “hug” category. Often, the extreme of “hit” has been indiscriminate. This is a major learning process for men as well as women, and what we can learn from leaders like Margaret Thatcher is not so much about policy perspectives as about the push and pull of power.
The most important learning for leaders is how to find that magic balance.
Work for a Jerk?
Posted by: | CommentsAt one point or another, we have all worked for a jerk. Trending analysis, client feedback and underground communication clearly indicate that mismanaged employees and boundary violations are on the rise. Managing through tough times and poor leaders is often time more difficult than the work itself. Poor leadership can range from an immediate supervisor to poor HR leadership. Noone is exempt.
Taking charge of your career and disengaging from negative forces, including a jerk of a boss is within your reach. As a Career Strategist with an organic and practiced track record of problem solving, I am focusing this weeks blog on the employee relations aspect of managing poor leadership, self preservation and maintaining your sanity.
5 Strategies to Activate NOW
#1 Document…Document…Document
Venting is short lived whereas documenting is soothing, has long range positive effects and will set you up for a chronicle of events if you need to take legal action.. Hand write your discontent in a strategy journal. This is a journal specifically dedicated to you, your work, your accomplishments and your discontent. Keep it is a safe place and use it daily. Date, time stamp and openly journal details of what is occurring. Always be sure to credit yourself for one or two accomplishments per writing. When leadership is lacking, you need to start truly leading yourself. This means crediting your daily accomplishments and cheering for yourself!
#2 Keep the Personal Out of Professional
Remind yourself that you accepted your position to offer professional skills in lieu of pay. That is it! Nothing more! While it is a bonus if you make a friend or two in the workplace, your primary focus must be on your skills and honing them. If you have a jerk as a boss or a leader who leads you to feel uncomfortable, steer clear. You are under no obligation to take part. If you think you can out maneuver the person…perhaps you can but you will be far better served if you develop a strategy focusing on your accomplishments and becoming successful than trying to “play the game”.
#3 Remove Fear from your Vocabulary
There is a reason the famous quote “there is nothing to fear but fear itself” has stood the test of time. Use it. Get out from behind your fears and exercise your courage. This does not mean randomly acting out, but rather, put a plan in place on making your move to either sustain the existing workplace dysfunction OR exit the company. Planning your work and working your plan is powerful. Have dedicated hobbies outside of work. This will give you something positive and productive to look forward to and feed your focus on you.
#4 Stop living above your means NOW
If you cannot quit your job due to financial restraints, start cutting back on your luxury spending and live beneath your means. Start paying yourself first by banking as much as you can. Make a game out of stashing away extra money. You will gain power over yourself which will bring a heightened sense of confidence into the workplace. Your boss may be curious about seeing a change in your however, never needs to know why the change. Remember Rule #2??? Keep personal to yourself.
#5 Take Action.
If you have been spoken to inappropriately, asked to divulge personal information, felt emotionally violated to the point of crying or coerced to conform in what may be perceived as a borderline “touchy feely, cultish” environment, stand your ground and exercise your voice. The EEOC is always available to file charges especially if on the job allegations are not being dealt with. Environmental harassment is NEVER ok. Once you speak up, you are protected by the law from any further wrongdoing. Get Moving!
For more information: www.eeoc.gov.
Got Goals?
Posted by: | CommentsHave you set job-related goals? Are strategic goals included among the goals you’ve set?
These questions came to mind after a recent coaching session with a long-standing client, Jen H. (not her real name). We were discussing goals. It wasn’t our first conversation on the topic. As soon as she accepted the new position, a lateral move after nearly 15 years in a similar post at a different company, we set goals for the first 90 days on the job.
The first few months went well. She asked if I would help her set goals for the next year. I did and that went well. We did the same thing the next year. As the months passed a positive review and hefty bonus confirmed that she remained on track.
This year Jen had a different question. Instead of asking for my help in setting goals she said she had set some goals for the coming year and was hoping she could run them by me. I agreed and she rattled off a list of 3 objectives that would definitely serve her well in the months to come. We honed the list to include a strategic component and once again the ball is in her court to make it happen.
Jen’s experience with goal setting on the job offers two important lessons. It illustrates, first, the power of goal setting. Jen is an extremely intelligent, talented professional with a terrific record. Working with goals essentially let her stack the deck on the new job from day one. She wasn’t just offering her excellent professional contribution. From the very first she had a personal agenda stating clearly what progress she wanted to make at the company. Her list of goals created a roadmap that she could reference to support and direct the process of making new connections and establishing herself in her new position.
Jen clearly internalized the benefit goal setting offered her smooth upward trajectory in the now-not-so-new company. How can we tell? This year she wasn’t asking whether we could set goals. Instead, she had carried out the process herself to get that direction on paper. Our conversation allowed refinement of an existing workable plan.
Job-based goal setting can enhance your performance in a similar fashion. Do you have goals for the job? Do they take into account not just what the company wants to see from you but what you want to make happen at the company?
Goals that track what the company wants allow you to meet or exceed expectations. They expose weak spots, if any, and point the way to necessary improvements and enhancements. You may set these goals collaboratively with your managers as part of a review process. Or you may create them on your own based on both formal and informal feedback. These goals tend to focus on performance questions such as what you will do, what deliverables you will produce, or what profits you’ll generate.
The best goal setting is also strategic in that it goes beyond your present position and focuses on your career and “Brand You.” When setting these goals the question is what path is your professional trajectory taking.
Do you have a well developed network at your present company? Do you also have a carefully tended external network?
Are you a visible presence inside and outside the firm or do you toil without recognition? What are you known for? Does this reputation shortchange some of your key contributions? Can you do something about that?
What about your future hopes? Do you have the training, education and experience you’re going to need to jump to the next level? How does your salary compare to what you would like to be earning at this point or in five years? Is there something you can do in the near term to get it from where you are right now?
A goal setting session addressing these questions systematically and comprehensively is something you can carry out in as little as half a day. The task involves taking a careful, accurate look at yourself on the job and as an independent professional. Comparing what you find to where you would like to be next year is the next step. The goals you create flow naturally from this analysis. They state what you need to do to close the gap between today and that desired destination.
Get going and get goal setting. You will find the path to excellence easier and more direct if you do. And you deserve that success.
For free goal setting worksheets and to learn more about setting professional goals visit Anne Clarke’s website www.setting-and-achieving-goals.com.
