Be the Captain of Your Career

Be The Captain of Your Career!

Jack Molisani

Twitter: @JackMolisani

About the Speaker

• President, ProSpring Technical Staffing

• Executive Director, The LavaCon Conference on Content Strategy and User Experience

• Author, Be The Captain of Your Career: A New Approach to Career Planning and Advancement

In this Session

• The Top 10 Mistakes Professionals Make When Looking for Work

• Expanding Your Sphere of Influence, and Your Income

• Advancing your Career Using Branding and Positioning

The Top 10 Mistakes Professionals Make When

Looking for Work

Overview

• Recruiters (both HR and external agents) receive tens if not hundreds of resumes a day.

• Do everything you can to make it easy for them to help you get the job.

• The mistakes are presented in order of chronology, not severity—some are more “deadly” than others!

1. Not Following Submission Directions

• Make a good first impression—follow the submission directions!

• MS Word or PDF?

• “No calls.”

2. Not Building Professional Relationships

• Get to know people, build your professional network, meet your recruiter.

• You want someone who will sing your praises to the next person in the hiring process…

• …especially if you are not an exact match or have an odd situation.

• Plus, when a great job comes in, who do you think we’re going to call first?

3. Bad Manners

• It's poor form to mail your resume to 45 recruiters in one email...

• …especially when you display them all in the To: field!

• Keep a log of where your resume has been sent.

4. Applying When You Are not Even Remotely Qualified

• Pay attention to the "must have" vs. "nice to have" requirements.

• Do apply for jobs that are a bit of a stretch, but at least be in the ballpark!

5. Not Summarizing Skills vs. Requirements

• Not all recruiters have the time to read your resume from top to bottom.

• Many just skim for keywords.

• They can’t possibly understand what you do as well as you.

• Do you really want someone who is not a professional deciding if you are a good enough to pass on?


• Be proactive: send a summary of how your experience matches the job requirements.

• If you don't have one of the requirements, this is where you say, "I don't have XYZ, but I do have ABC..."


• Suddenly, recruiters love you: - They didn't have to search for the

information.

- You typed the summary for them.

- You pointed out important information they may have missed.

- All they had to do is verify the information and pass it on.

6. Misnaming Your Resume

• Remember, recruiters receive tens if not hundreds of resumes a day.

• Would you want to receive 100 resumes a day named "resume.doc"?

• Name your resume so it can be found easily: for example, "Joe Jones.doc"

7. Poor Resumes

• Your resume is the first sample of your writing skill and attention to detail.

• Hiring managers judge candidates based on their resumes...

• …and will disqualify you if they find errors in your resume.

• Make sure you have ZERO DEFECTS in your resume!

8. Mis-evaluation of Importances

• Highlight your strengths.

• Minimize your weaknesses.

• Put the most applicable information, experience or skills near the top of your resume.

• Put less applicable experience near the bottom.

9. Not Anticipating Questions

• Recruiters will wonder about oddities in resumes, so be proactive and explain them.

• Examples: - Gaps in Your Work History - Your Citizenship or Work Visa Status - Moving from Contract to Perm - Need Relocation Assistance?

10. Not Keeping Current

• Keep current with popular tools.

• Nothing is worse than losing a great job because someone else kept up with the latest tools and technology and you did not.

Summary

• Follow submission directions.

• Use good manners.

• Name your electronic resume.

• Use a professional email address.

• Have a flawless resume.

• Highlight your strengths, minimize your weaknesses.

• Keep your skills current.

• Include a summary of how your experience and skills match the job requirements.

Expanding Your Sphere of Influence, and Your Income

Overview

• To expand your sphere of influence, you must first identify your current sphere of influence.

• To do that, assess the value you bring to your organization.

Defining “Value”

• What, exactly, is “value”?

• Encarta.com has two definitions that apply:– Monetary worth: an amount expressed in money or

another medium of exchange that is thought to be a fair exchange for something

– Worth or importance: the worth, importance, or usefulness of something to somebody


• Education.Yahoo.com defines value as:– Worth in usefulness or importance to the possessor– (emphasis added)


• Thus there are two types of value:– Actual value: Do you generate revenue and reduce costs

for your organization?

– Perceived value: Are you perceived to generate revenue and reduce costs for your organization?

Measuring Value

• You can’t manage what you can’t measure

• So how do you measure your corporate value?

• Your actual corporate value?

• Your perceived corporate value?

Measuring Value

• API story

• RoboHelp story

• Boxtop story

• Decision tree story

Measuring Value

• While bringing a project in on-time and on-budget clearly saves a client money, have you ever helped the company generate revenue?

– Sales proposals

– Marketing collateral

– Presales-tutorial, etc.

– Lead generation (I met someone at a conference…)

– Anything that helped generate revenue? How much?

Measuring Value: Actual

• Have you helped generate decrease costs for your company? – Decreased time-to-market (which does both)

– Decreased tech support costs

– Decreased translation costs

– Anything that saved your company money? How much?

Measuring Value: Perceived

• Compensation (salary or hourly bill rate)

• Where you are in the product development cycle?

• Are you considered a critical member of the development team (profit center)…

• …or someone who has to be there, a commodity to be acquired for the lowest possible price given an acceptable level of quality (cost center)?

Other Ways

• Other ways to identify what companies value:– Statistics from job postings

– Feedback from hiring managers

Statistics from Job Postings

• I chose 50 riting jobs at random using Indeed.com (a job posting aggregator)

• I copied job “Requirements” into a file and then sorted and tabulated the results

• I did not include “pluses” or “nice to haves”

• I’m only reporting on skills or attributes that appeared at least two times in the results

Skills and Attributes

• Excellent communication skills 58%• Ability to work alone, work in teams 22%• Ability to adjust to changing priorities, deadlines 18%• Ability to multitask/juggle multiple projects 18%• Good organization skills 14%• Attention to detail 12%• Strong interpersonal skills 10%• Self motivated 6%

Tools

• Microsoft Office 50%• Microsoft Project 22% • Others 20%•

Feedback from Hiring Managers

• I posted the following question to the various social media lists:

– I know what’s popular these days with respect to tools and technology, but what “soft skills” do you look for when interviewing candidates?

– Please reply to me off-list.


• I requested “off list” feedback because I wanted to see if multiple managers identified the same qualities

• Unfortunately this was such a hot topic it created quite the online conversation

• At one point a manager had to say, “Enough—get back to work!”


• “Here is a rule of thumb that I swear by: You can tell more about a candidate from the questions they ask than the answers they give.

• Do they ask about your business model? Where they fit in? Why the position is open? Are there any “challenging” projects or people they should be aware of?

• Do they ask about what problems you are facing that they can solve? What keeps you up at night that they can take off your plate, etc. …?”


• “Business acumen. Understanding the basics of how and why an organization ticks and what motivates managers in general so that when specifics come around no one is surprised. Oh, yeah. Business acumen.”


• “Here are the traits I think are vital to being a successful tech com person:– Curiosity– Ability to analyze lots of disparate input and distill it into the essential bits– Thick skin– Ability to work with a variety of people in a virtual environment– Sense of humor– Self-motivated– Ability to move between the clouds and the weeds without getting stuck in

either place– Interest in science and technology– High but realistic standards for quality and strong work ethic”


• “I think it’s interesting that Kit listed “curiosity” first. At ProSpring, the first attribute I list in the Recruiter job description is, ‘Curiosity and the desire to help.’

• I think that summarizes what we’re all looking for in an employee, eh?”

Recap

• More companies are looking for soft skills than particular tools and technologies

• Managers want to see excellent communication skills combined with curiosity, observation skills and the desire to help

• The upshot: Have those and the hottest tools and technology to increase your corporate value.

Advancing Your Career Using Personal Branding

• I recently went to a conference where attendees’ name tags included the phrase, “Ask me about… [then an answer we provided when registering].”

• From this came a major career realization:

Introduction

The whole concept of personal branding can be summarized by that simple phrase, “Ask me about…”

Introduction

• Before we look at some examples, let’s define some terms.

Introduction

Branding vs. Positioning

• A brand is: “a unique design, sign, symbol, words, or a combination of these, employed in creating an image that identifies a product and differentiates it from its competitors.” BusinessDictionary.com


• Companies spend billions of dollars advertising and building brand recognition.

• Why?

• So people will remember and buy their products.


• Often a name-brand product and a no-name (or store brand) generic product are the same product produced by the same manufacture


• What matters is that consumers perceive that a brand is better and therefore buy it (usually at a higher price than a non-branded generic equivalent)

Positioning

• Positioning: to communicate about a product or service by comparing it to a better-known product or service

• “Stronger than steel,” “Faster than FedEx,” “Cheaper than Walmart”

• Each phrase above identifies what makes the product different (quality, speed, price) and then a better-known product (or company) against which the item is positioned

The Power of Branding and Positioning

• Philip Morris originally launched the Marlboro brand in 1924 as a woman’s cigarette, and advertising was based around how ladylike the cigarette was.

• When smoking was linked to lung cancer in the 1950s, Philip Morris repositioned Marlboro as a man’s cigarette.


• Men at the time indicated that while they would consider switching to a filtered cigarette, they were concerned about being seen smoking a cigarette marketed to women.


• So Philip Morris’ advertising agency decided to use a series of manly figures in the ads, starting with a cowboy.


• Within a year, Marlboro’s market share rose from less than one percent to the fourth best-selling brand


• Within a year, Marlboro’s market share rose from less than one percent to the fourth best-selling brand

Personal Branding

• Branding and positioning obviously apply to selling shoes or laundry soap, but what do they have to do with you, the project manager?

• That’s where personal branding comes in.

Personal Branding

Just as a company creates a brand and promotes why people should buy the product or service, so should you create a personal brand and promote why people should buy your product or service.

Personal Branding

• In Tech Comm 2.0: Reinventing Our Relevance in the 2000s (Intercom, Feb 2012) Scott Abel and I asserted that certain roles are in danger of becoming a commodity, a product or service to be acquired for the lowest possible price given an acceptable level of quality.

Personal Branding

• Why? • Because many companies do not

perceive the value that project managers bring to their organizations

• And why not? • Lack of personal branding!

Personal Branding

• Personal branding and proper positioning communicate why companies should buy your services and pay the rate or salary you want to be paid.

Personal Branding

• Example:

• Andrea Ames at IBM, when asked what she does for a living, answers, “I solve business problems.”

• Not, “I’m a project manager.”

• Not, “I wrangle programmers.”

Personal Branding

• While she may actually do those things as part of her job, they’re not the way she approaches her job, and they’re certainly not how she defines her corporate mission.

• “I solve business problems.”

• What a great personal brand! It instantly communicates what she does and why she is valuable!

Responding to Market Changes

• In their book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, James Collins and Jerry Porras state that of the visionary companies they studied, all had a history of responding to market changes while staying true to their core values.

• Content Strategist Sharon Burton’s rebranding story illustrates this beautifully.


“The whole reason I got into tech comm was not because I loved to write, it was because I loved being at the crossroads of people and technology and I could make a difference. That’s why I do what I do.

When the recession hit and I got laid off, it forced me to reexamine what drives me in this field, what excites me. I realized what was true when I started is just as true today: I love being at the intersection of people and technology.


Unfortunately, writing online help topics just doesn’t excite me anymore. But helping companies adopt a content strategy that gives people the information they need so they can go out and change the world?

That excites me!


Our industry is changing. We’re in a content development revolution. Companies don’t need just user manuals anymore, they need social media and webinars, YouTube videos and multi-channel publishing.

These are the areas on which companies are spending money, and they need help to do it right.


So the process of rebranding wasn’t just calling myself by a new title, it included reeducating myself and repositioning myself so I could effectively offer the services that companies need as the very ground beneath them changes.”


Alvin Toffler, an American writer known for his works discussing the digital revolution, takes the concept of reeducation a step further:

“The illiterate of the twenty-first century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.”

Ask Me About…

• How can you respond to market changes while staying true to your core values?

• What can you do well that you can promote as a specialized service for which you should be handsomely paid?

Ask Me About…

• Are you an expert in rolling out HIPPA-compliant software systems?

• A specialist in earthquake-safe commercial construction?

• A wiz at recovering troubled IT projects?

Ask Me About…

• What should people ask you about?”

Recommended Reading

Reach the Speaker

– [email protected]

– Twitter: JackMolisani

– The LavaCon Conference: www.lavacon.org