Jay Wren – Page 68 – Be in the Top 1% in Mindset – Leadership

How To Negotiate A Job Offer

How To Negotiate A Job Offer: An Outline for Getting What You are Worth.
How To Negotiate Awesome Job Offers

Employers are more open to negotiating a job offer when they can see that there is a real shortfall between what they have offered you and what you have in your current job.

The simple way to approach the matter is to make a straightforward presentation of the facts involved.

Employers do not want to go back and forth over negotiations. Before going to the hiring company with counter offers, you need to make sure that you understand the offer and that you understand how it compares with what you want. List the offer items in a column. Then create a second column to list the details of your current or desired offer. Create a third column to list the details of the job offer. Create a fourth column of the things you would like to change.

Items	Current Job	New Job	Desired Change
Vacation
Job title
Start date
Salary
Bonus
Unpaid bonuses at your current employer
Reimbursement for business expenses
Benefits: deductibles, costs, coverage, start of coverage
Cost of commute
Retirement plan
Profit sharing
Stock options or grants
Other Items

Now that you have everything on paper so that you can understand how the offer compares with what you want, simply create a list of things that you want changed and present your list to the hiring company.

Ask yourself whether you will accept the offer if the hiring company changes the offer to fit your needs. If the answer is that you will accept the offer, present your list to the hiring company and state that you will enthusiastically accept their offer if they can adjust the offer.

“The World’s Noblest Headhunter”

How to Handle The Interview Question What Is Your Greatest Weakness?

What Is Your Greatest Weakness?

I made the mistake of answering this question honestly during an interview for a promotion. I did get the promotion. However, my new supervisor had an annoying habit of reminding me of my answer to that question during our work together.

Being able to answer this question is part of standard interview preparation. What should I have answered when he asked me about my greatest weakness? Here are some options that would have helped me.

1. Know the requirements of the job well enough that you do not say anything that would disqualify your for the job.

2. Respect the need of the interviewer to ask questions that show whether you are qualified for the job.

3. Avoid repeating the question in your answer. For example, the interview says, “What is your greatest weakness?” Do not start your answer with, “My greatest weakness is…” You want to focus on positive things.

4. Prepare your answer based on something that is true about you. False statements are costly eventually.

5. Show how you have made adjustments so that your weakness has made your more effective.

Here are some examples that are actually true of me.

I dread being late so much that I would rather lose a little time by being early than experience anxiety over being late. I find that I can easily use the time. I simply take some things to work on while I wait nearby to enter for my appointment.
I read guidelines and prefer to use them to avoid conflict. Other people focus on doing what makes sense at the time. I have learned that sometimes it is better to go with the flow of the team than to question everything everyone says or does. Guidelines are note rules or laws. Creative people often offer solutions outside the guidelines. When people want to know what the guidelines say, they do turn to me for advice.

Good luck with your interviews. You will do a great job.

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.

The Side Hustle: Finding New Ways to Make Money

With the Internet expansion and coincidental high unemployment starting with the 2008 recession, companies began to spring up to connect personal assets into ways of making money.

The “sharing economy” or “gig economy” exploded as a major economic force, powered by the proliferation of digital platforms that connect people who need services with freelance workers who can provide them on demand for everything from rideshare and home rentals to delivery services. Companies like Uber and Airbnb are considered the quintessential examples of this phenomenon.

Finding Opportunities for Income in the Sharing Economy

The internet drives the gig economy. Knowing how to use the Internet to find opportunities is critical to your success. Knowing keyword for the sharing economy will help you locate opportunities on the Internet. Here are some of the categories of gigs and asset sharing:

• Vehicle or equipment renting
• Home sharing for vacation accommodations
• Ridesharing alternatives to taxis and busses
• Delivery services from store to consumers
• Ad-supported video sharing
• Sharing Economy
• Peer-to-Peer Redistribution Markets
• Social Commerce
• Crowd Funding
• Collaborative Consumption

Knowing the Risks of the Gig Economy

The gig economy, with its promise of flexibility and freedom, has undeniably reshaped the modern workplace. But beneath the allure of independent contracting and flexible schedules lie some significant drawbacks.

Income Instability:
• Fluctuating Earnings: Gig work often involves unpredictable income streams. Earnings can vary wildly from week to week, making it difficult to budget and plan for the future.
• Lack of Benefits: Gig workers typically lack access to employee benefits such as health insurance, paid leave, and retirement plans.

Job Insecurity:

• Platform Dependence: Gig workers are often at the mercy of the platforms they work for. Algorithms can change, demand can fluctuate, and platforms can deactivate accounts with little warning.
• Competition: The competitive nature of the gig economy can make it difficult to find consistent work and maintain a stable income.

Be Extraordinary: Be a Good Neighbor.

I have had some excellent people work for me over the years. They were people I would like to have as neighbors around my home. They did things to help, often without my asking.

They were people I could trust. One of these instances of trust resulted from my needing to look into the desk of an employee when that person was gone for the day. What I saw is that the person had written themselves a note, “I owe Jay 2 stamps.”

I would have given the person the two stamps. The dollar value was not the issue. The integrity, the good neighbor mentality of this worker, was what I had a chance to observe that day.

Around my home, I have neighbors I would trust in my home in my absence. They are people who have had the keys to my home when my family and I traveled.

I have a neighbor who fertilizes my lawn. I am not sure why. He does a good job. Sometimes he might mention that he just fertilized my lawn, but rarely and he only does so if he and I are outside talking for a while.

For over 20 years, I would come home from work on Tuesday evening and would find my garbage cans moved from the street where they had been for City trash collection and would be sitting at the gate to my backyard.
Between my driveway and the front yard of one of my neighbors I planted a mow strip of grass. My neighbor has a rock bed. The water from my watering my mow strip sprays over into my neighbor’s rock bed and the water makes the weeds grow. So I have always made it a point to try to get to the weeds and pull them out before he could get to them. On another occasion, I pruned this neighbor’s pear tree and mended about twenty feet of fence along our property line.

However, it was twenty years before I realized that the neighbor with the rock bed had been putting my trash cans up at the top of the driveway. He still does this little favor for me.

Another neighbor shares the property line on the opposite side of the rock bed and mow strip. I have found that he and I make a great team picking pears. He has a ten-foot ladder and I have an extension pruner. Together or separately we get to the pear tree and pick the pears and then share what we pull down.

So I am lucky. In different ways my neighbors and I share little projects beyond our property lines. The experience is extraordinary. I feel as though I am part of something, a piece that makes a puzzle whole. I like being a good neighbor, and I like having good neighbors.

6 Ways to Create Brand Power in Your Online Profile

A basic online profile is a person’s picture, name, skills, employment history, education, training, and accomplishments.

Managed correctly, your profile can become the platform for your professional brand and advertising campaign. Here are six ways to build your brand:

From your profile, create advertising on a business page.
Sell products or promote your company’s business by posting links on your business page and your profile.
Create a group. A group attracts members who create content that in turn attracts other people to become aware of your profile or your company profile.
Build relationships by helping people through connections, recommendations, or introductions.
Establish an image as a person or a company that helps people through your comments in membership groups.
Publish a newsletter through updates to your profile, your business page, and your membership group.

For search engines, content is king. Whenever you post anything on a membership site, you are creating content. As you create content, your name or your company name appears more often in search engine results, sometimes even when you are not signed into a membership site.

Some companies divert money from advertising to the cost of creating content on social media. With a little time everyday on a regular basis, you can do the same thing without spending a dime.

Connecting The Dots: Asking Questions, Listening, And Success

The opening question in retail is “How may I help you?”

The shopper says, “I would like to try on a pair of shoes.”

“Do you have a particular style in mind?’

“Yes, I would like to try this brand of walking shoes?”

“What size would you like to try?”

“Size 8.”

The clerk brings out four pairs.

You try them on and select a pair.

The clerk asks, “May I show you some other shoes?”

“No.”

“Would you like to try some inserts or socks with those shoes. Our socks are on sale today.”

“I am not interested in the inserts, but I will take four pairs of the socks that are on sale.”

The clerk asks you if you would like to put your payment on the store credit card.

You say, “I don’t have one.”

The clerk asks, “May I sign you up today? You save 20% on all your purchases.”

You went to the store to buy a pair of shoes and feel as though you just got the bargains of your life. You bought the shoes. You spent an extra $12.00 on the socks, but you got a great price for the socks. You saved an extra 20% on all your purchases.

By training their clerks to ask you some simple, polite questions, the store accomplished four things on a store visit for which you had come in for only one item.

The store sold you a pair of shoes.
The store increased the amount you spent during your visit.
When you signed up for the credit card, the store collected marketing data on you for its own business and perhaps collected facts sell to its suppliers. Although you will remain an anonymous shopper, you become a shopper who fits into a demographic and economic pattern.
The store sold you on establishing a line of credit for which they make more money in interest charges than on the money the store makes in selling you goods.

Great managers use the same process for finding solutions. These managers ask questions and learn from their employees. At the beginning of a meeting, a manager might ask the team members, “how might we cut our costs.”

The team members begin to answer the question.

Perhaps on a flip chart or overhead projector, the manager or an assistant begins to record answers.

As the meeting proceeds, enough information goes on the list of ideas to start a process.

The manager says, “Today, we have made a good start. I will send you an email with a list of the things that we discussed today. When you receive the email, begin to prepare for the meeting tomorrow by writing your answers to these questions.

Which of these ideas is practical for what we do as a company?
On what schedule can we carry out each of these ideas?
What are the risks to our business if we carry out these changes?
What are the gains to our business if we carry out these changes?”

So begins the process through which great managers direct teams. The same process would work for any department: selling, marketing, product design, finance, human resources, and so on across a company and so on throughout all of its functions. The process is simply a series of questions that lead to solutions.

Good questions lead to listening and learning, which lead to success.

Books for Your Career

Wonderful things happen when I read books. I learn things that I would not know from surfing the Internet. There are things in books that I do not know that I do not know.

I have a library card and I use it. There is a library within walking distance. It is a library branch and more often than not does not have the books that I want to read. I always have a couple of books on order from other branches.

I am always looking for ideas for books to read. I pick up these ideas from discussion groups, friends, and best-selling lists.

Some of the fun and informative books I have recently read include

Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell
The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America, John D. Gartner
The Feeling Good Handbook, David D. Burns
Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson
The Art of Client Service: 58 Things Every Advertising & Marketing Professional Should Know, , Robert Solomon

Keeping Track Of Your Things At Work

Keeping Track Of Your Things At Work: You are sitting at your desk. You notice that you need to charge your cell phone. When you look in your case, you do not find the charger. As you think over your day and the days before, you can recall the last times that you used the charger, but can not find it in any of those places. Some things just disappear.

In the Navy, I found myself signing documents every day. I was the education officer for a ship with over five thousand officers and crew. I signed entries for thousand of service records. During bridge watches, I made log entries. When I became a public affairs officer, I used a pen to write daily press releases on a legal pad. A technician would then enter the articles into a computer. I wrote everyday.

I used the same Skilcraft® retractable ballpoint pens that the military uses in all its branches of services today. These pens are everywhere in the military. I tried to make it a habit of carrying one of these pens everywhere I went.

Since everyone used the same pen, there was a tendency for people to put the pen back in their own shirt pocket whether it was his or her pen. Losing a pen could be moderately inconvenient.

One day a man came to the Dutch door of my office to have me sign a service record. I borrowed his pen and unconsciously put it back into my pocket. He asked me if he could have his pen back. He pointed out that he had put a piece of tape around it. He said that he had gotten tired of losing pens and having to pick up more from the supply department. Therefore, he put a simple piece of tape on the pen to help him make sure that he got his pen when someone borrowed it.In offices, most people are honest. Few people intend to steal anything, especially inexpensive things. Yet scissors, pencils, pens, legal pads, and other inexpensive things have a way of disappearing. Putting a piece of tape or my initials on things can help me avoid losing things.

Where I work, we have more than one phone line. The main line runs to a separate portable extension phones. It is easy for the phones to end up in another office. I have unique settings on my phone. I want to make sure I get it back. I put a small white spot on the back of the extension phone for my office.

Some things that cost a little more can easily disappear in business meetings. Smartphone adapters, laptop adapters, ear buds, USB cords, and other small peripherals often have no unique qualities. When people go into a business meeting, some people put things on the table as the meeting starts. A simple piece of tape can easily help you spot which items are yours.

As a convenience note, I find that black cases and black items can make sorting things a bit tricky when I am in a hurry. Apple makes everything white. The color is a convenience in a black case. However, many computer adapters and other items are black. Simply putting initials on a white piece of paper and taping the piece of paper on black items saves time, especially when in a hurry or tired. The practice is also helpful to keep track of my small computer peripherals in a conference room.

Powerful People Who Regularly Take Walks

Legend has it that Aristotle walked around the Lyceum as he lectured to his students. Aristotle is often the model for people who discuss walking meetings.

The idea of a walking meeting has a lot of appeal. Many people find the flowing environment, the exercise, and the side-by-side pairing stimulating.

No one should find it a surprise that walking during meetings is popular in the Silicon Valley around San Francisco Bay. The weather is comfortable most of the year. The views are spectacular. In many places, there are safe pathways for walking.

In the book “Steve Jobs,” Walter Isaacson writes about his conversations with Steve Jobs. “Some were…done during long walks.” Isaacson also writes about the many business deals that Steve Jobs conducted while walking.

Nilofer Merchant, a former Apple employee and self-described “author, speaker, based in Silicon Valley,” discusses how she has woven walking into her business life in a presentation on Talk.com.

To quote from one of her articles on HuffingtonPost.com and HBR.org, “Sitting is the smoking of our time.” During her “Ted Talk,” Merchant said that she walks “20 to 30 miles per week.”

How much walking is a good thing? In the 1960’s, a Japanese pedometer company ran an advertising campaign promoting walking 10,000 steps a day.

How far are 10,000 steps? The length of an average stride is 2.5 feet.

10,000 steps x 2.5′ per step= 25,000 feet
25,000 feet / 5280 feet per mile = 4.735 miles.

At 12-15 minutes per mile, a person will spend close to an hour or more in taking 10,000 steps. As people increase their hours of walking, they increase the risk of injury, put more wear and tear on their legs and hips, and increase the risk of sun and wind damage to their eyes and skin.

All steps count. To take 10,000 steps a day, standing at a desk and walking in place, taking walking breaks in indoor parking lots, and walking up and down hallways and stairways all count. Walking in the office is often safer than walking on the street.

Walking is hardly a new experience for executives. Although these people may have walked alone to avoid political associations, President Thomas Jefferson walked to and from his inaugural. There are many pictures of President Harry Truman taking morning walks in Washington, DC. He wore glasses, a hat, and a suit. He protected himself fairly well from the elements. To quote Truman, “Take a two-mile walk every morning before breakfast.” Nelson Mandela walked daily before going to his office.