When People Think Of You, What Is Their First Thought?

Posted on March 15, 2013 by John G. Self

When people think of you, is it good or bad?

Do they think successful? Smart? Accomplished? Insightful? Abusive jerk?

These first thoughts, like first impressions, are part and parcel of a career brand.

It is amazing how many leaders are what they are without thinking about their personal brand. They can come up with a hundred reasons for their good or bad habits, how they treat people, or for their failures. They become incredibly dismissive when you try to connect these behaviors and their brand.

Bad mistake.

There are three important elements of effective career management:

Awareness
Outreach
Performance

At the outset, you must be aware, or become aware, of how your colleagues, your customers, your friends and even your family perceive who you are and why you are they way you are. Without self-awareness you have no ability to change and grow.

Outreach involves everything from your personal interactions to your social media presence. Unless you are at the apex of your career, and your retirement is funded beyond your wildest expectations, you must focus on advancing your brand — as a cutting edge thought leader, superb operations leader or values-oriented staff support person. When you start assuming everyone sees you through the same lens as you see yourself, you are in trouble. You must take the initiative in defining who you are, how people see you and how they evaluate your value.

In the end, it is all about performance. Whether you work in a staff support function, or on the hard edge of nailing aggressive budget targets, you have to achieve results, deliver value.

That will define your brand as much as how you treat people.

Common Resume Mistakes Hurt Candidates

Posted on January 30, 2013 by John G. Self

In a tight job market, it is fascinating how many senior level and aspiring executives shoot themselves in the career foot with mediocre or bad resumes, or with a resume that contains major mistakes.

There is no shortage of books, columns and blogs that provide guidance in resume development, outlining the rules of what you should, or should not do. But judging by 200 resumes of executives that I have reviewed over the past three months in connection with research for a career management book I am writing, our advice is being ignored, or that the ample career management knowledge base is one of the best kept secrets in MBA programs.

Some of the errors reflect carelessness. Those are easily fixed. Others are structurally flawed and need to be reworked. But the vast majority of the resumes do not do their intended job, as a first interview, to get the candidate to the next level of the recruitment process.

It has always amazed me how many people just list on their resume the name of their employer, their title and term of employment. They do not explain who the employer is or what services they provide. Finally, the candidates frequently use dot points to explain their scope of responsibility while failing to list any of their accomplishments, or explain the value they could bring to a prospective employer. They wonder why they were eliminated so early in a search.

In competitive senior executive searches, virtually every candidate is qualified. The vast majority has a master’s degree and, in healthcare, increasing numbers hold a Fellowship in the American College of Healthcare Executives, a certification that shows they have the requisite current knowledge. The resume, therefore, should be that part of your personal career brand which helps distinguish you from everyone else. That is why candidates should/must list the significant accomplishments that reflect their success and value contribution. Moreover, as a general rule, recruiters focus on candidates whose resumes clearly demonstrate that they have produced positive results. Candidates should never assume that their advancement to positions of more responsibility is sufficient evidence of success.

Here are a few examples of the most common problems I noticed when reviewing the 200 resumes:

No address. I saw a LinkedIn site where discussion participants argued that address was irrelevant since where the candidate currently lives should not be a factor. It is. Why be hardheaded, or try to make some point, and not be included in future consideration?
Formatting problems. Once you get your resume in perfect shape, convert it from an Apple Pages, Word Perfect or Microsoft Word format to a PDF document. Be sure you do not have blank pages in the middle or tacked on to the end of the resume because you left a pesky page break in the document by mistake. Be sure your name and page number is at the top of each page.

Too much information in too few pages with a typeface that requires a magnifying glass. More than 25 executives with 20+ years of experience tried to cram their professional life and accomplishments into two pages because of some two-page resume rule that does not exist. The length of a resume should be proportional to the length of a candidate’s career and the number and quality of their accomplishments. Early careerists loaded their resumes with extraneous information to make it seem like they were more experienced than they really were. If you have a 2.5 page resume and you are using a 9 or 10 point typeface, you might try increasing it to 12 point so we can actually read what you wrote without blowing up the size of the page by 200 percent.

References were attached. As a common sense rule of career brand management, DO NOT send a recruiter or employer your references until requested to do so unless, of course, you really do not care if someone inadvertently discloses your confidential search.

There are a lot of career management consultants in the market. If you pay someone for advice, and if what they tell you to do doesn’t have that certain ring of common sense, or it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

For a free copy of John Self’s resume guide, click here.

Career Management, The Resume And Dealing With Recruiters

Posted on December 31, 2012 by John G. Self

My 2012 is coming to an end in much the same way it began, at least according to my email, with questions regarding career management, the resume and how to deal with recruiters.

Career Management – My email is balanced between people who are concerned about losing a job, or those already in transition. Very seldom do I hear from an employed executive who is seeking to maximize career management effectiveness since the vast majority in this group do not think about managing their career until they are ready for a promotion or they hear about a job they really want. That can lead to a bad surprise along the way.

Self Rules:

Everyone, all the time, should be thinking about managing their career, or, at the very least, their personal career brand. Organizational changes occur, sometimes rather suddenly. Once you are going over the cliff, it is really too late to catch up. Networking is for everyone. Building and nurturing a robust, focused network of contacts is a very important asset in the career management universe
Do not take a big step back financially, even if the new job will expand your portfolio of skills
Social media sites like LinkedIn are important tools to build a network and to look for jobs. If you have not mastered this platform, do so ASAP

Resumes – For some reason the resume is the career management tool that confuses or intimidates even the most accomplished of executives. Just remember these two overarching themes: the resume is your personal brand document, and it is the FIRST interview with a potential employer.

Self Rules:

Keep your resume up to date. Store it someplace besides your office computer. The same goes for your networking list. Having to rebuild a resume after 5 to 10 years in the same job is an invitation to make mistakes on dates of employment, titles and, more importantly, your scope of responsibility and accomplishments
There are no ironclad rules regarding resume length. It should be proportional to your years of experience and accomplishments. If you have been employed as a healthcare executive, it is a safe bet you cannot successfully cram those 20 years of increasing responsibility and accomplishments into a two-page document. If you are an early careerist, please do not expand your resume to appear to be someone you are not.

Recruiters – How do you connect with recruiters is another frequently asked question. The answer is that it varies, depending on where you are in your career, and the type of job you are interested in. For the most part, the senior level executive positions are handled by retained search firms, or in-house recruiters. Lower level supervisory and management positions more typically are handled by internal recruiters, contract sourcing firms or contingency search consultants.

Self Rules

Always take a recruiter’s call, and try to help them even if you are not interested. Recruiters appreciate that a great deal. If the recruiter is a jerk, do not take their calls in the future. They are not someone you or the client needs
Regardless of your level in the job food chain, do NOT waste your time with a recruiter who does not know, or will not divulge, the starting salary for a job. If you cannot get that basic bit of information, then walk away. It is better to frustrate a recruiter on the front end than to make the client frustrated on the back end. This happens frequently
Failure in a new job is almost never about skills or qualifications. Culture, style and performance expectations are more often than not the issues that trip up even the most successful of managers and executives who move into a new position. Do NOT take anything for granted

So, here we are again preparing to say goodbye to another year. 2012 was a great year for JGSA and 2013 appears to be starting with a boost of energy, two facts for which I am very grateful.

To my clients, candidates, friends and family, best wishes for a Happy New Year and a successful and prosperous 2013.