Category: Adapt, Innovate, Win

Picking A Career

In picking a career, start with an understanding of what you want to do and what you need to do to have that type of career.

First, answer these questions.

    1. How well do you relate to other people.  If you enjoy helping people, jobs in service industries, health care, hospitality, and other jobs requiring people skills will interest you.  If you have no interest in human relations, you may prefer performance jobs: writing, computer programming, sales, or other jobs where the focus is on a task more than interaction with other people.
    2. Are you a leader, team member, teacher, or worker?  Leaders need opportunities with companies that use more people.  Team members work well in companies with a focus on planning or innovation.  Teachers find jobs in education or training.  Workers should focus on jobs where the company expects them to do their job but does not need that they accept responsibility in management.
    3. What are your interests?  Answering this question will help you pick a trade or industry.
    4. How much do you like risks? If you need security, you may want to work in large institutions or government.  If you love risks, self-employment or start-up companies will excite you.
    5. Where do you want to live?  Some jobs exist in abundance in some places.  Other jobs only exist in specific locations.  If you want to sell surfboards, you should consider living near beaches.
    6. How important is income?  Your focus on income can affect the risks, amount of education or training, and the levels of responsibility you will accept.

Second, answer these questions.

  1. What skills do you need?  When you are planning your career, consider what skills you will need to move through the stages of your career.  You can build your skills through volunteer, hobbies, training, and at your workplace.
  2. What education do you need?  Understanding the education can save you a great deal of time and money.  For example, if you need specific classes to get a teaching credential, you can include those classes in your curriculum and save returning to complete those courses after you graduate.
  3. What experience do you need?  Similar to planning your career based on the skills that you will need, you can get specific experience through your work and education as well as hobbies and volunteering.
  4. Where do you need to live?  Often people have family or health needs that limit their choices for where they can live.

6 Things to Know Before Accepting a Job Offer

6 Things to Know Before Accepting a Job Offer

When a company makes you a job offer, you have done a lot of hard work and now you are in control of the process.   You have the power to accept or decline the offer. You are also in a very important part of the process. This is the time for you to make certain that the job is as nearly right for you as you can find.
Here are some job offer questions as to help you evaluate the offer.

1. Have you met your supervisor?  When I went to work at Procter & Gamble, I did not meet my supervisor until the day I started to work.  I was in a division that Procter & Gamble had created to expand the field sales organization in the West.  Procter & Gamble conducted the interviews in an office of a recruiting firm in San Francisco.  The people who interviewed me were charismatic, outgoing, and personable sales people.   I had expected someone who was a fire-in-the-belly mentor who would raise my performance to new levels and teach me how to move ahead in one of the finest companies in the world.

However, on the first day at work, I met my supervisor, and he was anything but what I had expected.  He had been in the same first-line management job for fifteen years.  He was unenthusiastic about what he did.  He emphasized getting the job done as quickly as possible and heading home.  He was a good person, an excellent father and husband.  He was just different from what I had expected based on the people I had met during my interviews.

2. Is there anything in the job description you do not understand?  I have learned from working on recruiting assignments that job descriptions can create confusion.  Here are some things you might want to clarify before you take a job.

  • If the job involves travel, where will need to go and how often?
  • What are the reporting relationships in the new company?  If the job title includes a word such as “manager,” what does that mean?  Will you manage a budget or perhaps manager an overwhelming number of direct reporting relationships?
  • What is the job?  If you think that you are joining an innovation team and you find that you are joining a planning team, you will need to do a lot more analysis that creative thinking.
  • What is the promotion opportunity or expectation?  If you want promotions and there is little opportunity, you are facing frustration.  If the company expects you to take promotions and you want to settle into a career position, you could find that you face pressure to leave for people who can keep the promotion pipeline fluid.

I saw one instance at Polaroid where the company hired a person who quit when he found out he had to fly to a sales meeting in the Bahamas.  The man was afraid to get on an airplane.

3. Is the workplace right for you?

  • How long is the commute?
  • What type area surrounds the office?
  • Does the job allow you to work at home or require that you commute daily?
  • Do you have affordable transportation?

4. Do you have any special conditions that you want to set up?  Perhaps you sunk a few thousand dollars into a family vacation that will start six months into your new job.  If you cannot get your money back or if this vacation has special importance to your family, the time to raise the subject is before you accept the offer.  I married my wonderful wife four months after I started to work for Procter & Gamble.  The management team at Procter & Gamble fully supported my taking time for my wedding honeymoon.  I discussed the matter with them before I accepted the job.

5. Do you understand the benefits? There are a few things for you to consider about benefits before you accept a job offer.

  • When do the benefits start?  This information is critical to transitioning your healthcare coverage from your current coverage to the coverage at your new job.
  • What are the out-of-pocket costs for the benefits?  There are differences from one company to the next.  I placed people with a company that had terrific coverage for people who lived in California, the home state of the company.  However, the costs to people who lived outside of California were several thousand dollars a year.
  • What benefits are you giving up in the transition?  If you have prescription, major medical, primary care coverage, dental, and optical coverage at your current company, and the new company does not cover some of these things, based on your health, you might find a big gap between what you are getting and what the new company will give you.
  • What are the deductibles in the plans at your new company?  Insurance companies offer lower rates for higher deductibles.  You not need in any surprises in these potential gaps.

6. How often will the new company pay you?  If the new company pays you twice a month, you get 24 checks a year.  If the new company pays you every two weeks, you get 26 checks a year.  Companies often state income in the amount that the company will pay an employee per paycheck.

19 Top Job Interview Questions

19 Top Job Interview Questions

You can never know what questions an interviewer will ask you. However, here are some of the more popular questions.

  1. Why are you leaving your current job?
  2. What is your greatest achievement?
  3. Who was the best supervisor you have ever had?
  4. Who was the worst supervisor you ever had.
  5. What makes you the best person for the job?
  6. What is your greatest strength?
  7. What is your greatest weakness?
  8. What are your long-term goals?
  9. What do you plan to do the first 90 days on the job?
  10. What do you do to grow professionally?
  11. What qualities to you seek in building a team?
  12. What are your career passions?
  13. What did you want to become when you were a kid?
  14. What is your typical day?
  15. What is your greatest failure and what did it teach you?
  16. Have you ever told a lie?
  17. Whom do you most admire?
  18. What is the most difficult problem you ever had to handle and what did you do handle to the problem?
  19. Where did your parents work?

Add to these questions some other questions to ask yourself some questions before you go to the interview.
The first questions are the things you will do for the hiring company.

  1. What five things you will do for the company the first 30 days on the job?
  2. What five things you will do for the company the first 60 days on the job?
  3. What five things you will do for the company the first 90 days on the job?

The next questions are how your professional goals will do for the company.

  1. What are your short-term professional goals that match the short-term company goals?
  2. What are your long-term professional goals that match the long-term company goals?
  3. What goals do you have that can create innovation at the hiring company?
  4. What professional development goals do you have that will make you more effective for the company over time?

The next questions are what you want to work for this company.

  1. What do you think of the company’s products?
  2. What do you think of the job place?
  3. What do you think of the company’s mission statement?
  4. What do you think of the company’s business sector?

Writing out these questions and writing out your answers will help you be ready to show the hiring manager how you are the best person for the job.

8 Ways to Raise the Level of Your Job Performance and Your Leadership

Seek advice before acting on important decisions.  It is so easy for me to go into difficult situations and make large decisions with the belief that I already have all the answers.  It is equally easy for me to overlook things that I should have considered before acting.  I have better results when I get ideas and solutions from other people.  I better understand my circumstances by discussing them with someone else.

Get greatest results from each activity and from each day.  The National Football League wide receiver Jerry Rice holds 23 NFL records.  He caught long passes.  What made him greater than other wide receivers is the distance he gained after he caught the pass.  Business professionals can do a better job for their company by identifying those small details that turn mediocre projects into hugely successful products.  These people are the innovators.  They do the same tasks every else does and make greater results than anyone else.   These people make the same products everyone else makes and make those products far better than anyone else.  These people build companies like Google, Apple, Procter & Gamble, Toyota, and Samsung.

Take breaks during the day and stop working when the day is over.  Again Jerry Rice knew when to step out-of-bounds or go to the ground to avoid a violent tackle.  He knew when he had gotten the most possible yards out of a play and avoided pushing a play that would only risk dangerous tackles and possible injuries.   Smart workers take breaks during the day.  Smart workers leave work at the end of the workday.  Continuing to work longer and longer hours can lead to inefficiency and health problems.

If you finish your work before the end of the day, do at least one more task before leaving work.  It is easy to sit around or leave early.  By starting and completing one more task on these days, you will find that your production can rise dramatically.  If you add and complete one extra task per week, you will complete fifty more tasks over the course of the year.  Your company will benefit.  Your value to your company will grow.

Regularly read articles and books about your job and your goals.  Nearly every job continues to evolve.  Many jobs disappear entirely. New information and tools become available to make job performance easier and make you more marketable.  Take advantage of this information to grow in professional value and for personal enrichment.

See obstacles as opportunities to create personal value.  Everyone encounters obstacles.  It is very easy to give up or procrastinate instead of acting on these obstacles.  Often obstacles one person experiences are the same obstacles other people experience.  By acting on the challenges you face, you can develop effective, often new ways of dealing with these obstacles.   As you overcome obstacles in your own life, look for ways to help other people use your solutions to overcome their own obstacles.  People have founded companies based on providing products and services to overcome common obstacles.   If you can sell the solutions you have developed in overcoming obstacles, you have a business.

Continue to build your network of friends and mentors.   One of the more interesting qualities of my son is that he has multiple circles of friends.  The people in each of these circles are people he has met at different times and in different settings.  He has friends from high school classes.  He has friends from his sports activities.  He has friends from college.  Since graduating from college, he has met these people from different circles to pick up new hobbies and to travel.  He has traveled to Sweden, Peru, and Thailand to meet with friends he has met over the years.  You may also find that having new circles of friends can help you develop new and valuable career ideas and solutions.

Continue to set goals.  Goal setting can have a subconscious power to drive your actions even when you are not working directly from a daily plan.  Additionally, having goals can give you a sense of purpose and a feeling of a richer quality of life.  Rather than focusing on the ruts of your life, you can focus on your goals and how to move toward them.

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!”

Resumes for Managers

Here is a simple resume format.

Your name
Street address, City, State Zip
Home phone, Cell phone
Email address

OBJECTIVE AND SUMMARY
Stating an objective or a giving a summary at the beginning of the resume is common practice.  Stating an objective or providing a summary is optional.

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY 

(Most recent job first)
Company Name; company Location, From –to
Most recent title, Location, From – to

Use bullet format.
•        List things you have accomplished.  Do not waste space on your just giving a job description.  List things that showed that you made a difference in the positions you held.
•        Use facts—for example, exceeded assigned sales goal by 30%, reduced costs, promoted people, saved time, increased productivity, etc.
•        Employers and recruiters search their databases for specific words, so list successes with specific industry words or functions.  Include the real name of your product categories, product names, sales accounts, functions (e.g., Profit & Loss, Market Research or Software Names, New Product Development, Market Insights, Innovation), etc.

Next List Previous Titles at this company and again list successes and accomplishments in bullet format.

Then include Previous Companies going back in time from most recent.

EDUCATION
Normally, education goes at the bottom of the resume.  People who have recently received an educational degree or credential that alters their employability might consider putting education at the top of the resume.

Other items that might go at the bottom of the resume are awards, extra skills, volunteer work, or perhaps some relevant college employment.

Cutting Weak Wording From Your Resume

The people who invite you to an interview want to know what you have done and what happened as the result of what you have done. They are looking for measurable results.

Your competitors as job seekers are writing resumes to focus on career accomplishments and career keywords.

These words waste space and weaken your resume.
Experienced
Excellent
Driven
Motivated
Seasoned
Inspirational
Team player
Energetic
Results-oriented
Expert
Outstanding
Effective
Innovative
Strong
Exceptional
Love (i.e., Love to…)

=”https://www.jaywren.com/resume-ideas/”>Resumes
=”https://www.jaywren.com/is-your-resume-a-success-story/”>Is Your Resume a Success Story?
=”https://www.jaywren.com/core-responsibilities-job-spec-or-resume/”>Is a List of Core Responsibilities a Resume?

Resumes Employers Will Want to Read

Resumes Employers Will Want to Read: Working through stacks of resumes, hiring managers and recruiters spend just seconds on deciding whether to save you resume or delete it.  Job seekers must know how to write resumes employers will want to read.

I based the following information on feedback I have received from hiring managers, staffing managers, and other recruiters.  I have also discussed resumes with hundreds of applicants.  These are suggestions only, but the layout is a working format.

A resume is a job application.  You list the jobs you have had, where you performed those jobs, and when you had those jobs.

If you replace the information below with your information, you will have written a resume.

Sample Resume

CONTACT INFORMATION

Your name
Street address City, State Zip
Phone
Email address

OBJECTIVE AND SUMMARY

Stating an objective or a giving a summary at the beginning of the resume is common practice. However, stating an objective or providing a summary is optional.

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY

There is no sentence structure in a resume. The wording in a resume is simply a series of statements of actions and accomplishments.

For example, this is a sentence: I doubled the company’s sales in 6 months.

This is resume wording: Doubled company’s sales in 6 months.

The history in a resume is just a list that includes employment periods, performance, skills, responsibilities, accomplishments, and education.

(Most recent job first)

Company Name, company Location,   From -To

Most recent title, location,  From – To

Use bullet format.

•        List things you have accomplished. Do not waste space on your just giving a job description. List things that showed that you made a difference in the positions you held.

•        Use facts—for example, exceeded assigned sales goal by 30%, reduced costs, promoted people, saved time, increased productivity, etc.

•        Employers and recruiters search their databases for specific words, so list successes with specific industry words or functions. Include the actual name of your product categories, product names, sales accounts, functions (e.g., Profit & Loss, Market Research or Software Names, New Product Development, Market Insights, Innovation), etc.

Next list previous titles at this company and again list successes and accomplishments in bullet format.

Then include Previous Companies going back in time from most recent.

EDUCATION

Normally, education goes at the bottom of the resume. People who have recently received an educational degree or credential that alters their employability might consider putting education at the top of the resume.

Other items that might go at the bottom of the resume are awards, extra skills, volunteer work or perhaps some relevant college employment.

HOW TO SHORTEN YOUR RESUME FOR READABILITY

Hiring managers only spend seconds looking at each resume. They are going through stacks of resumes, often in documents that have to be opened one at a time.

Avoiding the following items might make the difference as to whether your resume even gets read.

  • Objective Summary Titles
  • Hobbies References
  • References available on request
  • Compensation
  • Long paragraph formats
  • Long-winded discussions of core responsibilities
  • Too many details on jobs with well-known functions
  • Details on jobs that date back in time
  • Paragraph formatting
  • Third person reference
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