Month: September 2013

Staying Healthy for Your Career Increases Your Success

Staying healthy and being successful go hand in hand. ~ www.jaywren.com

I found that when I quit smoking and started exercising, my personal performance doubled.

Steps to Staying Healthy

Get your doctor’s advice before starting an exercise program.

To turn my decision to exercise into action, I set up situations and times to exercise. I involved my family and friends.  Whenever possible, I exercised with my clients.  I found it helpful for staying healthy to involve other people.

Health Clubs

I enjoyed going to a health club for several years. The club had coffee and other beverages. The equipment was ready to use. I could go to the health club on my way to work or during my lunch hour. After exercising, I could shower and shave and go directly to work.

My clients were all over the country.  When we were staying at the same hotel, I would ask some of my clients to join me in exercising.

Sports Teams

Softball games at company picnics may be as common as the potato salad and the barbecue on the menu. I have been to national company meetings where golf, beach volleyball, relays, tennis, and softball were all part of the company activities. Sports may be a terrific way to expand your network within your company, with your clients, and at trade events.

My wife and I played co-ed adult soccer, volleyball, and softball. I coached and played on men’s softball teams.

While playing sports, my wife and I had a wonderful time.  We spent more time with our friends.

Furthermore, we got to exercise when we might otherwise have sat on the sofa and watched television.

Get Sports Partners.

If you do not have friends for golfing, tennis, handball, racquetball, basketball, bowling, running, or other activities, ask your friends or family if they would like to join you for play time.

Buy Inexpensive Equipment.

Finding free exercise equipment is not necessarily easy, but it is far from complicated. For over 10 years, I used an exercise bike in my family room and a weight machine and free weights on my covered patio. I enjoyed using this equipment. Over time, I began to enjoy walking and calisthenics more than I enjoyed sitting on a stationary bike or lifting weights. I listed the equipment on Craigslist and did get a few bucks for my equipment.
I have found listings on Craigslist for free equipment. In some cases, people list equipment just to have someone come to their home and take it away.

Don’t be afraid to negotiate.  I have a friend who listed a Shopsmith™ woodworking table for free on Craigslist. He did not get any calls. Then, he changed the price from free to $50.00. He started getting offers at once and the equipment was gone in 3 days.  However, if anyone had asked, he would have let the equipment don’t for free.

Walk. Run. Lift. Move Your Body.

If you live in a safe area and you do not suffer from injuries or health issues, just walk out the door and walk back in after a great trip around the neighborhood.

Calisthenics can be very effective as well: toe raises, sit ups or crunches, leg lifts, squats, lunges, push-ups, pull ups.

If you want to add a little weight, fill a couple of water bottles with sand and do upper body exercises while marching in place or walking for 15 minutes.

Joining a Class

Physical activity classes are helpful in staying healthy.

There are classes for every activity: yoga, meditation, martial arts, golf, tennis, fencing, horseback riding, casting and fly fishing, ad infinitum. There are also trainers or personal coaches for any sport you can imagine. Before joining a class or signing up for instructions from a stranger, ask around to see what other people have experienced through the classes, place, or person you are considering. You might also check on the Internet to see if people have reviewed the place where you are considering taking a class.

My wife and I joined dancing classes on two occasions. I managed not to embarrass her too badly, and we had a wonderful time. I have also taken classes for golf, meditation (a mental exercise), baseball, and volleyball. Taking classes is a lot of fun, especially when you take them with your family or friends.

Take Exercise Vacations

Rather than go someplace where you sit around a pool or on a beach, go someplace where you can hike, surf, snorkel, fly fish, or take walking tours.

https://www.jaywren.com/even-in-the-lottery-work-comes-before-success

Forbes Top Career Sites

Thank you everyone for your support in nominating JayWren.com to Forbes top career sites.  I learned this morning that I made the list.

Forbes writers Jacquelyn Smith and Susan Adams reviewed hundreds of websites and thousands of comments to reach their decision.  It is a real honor to be among their choices.
The excellent articles that Smith and Adams write should place Forbes among the top websites for your career.

5 Techniques for Better Focus

Clap your hands.   Have you ever noticed how American football teams huddle before each play?  What is the last thing that the players do before breaking the huddle?  They slap their hands together in unison.  They clap.  They are practicing the rhythm of focus.  In the huddle, each player receives the assignment for the next play.  Clap, their mind is on their assignments.

Turn off your computer monitor.  If you are on an important phone call and you are not using your computer to record information for that call or to research information to answer a question, just turn off your computer monitor.

Make notes with pen and paper.  It is impossible for me to write down what you are saying and at the same time think about something else.  When I go to an important meeting, I use a pen-and-ink list to ask questions and take notes.  The other person in the meeting can see what I am writing and participate in my note taking.  After the meeting, when I record my handwritten notes on my computer, I review and memorize the important points of what I just learned and take action on the things I need to do.

Look, listen, and ask yourself a question?  How many times have we all heard a person’s name and not be able to recite it immediately afterward or looked at a clock and have no idea of the time of day?  When I meet someone, I can look at the person’s eyes and ask myself, “What color are the eyes?”  Then I say the name of the person in my mind and state the color of that person’s eyes.  “Sue has hazel eyes.”

Eat, but eat light.  If I am suffering from a drop in blood sugar or if I am in a food coma from a heavy meal, my mind travels to far-away places.   If I eat a few carrot sticks or an apple or a few bites of almost anything a half hour before a meeting, my mind comes back to the present moment for that meeting.

Is it Time for You to Start Your Own Business?

Is it Time for You to Start Your Own Business?

Prior to entering recruiting, I worked for two terrific companies: Procter & Gamble and Polaroid Corporation.

I did a lot of things that I loved to do.  I took pride in my companies’ brands.  I loved giving presentations.  I enjoyed the travel.  I took fascination in new product introductions.  I found joy in absolutely crushing the competition in shelf space, ad space, and in sales.

However, I had two frustrations.

  1. Income: No matter how great my performance or the evaluations of my performance, there was little difference between my income and the income of my peers.  At one point at Procter & Gamble, I led in sales performance for 15 consecutive months and got the same bonus and same pay raise as everyone else.  My first year at Polaroid, I led the nation in sales against quota.  My bonus was 17% of my salary.  The lowest bonus was 12% of salary.
  2. Location: Where my family and I lived had to fit the needs of the company.

My first experience at witnessing a successful start-up company was a real revelation.  I had just taken a promotion and moved my family to The Woodlands, TX, just north of Houston.  I had an office around the corner from a man, who had worked for a major oil company.  Three years earlier, he had started a company that brokered sulfur and sulfuric acid.  These chemicals are waste products.  Refining separates then from the oil.

To other companies, sulfur and sulfuric acid are essential products.  He developed the knowledge for selling these chemicals during the time he worked for the oil company.  His business model was simple.  He found people who needed to dispose of sulfur and sulfuric acid and found people who needed to buy them.  He made a commission off brokering the deal between the two parties.

His income and my income were very similar except that his income had significantly more digits to the left of the decimal point than my income at Polaroid Corporation.

Today, the company that he founded is an international chemical company that sells a diverse range of chemical products.

He started his company based on two concepts:

  1. He relied on his established network, which immediately gave him a customer base.
  2. He became a broker, which eliminated the costs of owning inventory and the costs of manufacturing products.

You may find that starting a company offers more security than getting a job.  A member of my family was a successful sales person for a fragrance company until another fragrance company bought his employer.   He found himself in the same place in which many people find themselves.  Another company bought his company and eliminated positions.

Rather than pursue another job and face the risk of yet another job loss through an acquisition, he set up a brokerage operation for consumer products.  He established contracts with a network of companies that would ship to and bill retail customers.  He had no shipping or inventory complications.  He got his commission directly from the company that shipped the product.  His retail customer base was the same as the one where he had been successful.  He reduced his risk of distribution losses by building a base of product selections built on contracts with a broader range of products than just fragrances.

He quadrupled his income.

The broker business model is simple.  Brokers find a person with a need and a person with a product or service and make a commission from putting them together.  Sales people have the straightforward opportunity to go from an employee to a contract employee, because they typically have an established network for their goods or services.  Yet many people have a network and the skills to meet needs within that network.  Even without a network, people set up websites with shopping carts and start new businesses.

Self-employment provided me with these three things.

  1. Allow me to live where I wanted to live
  2. Connect with contacts and knowledge I already had and every year build on those relationships and that knowledge
  3. Tie my income directly to my performance.

Is it time for you to start your own business?

8 Ideas for Enjoying Work

8 Ideas for Enjoying Work

Find the beat of your own drum and march to it.  It is so easy for me to get distracted and off course when I look at what other people are doing and imitate those people.  What I often find is that the direction that those people are going is completely off track from where I want to be.   If I can just trust the beat of my drum, I can stay on task, trust my instincts, and create work that is original and produces fantastic results.

Be happy today.  Happiness is an inside job.  When I feel sad, I acknowledge that I am sad.  I do not focus on the things that I believe are making me sad.  Often my feelings come along and I seem to find ideas to hang them on.  I admit that I am sad, I experience the feeling of sadness, and I let it pass on its way.  If I do not attach ideas to my feelings, most of the time my feelings only hang around for a minute or two, and I get a fresh, often invigorating sense of my world.

Focus on doing things accurately.  My baseball coaches said see the ball and hit the ball.  In football, the coaches said see the ball and catch the ball.  Watch the baseball all the way into your bat.  Watch the football all the way into your hands and arms.

Create new things instead of perfecting old things.  I have worked drafts of articles so many times that I have lost track of what I had in mind when I started writing the article.  I have found that the best way to work on any project and carry it forward to the finish is to write day a statement of what I want to do.  Then I create an outline of the things that I need to do to do the task.  Next I fill in the details of completing the task.  Whether I am washing my car or writing an article, the process of the same.

Keep projects simple.  The steps are pretty much the same for each project

 Wash Car  Write Article 
Tools: bucket, soap, sponge, towels, water hose Tools: Laptop
Spray the car. List paragraph headings
Sponge wash car. Write material to match
headings.
Rinse the car. Proofread the article.
Dry the car. Post the article on my website.

Emphasize the things that are working and build on those things.  Sometimes it is easy for me to get off track, discouraged, and loose my sense of direction.  What seems to help me to focus on the things that I did when things were working and simply repeat those things.

Keep an open mind to new ideas to simplify and make your life easier.  I see new, simple, even free ways to do the same things that have been a struggle.   I created the table above in Microsoft Word.  For anyone who has ever tried to insert a table in a website, you will know that tables make some material easier to read can the table can be a challenge to create and support through editing.

Take criticism as suggestions not rules and certainly not as corrections.  I remember working with an applicant on her resume.  She told me that the things that I told her she had already covered with other recruiters and had even had her resume written professionally.  I said simply that I understood and that the only thing that mattered is that she manage her resume in the way that she feels will be most effective for getting her interview.

4 Tools for Turning Decisions into Actions

Four tools for turning decisions into action

I find that the most successful people have tools and systems for turning their decisions into actions.  The things I decided to do in life are not nearly as important as the things I actually do.  Deciding to get exercise, learn a new skill, get a better job, start a new business, and so on through New Year’s resolutions, frequent or occasional inspirations, or anything else that seems appealing yet may be fleeting without something bringing forth the action to complete the vision.

Have a partner or a team.  The Internet has isolated so many of us that we lack the benefit of having other people who start the day at the same time, end the day at the same time, and share processes and ideas to keep the project moving.

Google, IDEO, Apple, Campbell, Exxon Mobil, and nearly every other business use business teams to carry out their goals.

I have read criticisms of teams or, rather, committees, for the ways that joint efforts can throw projects off track.  As I read these criticisms, I find is that the problem is not in the team concept but the team selection and structure.

Start with a team manager who can bring leadership, direction, motivation, energy and focus to the team.  Add team members with different, complimentary skills and experience.  For example, if you are creating a financial planning team, the team leader might be from the finance department, but the members might be from a variety of departments who can add ability and creativity to the team.

In many cases, the team leader report to a director of teams who is not a member of any team, but is the person who appoints members to the teams, and directs the teams through the team leaders.  The head of marketing or sales or any other department might supervise the team leaders for innovation, product development, insights, labeling, advertising, branding.

Teams come together in meetings.  Scheduling meeting to afford the greatest use of the skills of each employee is critical.  A demand planner might take part in team meetings for finance, sales, marketing, and logistics.

A head football coach might be a good example of a team director.  The head coach has team leaders who manage the development and success of specialty teams in modern football:  quarterback coach, special teams coach, linebacker coach, offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator, offensive line coach, secondary coach, strength coach, defensive line coach, and coaches with special skills in working with kickers for punting, kickoffs, on-sides kicks, and field goals.

On a small-scale, your team might just be you and your partner.  In a family business, the team might be two sisters or a mother and daughter in a garage, a kitchen, or in the case of a new household product, even the bathtub, where they create the vision, draw up the plan, develop the financing, and maybe even create the products right where they will use the product.

Gordon LeBoeuf, the person who trained me recruit, owned one of the top four executive search firms in the nation and owned the Carter/Bryant  (named after Amon Carter and Bear Bryant) employment agency in Houston.  Prior to recruiting, LeBoeuf had played professional football and had worked as a national marketing manager for Pfizer Pharmaceutical.

His advice was that I needed two things:  (1) someone to work with and (2) a place to go to work.

Develop outside sources.  Reading and listening to motivational and inspirational speakers that talk about my own goals is very helpful.  Reading, watching videos, or listening to speakers who have been successful at achieving their goal creates the motivation and provides the instruction for getting the job done.

Find a quiet place and a quiet time.  I have found times when I have become so absorbed in reaching my goals that I failed to recognize that I was too tired to be effective.  Failing to act was not tripping me up.  Stopping to rest was tripping me up.  Walking away from my desk and sitting somewhere else, some place quiet and restful, can bring tremendous energy and clarity.

Act motivated.  Acting motivated can bring real motivation, enthusiasm, and energy.  I have found that simply performing the actions of being happy, motivated, and full of energy can result in my being happy, motivated, and full of energy.

  1. Smiling, even when I am alone
  2. Clapping my hands or snapping my fingers with or without a crowd or music
  3. Saying “thank you,” especially to myself
  4. Singing, especially when I am alone
  5. Giving compliments, even to myself: “You did a great job!”

What does a Job Title Mean to Your Career?

What does a Job Title Mean to Your Career?  From time to time, I have worked with applicants who have received an offer for a job that had a lower title than the title they had in their current position.

Their current title may have been vice president and the title of their new role may have been director or manager.  More often than not, titles are set inside a company and tied to pay grades.  The connection of the title to pay grade can eliminate arbitrary title assignments.

Companies are sometimes leery of hiring people with titles that are larger than the title of the job for which they are hiring.  The risk in hiring a person for a lesser role is that the person could become dissatisfied and attracted to yet another company where the role and the compensation may be greater.

The networking value of titles:  There are companies that assign inflated titles to their sales people as a way to open doors at large companies.  I had lunch with the chairman of a marketing services company who told me that he had a new sales person who blamed his not being able to get appointments on his title.  Since the chairman had other people who were successful despite their titles, he considered the title issue to be an excuse for not succeeding.

However, the sales person was persistent and completed his first sale by convincing the chairman to go along with the title change.  The role of the sales person did not change, but this sales person became a vice president in title when contacting clients.  He also became a very successful sales person and made a lot of money for that company.

The personal value of titles:  To many people, titles hold personal value.  Their title is tied to their self-esteem.  On LinkedIn, I saw an interesting article in which the author said that job titles are not important.  The author made a number of good points about the value of performance and contribution to the success of a company being more important than the titles employees held.  Ironically, the author of the article listed his own title as a “C” level officer alongside his name in his LinkedIn profile.  His points about the value of contributions to a company are well taken.  However, he failed to see the importance that titles mean to a person’s identify and self-esteem, even in his own.

The marketability of titles:  When I read a resume and see that a person has titles that appear to represent demotions, I will closely examine the resume to see which direction a person’s career has taken.  Titles may not always reflect an accurate statement of responsibility.  I find that my clients will handle resumes the same way.

Many applicants are aware of the effect that titles can have on a person’s marketability.  I placed a woman who was working for a visual imaging company into a similar role at a home appliance company.  Her title at the visual imaging company was director of marketing.  If she took the job at the home appliance company, she would hold the title of brand manager.

The issue troubled her.  The responsibilities of the jobs were the same at both companies.  She dug in her heels over title before signing the offer.

The president of the hiring company offered this compromise.  On her business card, she could put whatever title she wanted, but that her title if she accepted the job was brand manager.  She accepted the job.

The hollow ring of meaningless titles:  I know recruiters, consultants, and other people who work for themselves and put the title president on their card.  Some companies give the title of vice president of sales to every sales person in the company.  There is the risk of losing credibility with clients when titles do not accurately reflect the function of the position person holding that title.

I recruited for a number of years for one of the best small growth companies in the United States.  This company brought in a consultant named Santo Laquatra to help them establish an effective recruiting program as well as refine titles and job descriptions for different roles in the company.  The titles that this company uses align approximately one notch above the title of most contacts the sales team will have as clients.  For example, directors at this company sell to people who hold the title of manager the client companies.

This approach has worked well for this start-up company in getting appointments with their clients and creates a greater impact when top-to-top meetings take place between this company and their clients.

Job titles in job descriptions:  One reason for having solid job descriptions for every role in a company is that job descriptions enable managers to ensure that each a function is being performed.  In choosing titles for

I placed an analytically brilliant and creative retail marketing and planning manager with a company that had posted the job opening the title of “Director.”  The offer letter contained the title of “Manager.”

The applicant balked at signing the offer over the change in job title.  He was a manager in his role at this current company, and the title and the responsibility were the reasons for which he had applied for the job.

The company was a small rapidly growing start-up.  Job functions were being created and defined as the company grew.  During the interview process with this applicant, the hiring company had begun to see the role differently and had redefined the role from the role in the job description.

One of the stated goals of this company was to hire the most skilled and accomplished people possible.  Their efforts to hold to that goal were in part the reason that the current title of the applicant made them redefine functions and change the title of the position.

Now they found themselves trying to hold to the goal of hiring people who were skilled at or above pay grade and not lose an applicant who had what they were seeking for the role.

In further discussions with the applicant, the executive team saw that they had in reality stumbled upon a person with much more ability than required for a manager role and more potential than perhaps any other manager or even perhaps any other director in the company.  They rewrote the offer letter to place the applicant in the role and with the title of the original job.  The applicant accepted and signed the new letter.

Another interesting part of this particular process is that the applicant received an attractive counter offer from his current company.  He told the hiring company about the counter offer and said that he had rejected the counter offer and given his current company a letter of resignation that stated that the last day he would be available to work for them.

By this time, the hiring company had become very committed to ensuring that this person came to work for them.  They added a sign-on bonus to be paid on the first day of employment.

Should You Discuss Your Income?

Should you be prepared to discuss your income?  My answer as a veteran headhunter is that you should discuss your income only if you want to get an interview.

I have placed 100’s of applicants with dozens of companies. I never referred an applicant for an interview without first knowing that person’s income.

What are you really keeping to yourself?  At one time this advice may have had some basis for negotiation purposes, but today there are plenty of websites that have nailed compensation for every possible position in every possible location.  Right here on JayWren.com, I provide employers and job seekers with a free salary custom search feature built on a database of compensation sites.

For nearly every job seeker, discussing income is private matter.  Many employers have a company policy that instructs their employees never to discuss their income with anyone inside or outside the company.  These are solid, meaningful, valuable policies that benefit the company and benefit the employees.

However, if you intend to leave your current employer, you will need to work with hiring managers and perhaps with headhunters who will need to know your compensation.  Many of these hiring managers work for companies that have policies that require applicants to provide a truthful statement of their income.

Why burn bridges?  The interview process can be costly to recruiters and to hiring companies.  If you make $150,000 a year and you require $300,000 to accept a job, put that information out there before you have your first interview. If you plan on running a lot of people through an expensive, time-consuming process to spring a fantastic compensation negotiation on them at the finish, you are more likely going to burn a bridge than double your income.

You can double your income.  I have placed people in positions where these people have doubled their income.  Small growth companies often offer large performance-based and stock-connected compensation packages.  I have helped a lot of people pay off their home early.  The way to go about doubling your income is to work with a recruiter who has the connections that will enable you to accomplish your financial goals.  The best way to help that recruiter is to start by telling the recruiter where you are financially and where you want to go.

The people to whom you discuss your income needs to be people you know you can trust to keep that information to themselves except when you have given them explicit direction to discuss the information with a specific employer or explicit circumstances.

If a hiring manager or headhunter calls you and you have no interest in making a job change but would like to begin to develop a relationship so that you can have people to contact for future needs, you are smart to avoid a discussion of income. These people have no need to know your income until you get serious about making a job change.

Become the Solution

I heard Ed Land, who founded Polaroid Corporation, speak on the role of the inventor.  Land stated that it was his job to imagine things before they happened.  His approach began with identifying a need and creating a way to meet that need.  Ed Land provided solutions.  On the day he spoke, he said that he had hired plenty of highly educated scientists, ” PhD’s   in white smocks.”  He went on to say that the real inventing still took place in his lab where he was known to hole up for weeks at a time as he personally conducted research to create new products and improve old ones.  His first inventions were inexpensive, commercially practical filters that allowed light to pass and eliminate glare.   Today, polarizers are common in camera filters, mirrors, windows, especially windows in commercial and military transportation.  If you ever wear a pair of sunglasses with polarized lenses, you will become aware of how common polarizers have become.  Looking through the polarized filtration of a lens and then through the polarized filtration of a window or a mirror that contains polarized filtration creates a tinted pattern in your field of vision.

If you are a company, a hiring manager, or a job seeker, you will find that your efforts to identify, communicate, and achieve your objectives are easier and more successful if you see yourself as providing solution to existing needs.

The way to measure great companies is how well they deliver on their business plan.  The way to measure great hiring managers is the success of the people they bring to a company.  The way to measure great hires is the success those people bring to a company.

I remember that a staffing manager at the E&J Gallo Winery said that the only way his career could progress was to excel at finding and getting great people hired for the Winery. He had to become the solution for the Winery’s hiring needs.
Become the solution.

“The World’s Most Noble Headhunter”

How To Hire the Best People

How To Hire The Best People

I had a partner who would tell clients that when they made a job offer they were halfway to making a hire.  Finding and interviewing great people is only the beginning process in hiring great people.  Working with those people through the interview process to the point of accepting an offer can play as big a role in hiring great people.

Some companies emphasize the performance of employees in the first 90 days of employment.  Hiring companies should place equal emphasis on the performance of hiring managers in conducting orientation and training after a company has made a huge investment in attracting and hiring great people.   I once placed a very talented applicant with a San Francisco company.   When the new hire showed up for work, the head of his department at the new company was on vacation.

The person managing the orientation for the new applicant unfortunately had one foot out the door in leaving the hiring company and made a mess of the orientation.  The new hire lasted three days.  He resigned and returned to work for his former employer.

Applicants do need to prepare for interviews.   I have worked with a lot of hiring managers who decline to go ahead with applicants who do not come to the first interview with enough knowledge of the hiring company to have a good idea whether the company is a place where they would like to work.

The best companies and the best hiring managers assume an equal responsibility in learning about an applicant before the person walks through the door. Without looking back at the applicants’ resume, the best hiring managers will know where the person went to college, the person’s collegiate record, where the person has worked, as well as the person’s career progress and accomplishments.  The best hiring managers will have a list of questions for information that he hiring manager cannot know by simply reading an applicant’s resume.

I have had hiring managers tell me that they did not believe that they should sell an applicant on a position or a company.  This point is excellent.  The role of the hiring manager is not to sell the applicant on the company, but to do the best job possible in representing the hiring company by preparing for the interview and being 100% percent focused on the applicant during the interview.

13 Action Steps to Getting Promoted or Getting Hired

13 Action Steps to Getting Promoted or Getting Hired

Below are thirteen powerful steps to help you be successful in your current job or to make career move.

Step into action:

  1. Offer to help each person you contact.  Building a professional network begins with helping other people.
  2. Become a research wizard.  It is no longer necessary to drive to a library to get information on companies, job openings, and compensation.  Simply entering the information into a search engine will give you nearly all the information you need to know to find your next job.
  3. Work your network by making a list of every possible contact you have ever made in business and contact these people for ideas and opportunities.
  4. Ask for referrals of every person you contact.  Build the most powerful personal and professional database possible.
  5. Lay out your goals as specifically as you can, but be aware that the more flexible you are in terms of money, location, and responsibility the more opportunities you will have available to you.
  6. You should get to know two recruiters you trust.  Contingency recruiter or retained recruiter?  In practice, how a recruiter is compensated is not nearly as important as what contacts he may have.  Typically, retained recruiters are conducting searches where the salary is above $250,000 and involve “C” level managers.   See <a “=”” title=”Working with Recruiters: The Different Types and What They Do” href=”http://www.jaywren.com/headhunters-and-big-diamond-rings/”>Working with Recruiters: The Different Types and What They Do.
  7. Be organized.  Make a list daily of your contacts, what you discussed what action you have taken and what action needs to be taken.
  8. Use some type of contact management system.  Gmail and Google Calendar are great tools that are free. Smartphones offer apps.  Windows Outlook has an integrated contact management systems.  There are others.
  9. Become an expert on what is in the job market for your benefit and the benefit of the people in your network.  Read the want ads in the local newspaper, national publications, and especially trade journals,.  Track these open positions on a spreadsheet.  You may not need the information when you started the day, but you may before you finish it.
  10. Before approaching a company directly for any purpose, research it thoroughly.  How is it structured:  Marketing, sales, operations, finance, administrative?  Public or private ownership?  Do you have a referral to get your foot in the door or who may even work against you.  Who are the key managers in your skill or business area.
  11. Prepare for an interview the same way you would prepare for a major sales call, business review, or planning session where you are the key presenter.
  12. Follow up with your contacts you have made.  An email that says I know I have neglected to stay in touch and not returned your calls but I need your help now may not serve you very well.
  13. Without your contact people can not respond quickly and can not put you into their contact management system.  Put this information every piece of correspondence.
    • Your Name
    • Your City, State, Zip
    • Your phone number
    • Your email address

    Remember as stated above, offer you help every person you contact. A professional contact begins with helping other people.

Every Business Meeting is a Job Interview.

I have written other articles on how to prepare for job interviews and how to prepare for business meetings.  The things that you do to prepare for both meetings are the same.

Once you land a job, you are competing with other people inside and outside your company to keep your job and to progress in your career.

If you want job security and, especially if you want to get promoted, treat each day as a job interview.

Before starting your business day, make a list of five things you want to accomplish that day.  If those five things include business meetings within your own company or outside your company, preparing for those meetings is very simple.  At first, you may find that making these preparations may seem complicated and burdensome.  I know that I did.  However, I found that repetition made these preparations easier and the habit of making these preparations made them feel natural, even necessary.  I also found that when I encountered new situations, these habits made preparation for those situations much easier as well.

Before going to a meeting, write down the following things.

  1. The purpose of the meeting
  2. Presentations you need to bring to the meeting
  3. Names of participants
  4. Location, time, and date of the meeting
  5. The things you want to accomplish in the meeting

During the meeting take notes.  From your notes you can send follow-up emails and take action on your commitments resulting from the meeting.  You will do a better job for your employer and your peers.

Finding New Industries for Your Job Skills

If you find that you have skills that are no longer needed in your current industry, you feel discouraged.  The ever-changing employment landscape often leaves people with industry-based skills and no employment market for those skills.  You are not alone, and you do have options.

The first week I worked as a recruiter I received a call from a man who had just lost his job from a reduction in force.  He worked at General Foods in the Jello™ division.   General Foods had merged the Jello™ division with the cereal division and fired half of the sales organization from those two divisions.

The man faced a large challenge, because companies across the food industry were merging divisions and merging with other companies.  However, he was fortunate to get a sales job in the medical industry.  The training at General Foods gave him the skills to sell.  A medical company considered those skills as transferable skills for selling their equipment.

There are challenges to changing industries.  Most people have transferable skills.  However, headhunters, hiring managers, and staffing people often face mountains of resumes.  They are focusing on close fits.  Scrutinizing resumes closely for crossover skills is a challenge for these people.  Also, professional networks lose value for most people seeking to transition into a new industry, because most people build professional networks around people who work in the same industry.

The first challenge is to find companies outside your industry who hire people with your skills.   

  1. Make a list of companies and industries that appeal to you.
  2. Determine if other people at those places have a similar background to your own.
  3. Evaluate the overall experience of these people in terms of other skills and experience that you might have in common.

The second challenge is expanding your network to the new industry.  You will probably find better success in getting an interview if you know the hiring manager and can get your résumé directly into that person’s hands.  Here are some suggestions.

    1. Ask a member of your network to give you an introduction to the hiring manager.
    2. If you can not get an introduction to the hiring manager, attempt to network with that person through the Internet.
    3. Join professional organizations that can give you introductions.
    4. Attend trade shows where you can make new connections.
    5. Backtrack through your network to find people who have transitioned from your current industry to a new industry.
    6. When you do send out your résumé, make sure that it markets your transition skills through highlighting your experience and your other training.
    7. Edit your résumé and interview agenda to highlight your qualifications for each specific company you are seeking to join.

    A third challenge is that your skills are just not as strong as those of people already in the industry you are seeking to join.

    1. Strengthen your marketable skills with more training.
    2. Become an expert on the new industry you are seeking to join. Write your cover letter and résumé to show what you know about that industry.
    3. Head back to school to get a diploma, degree, credential, certification, or advanced degree.

    Keep your chin up and think positive.  At one point in my career, I called a Procter & Gamble sales manager to introduce myself.  He informed me that I did not need to introduce myself, because he and I had spoken.  A few years earlier, he had called me to get help with his career.  At the time, he was working for a small regional company.  I told him that I would not be able to help him, because I specialized in recruiting sales people who worked for large consumer products companies.   He said that I had mentioned Procter & Gamble specifically.  Continuing to work for the regional company, he got an MBA and then applied at Procter & Gamble, where his career progressed rapidly.

    Remember that you are not alone nor unique.   Many people find that they need to consider transitioning to a new industry.   You are not alone in your trials.  If you concentrate on building your network and your skills, you do not have to work alone in your efforts.

3 Short, Powerful Meeting Practices

3 Short, Powerful Meeting Practices

There are some simple business practices that will make your business meetings more comfortable and more productive.

Think of your surroundings. Save your elevator pitch for nearly any place but the elevator.  People are confined and often feel awkward in elevators.  Also, there is a risk that someone could walk in on your pitch.  You never want to discuss your client’s business in front of strangers.

Wait until you step out of the elevator and start your presentation with a question that will focus attention on your pitch.

Carry a pen and paper to every business meeting.  Nearly everyone takes notes on a laptop or cell phone.  This skill is effective for safely and conveniently saving your notes.  The skill is also efficient.  However, when you get an idea during a meeting and want to press a point that is not included in a prepared presentation, passing your electronic device around at a meeting or across a table at a business lunch is probably not in your best interest.

Learn the art of the pen and paper presentation.  Sometimes abandoning your prepared presentation may be more effective than sticking to it.  A simple note on a piece of paper may be very powerful  I know doctors who explain complicated conditions by turning over pages of lab results and jotting a few notes for patients to see what the results mean.

In my own career, I have saved countless sales for advertising support and product purchases by using the same method of writing a few facts and figures down in front of the buyer to help the person understand what I was saying.

The Types of Recruiters and Agencies

The Types of Recruiters and Agencies

There are four types of staffing agencies.

  1. Temporary Agencies specialize in referring people for positions that are temporary or part-time.
  2. Placement firms specialize in placing people in hourly positions.  These firms may charge you a fee for their services.
  3. Contingency firms get paid by the employer upon filling a position and typically place people in management and middle management positions.
  4. Retained search firms specialize in filling positions at the executive level and are paid for a scheduled period of service plus an override based on the income of the position filled, and receive reimbursement for their expenses.

Recruiters usually specialize.

Individual recruiters and, in most cases, recruiting firms specialize in a particular industry such as healthcare, consumer products, technology.
Also, recruiters and firms may further specialize in the type of jobs they fill.  For example, they may only staff for jobs for nurses, accountants, engineers, sales managers, marketing managers, and so forth.

Recruiters specialize, because by specializing they are able to build a network of hiring companies that recruit applicants with similar profiles.  Quite often, recruiters have worked in similar positions and industries in which they recruit.  Because recruiters specialize, they can contribute added industry information to help an applicant prepare for a job and plan a career path.

What do the different titles for recruiters mean?

People refer to recruiters with a lot of different names:  employment agent, headhunter, corporate recruiter, executive recruiter, career or recruiting consultant, and other titles.   There is little difference among recruiters in their basic functions.  They typically spend most of their day contacting companies to get job listings, interviewing applicants, scheduling interviews, checking references, and sourcing applicants.

Should You Work with a Recruiter?

Should You Work with a Recruiter?  Whether or not you should work with a recruiter depends upon your personal comfort in working with other people.

  • Resume guidance
  • Interview preparation
  • Company information
  • Access to hiring companies
  • Industry knowledge
  • Income information and guidance

When working with a recruiter, you should set up an understanding about how the recruiter manages your information.  Depending on your need for getting a job relative to your need to keep your information confidential, you and the recruiter can set up guidelines on whether you need to approve of each place the recruiter sends your resume.

I recommend that you be selective in the number of recruiters you use.  If you place your resume with several recruiters who are competitors, you will not be expanding your opportunities, but will discourage recruiters from wanting to help you.  Never send an email with a “Send to” list that displays the name of more than one recruiter.  You will appear thoughtless, desperate, and will probably discourage the recruiters on the list from trying to help you at all.

The type of firm you need to contact depends on a two factors:  the type of position you are seeking and the firm’s client base relative to your experience.

Most recruiting firms have websites.  You should be able to determine from the information on the website whether the firm is right for you.  In addition, you may know people who have worked with recruiters and who can recommend recruiters and firms you might want to use.

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