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Promoting Yourself

Several months ago I posted a blog titled, The STARS and Secrets to a Successful Interview. The content applied to students interviewing for college admissions or individuals interviewing for positions in the workforce.  This month, as I write about Leadership, the concept of interviewing technique once again is quite applicable and becoming even more important in a highly competitive admissions or job market.

So, as you prepare for an interview and reflect on your experiences and the things you want to promote about yourself follow through with secrets #3 and 4 and promote your leadership capabilities with confidence.

Secret #3 – STARS – Since past behavior may be a predictor of future performance, many organizations are turning to questions that require the interviewee to provide specific examples of situations that are indicators of how they may perform in the new environment.  That’s where the STAR comes in.   In answering a question that asks you to give an example, follow this formula:

     Situation – Identify the situation you are going to reference

Time frame – Identify the time frame that the situation required from start to finish

Action – State the actions that you took to resolve the situation

Results – State the results as they relate to your actions

Secret #4 – Do Your Own Interview – Make sure you have done your homework before the interview.  Know as much about the organization as you possibly can and be prepared with your own questions.  Your interview is not just about what you can do for the organization, but also how good the organization is for you.  Questions that you ask should not have answers readily available on the website or literature about the organization.  They should be specific to the position, supporting positions and opportunities for growth.  Demonstrate your interest and your desire to be a leader!

 

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Creating Leadership Opportunities

All too often people wait to be nominated or appointed to leadership positions for clubs, organizations, committees or teams.  But more and more, universities and employers are looking at leadership as a defining characteristic worthy of selecting one candidate over the other.  Even the interview process has evolved to the point of employers or admissions advisers questioning the specific examples of leadership you have referenced on a resume’ or application.  They want to know the circumstances that created a situation of need, what action you took, and the outcome as a result of your leadership.  So padding a resume’ or application with frivolous titles is not an effective option!

Creating leadership opportunities means stepping up to the plate and offering your expertise, time or desire to lead the group.  It also means listening to others, having your eyes open for opportunities and thinking about the current circumstances and what possibilities exist to make a difference.  Leaders make a difference because they create something bigger than themselves.

When you reflect on your resume’, can you demonstrate leadership?  If not, think about what you have to offer your team, club, organization or committee and how you can step up to the plate and lead them in a direction that will make a difference.  Think about needs in your community or organization, policies or procedures that need to be updated or mentoring programs that could be developed.  Leaders are not confined to positions of corporate authority or heads of nations.  Leaders are all around us and so are the needs that can provide opportunities.  What action will you take?

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Real Leadership on a Resume’

As August begins, the lazy days of summer are drawing to an end and thoughts of school and school applications begin to take center stage.  For college bound students there are applications to complete and essays to write.  For freshmen, sophomores and juniors there are activities to consider, sports to be played and if athletic opportunities are on your horizon in college, then you have a profile to develop.  (Athletes should check out www.collegesportstrack.com for profile and recruiting assistance)  So, how does leadership fit in to your application, resume’ or profile?

As competition for college opportunities increases, universities continue to fine tune their processes for admissions.  Scores on the SAT and ACT remain the highest ranking determining factor, but other key ingredients are steadily taking their place in line as important factors and in fact, tie-breaking factors when the choice gets narrowed and especially if scholarship dollars are on the line.  When student A is compared to student B and both have equal test scores and similar GPA’s, what makes the difference?  Leadership is a key ingredient.

Identifying leadership experiences on your application, profile or resume’ can set you aside and above other candidates, but it must be legitimate.  Titles alone with no substance will not help you and in fact can provide cause for concern with admissions officers.  Remember, you may allude to your experience briefly on paper, but in an interview can you substantiate your leadership opportunity?  Was it meaningful?  What did you accomplish?  Is there a legacy because of your actions?  Creating false impressions on your application, profile or resume’ can backfire regardless of how well you score on a test or in the classroom.  Your character is on the line.  Every university has a code of ethics to deal with issues of plagiarism or other infractions of what they deem to be inappropriate academic action.  So before you even get through the door, they check you out,  take note of what you say you have done, and then verify the reality of what you accomplished.

Leadership experiences are an outstanding asset to promote who you are to universities and organizations.  Are you padding your resume’ and creating a false impression or conveying real leadership?

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Creating a “Best You” Resume’

Presenting the picture of you to a potential employer requires a careful, accurate and quantifiable selection of words that will pique their interest and provide connections to their need and purpose for hiring you.  Many times over the past several months I have referenced the importance of measuring natural ability. In so doing, it is possible to quantify characteristics which are valued by employers and most especially in today’s job market.

Just as there are jobs that no longer exist, the words once highly effective in resumes have also changed.  There was a great article on MSN Careers about writing an eye-catching resume’.  Click here to read the article.  Click here if you want to know more about measuring your natural abilities.

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Connecting Passions, Talents and Careers

“The biggest mistake people make in life is not making a living doing what they most enjoy.”  Malcolm S. Forbes 

 ”Find your passion, whatever it may be. Become it, and let it become you and you will find great things happen FOR you, TO you and BECAUSE of you.” Alan Armstrong

Both of these men have lived lives dedicated to their passions, using their talents and establishing careers that are recognized by millions.  Their success may be measured by some people by the money they have made or their impact on the world.  But most important is their own perception of their lives.  In sharing their quotes we get a glimpse of what living their passions has meant to them.

As I write this blog in July of 2011, the unemployment rate is sitting at 9.2 percent leaving millions of people without jobs, disconnected from careers and questioning their direction.  But that is not the only alarming figure.  In recent articles, figures are being reported that 60-75 percent of workers dislike what they do for a living.  I say, “Life is too short not to be happy in your life’s work.”  What are you doing to assess your talents, skills, passions and direction?

Do you remember the learning to count worksheets you did in kindergarten and first grade that instructed you to connect the dots from 1-10 and in so doing you created a picture of something?  Well, connecting the dots of passion, skill and ability can help you create a masterpiece in life.  Creating the best you is about connecting all of the dots.   Need help?  Click here to contact me.

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Shortchanging Ourselves

If you sat down and began identifying the dreams and goals you have had, what would you list?  How many have you achieved?  Now think about you today and what goals or dreams you have for your future?

In one of the presentations that I make for career directions, I address the importance of having, writing and achieving goals.  Edgar Mays said, “Failure is not, not reaching your goal, but in having no goal to reach.”  I find it interesting that statistically, the majority of the population does not write goals and yet research has proven that writing goals significantly increases our achievement rate.  Just look at the number of weight loss programs advertised on TV and what they offer.  They are centered on a goal, baseline data, a set of strategies and a monitoring plan.  Success ensues as long as the plan is realistic and maintenance and monitoring occur.  But all too often success is diminished because the plan is not maintained or monitored.  Goals must be realistic, updated and the rest of the plan accordingly.

Now transfer that same rationale to career direction or anything we do in life that we want to improve upon.  A friend, great golfer and talented Mind and Sports Performance Coach says it this way, “We can become afraid to raise the bar and set high expectations for ourselves so that we don’t have to feel the frustration and disappointment of what we mistakenly think of as failure.  We can also set unreasonably high standards that we don’t really believe to be true and sabotage our efforts by becoming very unkind toward ourselves.  Fear only exists because we don’t believe that we have the power inside of us to achieve absolutely anything that we want and desire through the power of the Mind.  If we knew beyond a doubt that we could direct our focus, imagination and intention to create anything we wanted, we would never be afraid again.” – Tim Kremer  www.myspiritofgolf.com

Creating the best you requires that you reflect on your own achievements, goals, talents, dreams and fears.  Creating the best you requires a commitment to writing a plan.  Have you shortchanged yourself by not having goals or giving in to fear of failure?   What’s stopping you today?

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Creating the Best You

George Bernard Shaw once said, “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”  I would never argue with Mr. Shaw, but I would certainly modify and apply his quote to the current college and career market and say this,

                 “College isn’t about finding yourself; it is about understanding yourself and creating your best life.”

That being said, there are two questions that follow:  Why isn’t college about finding yourself and how does one better understand them self and create a “best life”?

 Twenty years ago, students could go off to college with no specific career goal and spend four years finding themselves while acquiring a degree in the process.  But in the last twenty years, the cost of college has increased 163% and the average household income has increased only 23% according to College Board and the National Bureau of Labor Statistics.  It is no longer “affordable” to go off and “find” yourself at college.

Today, understanding yourself and creating your “best life” means investing in yourself.  Getting a college degree or attending a trade school are investments in yourself.  But those investments need to be directed.  Would you simply hand your savings over to an individual and say, “Do whatever you like”?  No!  You would give them a directive to be aggressive or conservative with your investment.  So in creating your best life, you need to have the tools and the plan just like a professional who invests your savings uses tools and has a plan to help you achieve your financial goals.

You can choose to continue on a path of uncertainty or you can choose to direct your path, invest in your future, and create your best life.  Creating that life doesn’t happen by accident or by default.  It happens because you make informed choices about how to spend your valuable time and resources.  That investment may include a career direction specialist, use of specific tools that measure natural abilities, interests and values, and guidance by a professional in creating a plan that helps to define and direct your life goals.

Creating the best you requires an investment.  What are you willing to invest in yourself or a loved one to be able to define and direct a career direction?  Contact me if you would like to know more, or make a comment below if you have had a great experience Creating the Best You!

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The Importance of Job Search When You Are Not Searching

Last week I wrote about trends that had occurred over the last 30 years in the career and job market.  I specifically identified the newest flash of social media opportunities.  My goal was not to encourage everyone into the social media marketplace, but to make a point of the changes in trends according to our culture and the world and that we must be forward thinking in our plans for future success.

Whether you are a college graduate, a high school student deciding on college, or have chosen a path of vocational training, it is important to look ahead and pay attention to job and career trends even when you are not looking for a job.  Click here to take a look at the lists in the 2011 Top Ten and the Worst Ten Jobs.  More important, pay attention to how the lists were developed.  Income alone is not a reason to select a career field.  Satisfaction with your career is comprised of other elements that include but are not limited to stress factors, time off, and professional development opportunities.

Just like Capital One asks, “What’s in your wallet,” are you asking yourself, “What’s in my future?”

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Social Media in the Job Market

At a time when information is driving the workforce, it is hard to imagine anyone not paying attention to the trends.  But we are creatures of habit and therefore our daily lives get set in routine and unless an effort is made to allocate time to educate ourselves or allow someone else to provide that resource, we plod along in an undefined direction and “life happens.”

I can remember being a classroom teacher and getting the first computer station.  That was thirty years ago.  Then along came the day when I got six computers and a curriculum for integrating the stations into my classroom schedule.  That was 1987, the computers were dependent on the mainframe with a set curriculum and the Internet was a “buzz word” we had just learned and had no idea of what was to come.  The trend was technology.

Fast forward to today, 2011, the “buzz word” is Social Media and a Google search of key words, “jobs in social media” indicates 163,000,000 results.  There is a trend in this age of information and it is important to pay attention.  Ten years ago we didn’t read articles or see job postings for social media marketing, social media headhunters, human resource management of social media, or social media litigation. While millions of jobs have been lost in the economic disaster of the last few years, the opportunities that are developing require that individuals be prepared and that thinking about careers cannot be the traditional thoughts that the general population has had over the last decade.  The evolution of the job market deserves our attention.  That which we can imagine today will be surpassed tomorrow.  Will you be prepared?  Want to know how?

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Career Trends and Forward Thinking

Back in January, I posted a blog, Paying Attention to the Trends.  I addressed the importance of paying attention to your career path and the occupational outlook in different sectors.  That outlook is based on how society and the culture of work has changed and will change over the next decade.  Did you follow the link within the blog to a great resource?

People like Peter Drucker were masters of understanding how organizations change, manage change and should prepare for change.  While most of the population could not have predicted or even anticipated the economic and employment changes we have seen in the last five years, we can learn from it and be smarter in our plans going forward.  That’s why we pay attention to the trends.

Ten years ago, in his book, Managing in the Next Society,Peter Drucker said, “A century ago, the overwhelming majority of people in developed countries worked with their hands: on farms, in domestic service, in small craft shops, and (at that time still a minority) in factories.  Fifty years later, the proportion of manual workers in the American labor force had dropped to around half, but factory workers had become the largest single section of the workforce, making up 35 percent of the total.  Now, another fifty years later, fewer than a quarter of American workers make their living from manual jobs…..Knowledge has become the key resource.”

If knowledge is the key resource, then being educated is vital and being educated is more than just achieving a degree in an area of study that seems to be a good idea.  I get contacted frequently by young adults who have completed a college education only to realize they either dislike their chosen field or can’t get work and see no hope in the future.  So how can you get on a better track or guard against a career mismatch and thousands of dollars invested in something you really don’t like or with limited career opportunities?

  1. Pay attention to trends across media by reading articles like, Job Market Picks Up for Graduates, in the Wall Street Journal or Hiring in US Slowed in May with 54000 Jobs Added, in the New York Times. While these papers are presenting different perspectives, there are trends that are apparent.
  2. Tag websites that report meaningful data like the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook and monitor them quarterly.
  3. Make a reasonable investment up front in a career professional to help you set a course for success and save thousands in the long run.   Contact me.  I can help you identify the right career direction for you, write a plan for success and monitor your efforts along with the trends.  (scrolling your mouse over any of the highlighted areas within this blog will take you directly to the link)

You can be “forward thinking” much the way Peter Drucker encouraged all of us to look at life and try to predict our futures 50 years out and imagine how our careers might evolve.  You can take action by following these three recommendations.  Or you can invest your time and your dollars ineffectively and like so many others, wonder what happened.