The Facebook Nightmare – Lost Job Opportunities…

Anyone who reads my blog knows that I have a very healthy skepticism of Facebook. I am not alone. We have 3 grandchildren under the age of 5; 2 are “on” Facebook, 1 is not. I support a parent’s right either way.

But I also know how much joy and connection Facebook brings to so many people and I respect and appreciate that.

When I read, Facebook’s Generation Y Nightmare,  the article put into words what I sometimes feel is the dilemma of sharing your ‘present’ on Facebook and illustrating it with photos.  The author of the article imagines a young lady, Tina, at 18 in 2012. The items she posts now will effect not only her future career opportunities but also her alternatives for health care.

Yes, it’s imagined and yes, this assumes that ‘nothing changes”, but it’s not hard to imagine judgements/decisions being made based on incomplete or ‘what’s readily available’ data.

So, I encourage you to review your Facebook ‘timeline’ – assuming that privacy settings didn’t work… (which I think is the reasonable thing to do these days)  — what would your future employer or insurer learn about you might prefer that the whole world NOT know.

I know a young man who lost his job as a student teacher because of his ‘drinking a beers with his buddies’ photos on his Facebook page. He was over 21 and the pictures were harmless and yet the school district’s policy on ‘public comportment’ took away his future career. You may think this is unfair but the truth is… this is happening. The nightmare hasn’t even begun yet.. for those who can’t tell their parents… please don’t put me on Facebook!

Thoughts?

Photo credit: Jack Skellington-O-Lantern  randysonofrobert

9 Deadly Sins of Job Hunting

Ok, these may not be deadly but they can slow down your search. Take care of these and your search will go smoothly because you’ll be building relationships and learning during your entire search.

You may not want to address these issues… but you’ll be glad you did.

I borrowed some of these from 7 Deadly Sales Sins.

1. You don’t know who you are so you can’t concisely tell others. Seems simple enough but trust me, if it’s been a while since you’ve looked for a job… you probably don’t know yourself as well as you need to. Look into those dark corners, root out your foibles and shortcomings and learn to say great things about yourself and your capabilities.

2. You don’t know what you want. If you don’t know where you’re going; any road will take you there. How can others help you if you don’t know what you need or want. I know it’s easier to define what you don’t want. Start there.

3. You don’t know how to easily help others (or worse you don’t understand why it’s important.) Being of service, listening, making referrals, introducing like-minded folks, etc. it’s not hard but you do have to stop thinking about yourself long enough to consider what to do.

4. You don’t understand what recruiters, hiring managers or human resource people need. If you put yourself in their shoes for a minute, you’ll be much more effective at getting their attention.

5. You’re afraid. We all are, you are not alone. Some of us just “fake it ’til we make it.” Take a page from that book.

6. You stay in your house and tell people you can’t network because you’re: shy, introverted, technical, a geek, blah, blah, blah. Get over it. Most of us don’t want to meet a bunch of strangers, but we do it.

7. You don’t follow up. You know, thank you notes you talk yourself out of.

8. You don’t have a process for your search. Do you have a spreadsheet of your contacts, companies and connections? Do you have a plan to meet 7-10 new people a week? Do you have a job search ‘buddy’ who can help you? Are you learning new skills?

9. You don’t ask for the job or you ask for every job. Be clear about what you want, who you are and when the time is right, be sure to be clear that you believe this is the job for you and why.

Bonus: You don’t have a complete LinkedIn profile with at least 200 contacts. sigh… what are you waiting for?

I believe in you. Go!

Photo Credit: MelB Handovermouth

Embrace Disruption

I’ve decided there 3 kinds of people… those who are very afraid of change (about 25%), those who create and embrace change (about 25%) and those who are willing to change if they have to (um yeah, 50%).

Which are you? Be honest… the most important thing is to understand yourself and then build on your strengths and mitigate your weaknesses. Given that GenY (those born 1980-1995ish) will make up 50% of the workforce by 2014… you might consider how you’re going navigate this change regardless of your age and experience.

Hannah Morgan (the career Sherpa) and I have a fun, powerful workshop called, “Taming the Know it All , 4 Generations at Work.” We share our experience in helping organizations understand that people are comfortable communicating in a certain way..it could be leaning over the cubicle wall, or  by phone, email, text, etc. Most of us don’t think twice about what method would work best for the person we want to ‘talk’ to. Taking a moment to consider the “receiver” of the information can limit undue friction. A little thought and training can make a team more efficient, productive and cohesive.

In his blog, Embrace Disruption, Cory Stewart describes his journey; “In May 2012, I decided to make a change. I vowed to start accepting the chaotic nature of life, and embrace whatever challenges may come my way.” Cool Cory. I’m with you.

In his post titled, Digital Natives vs. Digital Immigrants, he wisely advises us to embrace inter-generational differences by ‘bending’, not dictating, focusing on balance and encouraging collective work.  If this sounds a little too kumbaya for you then you are probably one of those people who’s afraid to change.

And if embracing disruption, thinking about changing my own attitude (one of the few things I CAN control) and being less stressed out are my goals then I’d better listen to Cory. He’s gonna help us make this work. Remember, its not about being right, it’s about being happy. Agree?

Image credit: simplysolo.com

Guerrilla Hiring (Not Hiring Guerillas)

I often talk with job hunters, HR folks and recruiters about how hiring continues to evolve; think mobile/social recruiting.

When I read this post about a woman who recently applied to,  interviewed for and landed a job in less than a week; I was amazed (job on east coast and she lived on the west coast!)

Here’s her story…

“So, on a fluke, I emailed them my resume. By the next afternoon, I had already done a Skype™ interview with HR and they assigned me a project so they could see my work. I emailed my project, they loved it and offered me a job. I was on an airplane that Sunday and started work on Monday!” What’s on Karen’s Plate

Let’s examine this. She…

1) Wasn’t even looking for a job., she ‘stumbled’ across this posting and decided it was her dream job

2) Sent a resume and someone actually looked at it (wow)

3) Interviewed via Skype™  (candidate and hiring manager actually saw each other, felt the mutual energy, etc.)

4) Completed an assignment (wow again). (So this means that the company actually knew enough about the job to have an assignment that an interviewee could complete and then they made it easy for her to submit it.)

5) Evaluated the organization – I wonder what they did to help her understand their culture? (Made interviewing completely painless!)

Of course all interviews can’t happen like this but imagine streamlining the process to even vaguely resemble something like this. What if you Skype interviewed several candidates? If they don’t know how to use Skype — do you want to hire them? and… can you use Skype?

As a hiring manager, do you have an ‘assignment’ for your short list of candidates?

As someone how waited months for a job to — ‘get approved’, ‘open up’, have a new ‘description/classification written’, etc., this whole thing blows me away. In a good way!

Image credit: Philhill.net

Stuck in the Middle with Me

Do you know when you’re stuck?

Sometimes it takes me a while. But when I’m crankier (than usual), finding fault in the people I love over small things, am afraid to try new things and so on… I realize that I’m stuck. Here are a few things to think about…   You’re not the only person who is stuck, you just need to be brave and reach out to someone else.

Remember, ” When the student is ready, the teacher appears.”

Symptoms of being stuck include, thinking you’re…

• always right
• always wrong
• the only person who has money troubles (really you lived below your means? … hmmm)
• married to/in partnership with the wrong person (without fully examining your part in it)
• in a job that you’re too good for (but you haven’t kept up your skills or networking)
• in a job you hate (but you don’t haven’t even looked for a new job in years)
• unemployed for several months (and still scoff at… social media, networking, building skills) unable to  remember the last time you learned something new that took real effort not helping other people
• a drip… you don’t even want to be around yourself

I understand. The reason this post was so easy to write… this is me. But I’ll tell you this…I stopped doing it as soon as I could.

Please tell me, what are you afraid of… go on, explain it to me or someone else.  Get unstuck. It feels so good. Take one little step.  You can do it!

Photo credit: CHUD.com

6 seconds = How Long Your Resume Gets Looked At…

Have you ever been on the hiring side of a resume? It’s not fun.

You often feel like this guy. Overwhelmed by ‘paper’ and buzzwords that don’t tell you anything.

Before you spend more time and get more opinions about your resume, check out this article, “How Recruiters See Your Resume…” Take a look at the heat map associated with this article.

It tells us that the more structured your resume, the easier it is for those 6 seconds to be productive and get you into the consideration pile vs. the no way pile.

The goal of the resume is to… wait for it… get you an interview! Be sure to think of it that way. It’s not to document your entire work history.

By the way, how’s your Linked In profile? Do you have 300 connections? Do you belong to several groups? Have you uploaded your PowerPoint presentations? Do you answer questions? Make sure you include a live link to your Linked In profile from your resume.

Now go forth and streamline that resume!

Image credit: Career Insider

New Executive Title – “Custserv/HR/Mktg/IT” Leader

Functions in the workplace are converging.  Social media is jumbling responsibilities at the enterprise at an alarming rate. Let’s take twitter for example.

You may know the online shoe retailer Zappos.com – they make a big deal out of using technology to give customers what they want and need 24 x 7. This is NOT because Zappos thinks that technology is cool. Their culture is totally built around superior customer service.  Check it out here.  Here’s an example of their twitter feed…

“Oh whoa! Truly sorry about that. We will try not to let that happen again. We had some slight hiccups in out Tweets today. ”

Check out Zappos employees communicating here.  And they are not alone.  Check out this tweet from a satisfied Southwest Airlines customer:  “Southwest completed my name change within 2 hours of my faxing them the info! #customerservice #newlywedtweet”

What about when an employee goes on Glassdoor,  Facebook  or twitter to complain about your company, whose responsibility is it to monitor and follow up?  HR? Marketing?

When things go wrong with a sale, who hears about it? The sales person? Customer service? Marketing? Maybe the IT department if it’s a web sale? Is response via social sites in your organization’s workflow?

Is a company’s Facebook or Twitter pages the responsibility of marketing, advertising, customer service or public relations? Smart companies are actually co-creating products with customers in real time. So now do the product development folks need to monitor twitter too?

What if I need to  download a 3rd party app to my desktop and cell phone to monitor twitter for my job… Does IT support that? Across which platforms (Apple, Blackberry, Droid or tablets?)

If you manage marketing, sales, customer services, human resources, IT or finance; are you paying attention? The head in the sand thing isn’t going to work any more.

Image Credit: All News Wire

Saying No, Graciously… Tonic for the OverCommitted

My grandmother taught me to say (with a big smile), “Not today but try me tomorrow” when I was turning down an offer.  I thought she was crazy but… she was teaching me to please others.

And so I thought  I needed to say yes in order to be liked. Fortunately, I got over that.

But saying no can be difficult so here are some helpful hints for saying no,

When someone starts talking about a problem and wants you to help, you could say:
“I can understand how that would be hard.”

Then say nothing more—just nod and smile while you assess what you want to do. If you can walk away without accepting any responsibility and let the person feels heard,  you have all my respect. A desire to help, curiosity and wanting to be the hero all kick in for me so I have to be on guard.

How about when you’re asked to start working on a new project, you could say:

“Would you email me the details? Once I receive that, I’ll be able to give you a more definite response.”

Maybe you’ll push the project to someone else, maybe you’ll take it on. You get time to decide on a response. And don’t forget the best ever, all purpose response:

“I’ll have to get back you.”

I have a ‘Git ‘Er Done’ mentality but I want to manage my time so I can enjoy my work and my life.  Got tips for saying no (besides change your personality?)

Photo credit: The 99% Solution.com  (BTW – an awesome website — check it out!)

(Other) Stuff to Do While You Look for Work… You Lucky Dog

When I was on unemployment, I was really happy. Don’t get me wrong, I love having my own business but getting paid to meet people, learn new things, think about my potential, help people and so on was great.

If you are unemployed, do you see yourself as lucky? Are you having fun? Are you showing your children how to thrive in times of change? (Believe me, whatever changes you have seen in your life will be child’s play compared to what they will go through.)

I found this  terrific article written by Tim Tyrell-Smith titled, “101 (Other) Things You Can Do While Looking for a Job.”  Here are a few of Tim’s suggestions

• Pick one person in your network and find them a job
• Put on an elaborate puppet show for your kids (fun, colorful socks work great)
• Join (or start) a book club and actually read the assigned books
• Write a thank you note to an inspirational high school or college teacher

You may or may be surprised at all the “yes buts” I hear everyday. “I would join a book club but when I go back to work I won’t have time.” ” Why should I help someone else,  I need help!)” blah, blah, blah. Just do it, you lucky, lucky dog.

The Start Up of You – All Dogs Gotta Learn New Tricks

Can we all agree that the whole job search/career thing has changed, um completely? If you happen to have one of those jobs (academia?) that isn’t changing…well, just hold on to your hats; your time is coming.

For the rest of us, whether we are 25, 40 or 55…we are wondering what to do. This terrific article by Thomas Friedman, the well-respected economist, speaks directly to the issues . Here’s an excerpt…

  While employers “are hiring; they are increasingly picky” and are “all looking for the  same kind of people” — those “who not only have the critical thinking skills to do the value-adding  jobs that technology can’t, but also people who can invent, adapt and reinvent their jobs every day… Professionals need an entirely new mind-set and skill set to compete.”

So, exactly what skills do you need to have in order to meet this new challenge? Here’s my take:

• Change agent – not just able to cope with change but create it – constantly
• Collaborator – find the right people to do the job and then work together a way to get it done – fast, seamlessly and on a shoe string
• Teacher/Student – learn everyday, on every project from all collaborators. See what works and what doesn’t and then help guide the team – either from a leadership or participant role – to success.

These are the skills that I am building – what would you add?

Photo credit: http://www.buddiescafe.net