Men and Women at Work: Can We All Get Along?
It may be true that men are from Mars and women from Venus. That doesn’t mean the two sexes can’t effectively work together here on Earth.
What Questions Should I Ask During an Interview?
What are good questions to ask during an interview is a good question in itself, and one that always comes up when a conscientious person is preparing for a big job interview. The fact that a person even wonders that sets them apart from the crowd of applicants and means that he or she is a proactive individual, intent on making a good impression and proper presentation of skills and experience.
Four Common Sense Tips for Telephone Interview
Here’s a phone interview tip worth considering: smile. A smile is a magic thing, and in addition to being seen in person it can be felt from a distance. When doing a phone interview, don’t think that because the person on the other end of the phone can’t see you that smiling and other positive body gestures are not important. The best interview tip that anyone was ever given was to smile and make positive gestures. In fact, many people talk with their hands. If you do, consider a telephone head set to free your hands up.
Another Chance to Shine – Following Up On an Interview
The interview follow up letter can make or break your chances of becoming hired. For that reason it should become an essential part of your job hunting tool box, right in there with the other tools you use: resume, cover letter, thank you note, reference sheet and salary history.
The Power of a Good Cover Letter
When your resume and cover letter first reach the prospective employer, the employer will start to form an opinion about you.
When the Job Search is Over, be Sure to Say Thanks
Using a job acceptance letter when offered a position shows true professionalism. It is a way of saying “thank you” to the person who hired you, and giving them assurance that they made the right decision. You have presented yourself to them as a professional with your resume, cover letter, reference sheet, salary history, letters of recommendation, follow up note, and any other personal marketing materials you’ve used while job hunting. You went out of your way to make sure that the interview went well, and probably did your homework on the company before going in for that first interview. Now using a job acceptance letter will be a capstone on all your work, and perfect the positive professional image you’ve tried to convey throughout the job search and hiring process.
Getting the Most out of your College Career Service
Look in your closet. Go on. Look at that vintage poncho, pocket bike, abdominal toner or frappuccino maker sitting there, collecting dust. You bought it, so why aren’t you using it? The same applies to the career services assistance that you paid for while in college. Remember all those administrative fees that were part of your tuition? Yup, you paid for it! Okay maybe you are one of those who did visit the career services office on campus where they patiently read and helped you edit a resume and find job leads to pursue. Or perhaps you had already secured a position without requiring their assistance at all. So why bother with them now? It’s simple, you paid for it so it’s time to use this service and get the most for your money.
If Your Resume is the Cake, Your Cover Letter is the Icing
The following cover letter sample gives an idea of what most job hunters should do when composing these. It consists of only a very few paragraphs, and is therefore short and easy to read.
Working a Job Fair
Given that the average employee will hold down 6.4 different jobs during his or her career, you can almost bet that you’re going to attend a job fair at some point, if you haven’t already had the pleasure. You see job fairs are a mixed blessing, with good and bad points. Here’s how you can maximize the positive and mitigate the negatives of job fairs.
10 Things You Must Do Before That Successful Interview
You’ve worked hard to get here. You’ve sent out 31 resumes, networked, attended job fairs, enrolled in school for more education – you’ve taken all the right steps.
Executive Career Tips – Expect the Unexpected
How do successful business executives stay on top of the game in an ever-changing global marketplace? By being prepared for the unexpected. When senior management and executives are up-to-date on industry movement, they are better prepared to know when to act and when to wait. Just as investors must understand and learn when to act in the stock market, so too do executives need to understand which industry changes necessitate action.
Creating a Breeding Ground for Success
You’ve invested years in your industry and many long hours developing your executive career and supporting team. How do you generate an environment that fosters a breeding ground for quality successors? The process begins with you and extends to your corporate culture and the atmosphere you create for your team.
Lead by Example
To help your team succeed, you need to implement an effective corporate culture. This goes beyond fostering a “team oriented” environment and extends into all aspects of your business. Demonstrate the attitudes you want to see in your managers. Company culture does not work if the top executives say they want the company to operate one way while acting another. Be willing to “work the trenches.” One key way to grow quality successors is by leading through example. Demonstrate the kind of work you want to see in your team by doing it yourself. The days of the executive locked away in the top floor office are gone.
Provide the Tools
Keep up on current business trends and be willing to adapt to change. As processes and technologies evolve, so too should your business. Offer opportunities for your employees to learn and shine. Personal growth cultivates company growth. This also creates an atmosphere of anticipating and working through change, which is a benefit to any company. In today’s business world, nothing is stagnant. Executive coaching options abound, from individual coaching to team building workshops. Research the best tools for your team, and then make them available. The best executive coach in the world won’t do you any good if you don’t make the first contact.
Let Your Team Know When They’ve Done it Right
If an employee or group accomplishes a difficult task or puts in the extra effort on a project, reward them with public recognition. Not only does this help boost morale, but it also lets your employees know what they are doing correctly, which will lead to repeat performances. It is all too easy to let someone know when he or she does not live up to expectations, but if your goal is to develop a successor or group of successors, informing others of the desired traits is also highly useful.
Value Your Team
When you give credit where it is due, you show your team that their work is valued. If employees do not feel valued in the workplace, they will likely seek elsewhere. Today’s manager does not believe in staying with the same company for years. The length of time someone stays with a company is often measured in a few short years. This not encouraging to those who are developing today’s talent into tomorrow’s successors.
One way for your management team to feel valued is through opportunities to make a difference. For the executive seeking a successor, this provides an excellent method of observing talent and screening out those individuals who show the most promise and dedication. It’s a winning situation for all involved, even when projects fall flat. Your future leaders will learn from mistakes and apply that information when the opportunity comes around again.
These situations also provide you with prime breeding ground for developing successors by growing your talent through the difficulties of business, which leads to the final point.
Grow Your Talent
You’ve likely heard a lot about attracting and maintaining talent, and certainly employing the help of executive recruiters is useful. However, one of the best ways to create a winning team is to develop it. Attracting and maintaining talent goes beyond an alluring salary. Today’s workforce, including managers and executives, are looking for value that cannot be measured in dollars. This means allowing people to use and develop their talents. Winning companies know how to identify their managers’ strongest characteristics and develop them into top executives based on those strengths. Companies that struggle tend to spend a lot of energy attracting new talent but falling short of allowing that talent the room to grow.
As with any plan worth undertaking, developing quality talent takes work and effort. However, when you consider how long it took you to get to the point of needing a successor, the effort becomes clear. The reward of growing a pool of successors is well worth it and goes beyond your legacy. Your team, company, and stakeholders will thank you for it as well.
About the Author:
Need a kick-butt resume and cover letter? Teena Rose is a credentialed resume writer, columnist, book author, and careerist. She’s authored several career books, including:
“20-Minute Cover Letter Fixer”
“Cracking the Code to Pharmaceutical Sales.”
Resume Writing Services by Certified Professional Resume Writer, Certified Employment Interview Professional, and Credentialed Career Master
Working Mom’s Carve Out Their Own Office Space
In 1950, the Cold War was heating up, Perry Como’s Hoop-Dee-Doo was No. 1 on the music charts, the Betty Crocker Picture Cook Book was a bestseller, and women were minor players in the American workforce. A half-century later, things have changed a bit.
Career Change – Throw Your Career a Change Up in Mid-Stride
After working most of your adult life in the same field, there comes a time when two powerful words enter your mind: career change. And for working women considering a midlife transition, there’s a bit of advice Mark Twain left society about 100 years ago: “The secret of success is making your vocation your vacation.”
10 Ways to Tell It’s Time to Find Another Job
Getting axed, sacked, canned or fired hurts. It does nothing for your self-esteem and it doesn’t look great on your resume. You’re always better leaving your position on your own terms. But how can you tell when your job may be on the line. Here are 10 things to look for.
What is so Important About Cover letters?
In a word – EVERYTHING!
It’s taking the best of your qualifications and characteristics and making them exciting and enticing to the prospective employer. It’s a carefully crafted letter that leads the employer to the resume to see why you are the best candidate for the job.
Surviving Office Politics
It ’s your first month in a new position and it’s rougher going than you’d anticipated. You feel like an outsider and you’re miserable.
Powerful Phone Interviews
Phone interviews are de rigueur with many organizations. Companies conduct phone interviews for a number of reasons. It’s a way to screen out the dead wood. It gives the next interviewer baseline information from which to work. It saves money.
The Cover Letter Checklist
When you have completed the first draft of your cover letter, compare it to the list below. Some of the items on the checklist refer to content and other items refer to format. You may have even read some of these before. As you review this checklist, compare it to your letter and determine if there are any additional changes that need to be made before sending it ? and your resume ? to the employer.
This blog's author, Debra Wheatman of Careers Done Write, provides executive career services including resume and cover letter preparation, job search / interviewing strategies and professional branding including how to effectively use LinkedIn, Twitter and other social media in your career.
Visit CareersDoneWrite.com to learn more about how we can put your career in gear with interview catching resumes and professionally written career documents.