Today’s Job Search: What It Takes to Get to the Top of the Pile

A job search today is not your Mother or Father’s job search

“I have some ideas as to how I am going to approach this and would like for you to take a look and give me your thoughts. My response was as usual, “talk to me first as to what you are thinking and then send me your draft [s].”

The lady I was helping methodically walked me through her thought process and how she was going to take it and transfer it to marketing collateral.

I realized after hanging up that a job search today is beyond anything that we have ever witnessed in years past. The day of just sending out a generic resume is a thing of the past. There is an entire cottage industry that has been built around resumes and LinkedIn bios.

Bringing your “book” to a job interview

I have friends that are former HR professionals who have hung their shingles out as resume writers, or shall I say, designers of resumes. Two of the industry best are Careers Done Write(Debra Wheatman) and The Resume Crusade (Chris Fields)

Dealing With a New Company Culture: Do you Compromise, or Adjust?

How are you going to deal with a new culture? Do you think the leadership style in another country will make a difference? I know that you can be very opinionated, but you may need to tone it down in another country.

Questions about workplace culture have always intrigued me. What is a successful model so that you are accepted into a new environment?

What if you are rejected? How can you get a sense up front to make the changes to increase your chance of success? What will you have to give up — and what will they have to give up?

These are all interesting questions, and they are all relevant.

Compromise or adjustment? Choose one

HR Leader Spot in the Middle East? It’s Just Another Check on My Bucket List

 I applaud you for having the gumption to make this move. Are you are really going to do that?Are you kidding me 

You aren't afraid to move to another country

Moving to the Middle East? Bon Voyage, I am so happy for you.All these comments came up over the   past month as I completed yes completed my career bucket list

I had always wanted a CHRO (chief human resources officer) role since the     day I got involved in HR. My    

other checkpoint was that I wanted to live life as an expat

PowerPoint Hell: Why Do We Put Up With 70 Slide Presentations?

 “We spent literally an hour trying to decide which whether the to use a period, capital letters, or the size of the boxes in the presentation. All this discussion went back and forth for so long that I could not believe we could waste all this time on something so trivial. But then again, all of our prep meeting are

like this. It seems more time is spent on this than the actual content.”

As my friend told me this, I could just see her stomach churning as she was regretting going into work for the prep session for yet another monstrous deck.

I had lunch with a CHRO friend of mine last week when she told me the story of a vendor presenting a 70 plus PowerPoint slide deck. By the time they were finished, everyone was just plain exhausted and worn out.

But did they get they content right? Well, yes and no.

Lots of slides. Rethink your presentation

PowerPoint has taken over corporate endeavors. You know it is a “major” meeting when someone has a deck of slides. When I see that my thought always is — what in the hell did we use before deck? We talked it through, I think.

I remember reading once about a CEO who would wait until people came in with slides, and he would say, “Just walk me through it and forget the deck.” He didn’t like the time wasted on PowerPoint decks. He just wanted them to tell the story.

I recall presenting a few weeks back and I used an age old technique. I started off by telling a story based on what we were discussing. By framing this story up front, I got instant audience connection to what we were talking about. My deck was a print out with only two (2) slides. We had a great discussion and I did not even pull that tiny deck out until near the end of the meeting.

Mission accomplished.

If you need a 70 slide PowerPoint deck to get your point across, maybe you need to rethink your presentation. Do you actually need all those pages? Not only that, but when you see this level of volume you can rest assured that the slides are busy with circle, semi-circles, multiples of everything, fade in/fade out, etc.

Have you ever driven down a highway and noticed a billboard while you are driving at 60 plus mph? With one glance, you got it. The more info that you add, the less clear your message is.

Is your deck the teleprompter

I tend to think that these large PowerPoint decks are the cousin of the teleprompter and the brother of the notecards. It makes sure that you will not forget anything. If I put everything on a slide, it keeps me on track.

I remember a politician a few years back got on stage and her notes got pulled out of order — and she was flustered. She kept asking for time to get her notes straight. She was frozen and she could not continue her speech.

It  makes me wonder: What would happen if your deck was misplaced and you had to do it solo without the aid of the slides?

However, if you concentrate on your story and what you are trying to tell, you will become a lot more confident, and that makes for a stronger connection with your audience.

Simplicity has benefits

The Harvard Business Review‘s Nancy Duarte judges PowerPoint presentations by applying the “glance test,” saying that it should take no more than three (3) seconds for viewers to intellectually process and comprehend a slide.

If it takes any longer than that, the audience is going to be reading your slides and not hearing your message.

Simplicity has its benefits. If they are going to read or glance, make it so that they can get to your point within three seconds.

Take a quick look at the slide here and you get what simplicity means. This allows you to tell your story and make the story the business case and tell a compelling story.

So next time you feel a deck beckoning you, let your story be the real story, which will be remembered a lot longer than a 70 plus slide deck.

The Battle For Top Talent: Will Your Workforce Policies Pass the Smell Test?

 “You mean to tell me that you tried to forbid someone to look for a job for two years until the program that they are in is completed? Are you guys nuts?”

That was my reaction to an article concerning Morgan Stanley’sill-fated program to lock in junior level employees, at least until they had completed their two year analyst program. On top of that, this was a pledge that they had to sign.

I picked up the phone and called a friend who worked there and we both kind of shook our head. He felt the same way as I did. He said the company wanted to keep these folks under lock and key so they could watch their investment.

You’re hired — and you can’t look for a job

Staying Relevant: Either We Continually Adapt, or We End Up Obsolete

 The headline in USA Today blared Columbia flunks relevancy test.

Columbia University’s Journalism School just appointed a new dean. The uproar was astounding, to say the least.

The new dean’s “alleged crime” is that he comes from a background of print [think newspapers and magazines] and he is taking over the training ground for the next generation of journalists whose skill set has changed.

This new dean (his name is Steve Coll, an author and formerWashington Post managing editor), and while having impeccable credentials, he is not versed in social media and reportedly does not have a Twitter account.

 

And while a Twitter or Facebook account should not be a requirement for a job, having them should be taken into consideration if you are going to be training students in an industry that has been decimated by social media. You should be well versed in the annals of digital media

Industry changed but skills set did not

Engaging Employees: Don’t Overlook That They’re Your Greatest Experts

"We need to have a discussion on your work ethic.”

This message was the response sent in reference to an email that was mailed at 9:20 pm on a recent evening. The recipient was still at her desk toiling away. The sender, her boss, was already home.

When I saw this woman a few days later, I asked her to tell me about the work ethic conversation her manager mentioned. She said, in a matter of fact manner, “Oh, she does not want me working that late every night.”

Nothing was mentioned about the department being short one person, or, that the one person they were short had left because of long hours.

Getting close to the problem

Doing the Right Thing Is Always the Right Thing

 Even though she didn't put in the $20, the crew at Keller Williams decided to kick in a bit of their winnings — they won’t say how much.

“As a team, we put together a fat pile of money,” Finkelstein Reader said. “If we do the right thing and always care about other people, the right thing will happen to us.”

Those were the remarks from a realtor at Keller Williams concerning their good fortune of winning 2nd place in the recent lottery – which just so happened to be a cool $1 million. By now we have all heard about the winner of the top prize, but 2nd place provided for me a more compelling story about human nature.

“Creating workplaces everyone wants to be part of”

You Can’t Solve Today’s Problems With Yesterday’s Solutions

 “Twenty-first century leaders might benefit from thinking of themselves as being in the center of a web rather than on top of a pyramid” — Dr. Ben Dattner.

When I read that statement over at Smart Brief as their quote of the day, I was pleasantly surprised to see my good friend Dr. Dattner being quoted.

He is a nationally known organizational psychologist that I have worked with numerous times over the years. His recent book, The Blame Game, is centered around two words that causes so much angst in an organization: the dynamics of credit and blame that is percolating 24/7.

Today’s problems, yesterday’s solutions