Employment Digest

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Managing your career– more important than ever

As an adult educator and an advisor to hundreds of students during my 19 years at Gwinnett Technical College, the most important obligation I have to students is career advice. This process always seems to center around how to make someone more employable. This advice is not only applicable for students but also for the seasoned professional, especially during these days of corporate mergers, downsizing, and bankruptcies.

Learning how to manage your career has become more important than ever.

In managing a career, we need to use some of the same skills that employers use to manage a company. Successful careers and successful companies have three things in common: a great product or service that the consumer (employer) is willing to buy; a strategy and a clear direction; the ability to adapt to change.

Do you have updated knowledge and skills that are valuable to employers? If I am the president of a chair company and I do not adapt and improve my product to meet the current demands, my competition will take over my market share. My chair company cannot sit still and neither can my career. As the loss of jobs in the auto industry and in corporations such as Kraft and AT&T has shown us, we can’t depend on lifetime employment. We must take an aggressive approach to ensure that there is a need for our “service/product.”

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Keys to the perfect CEO Resume

As president of The Corban Group, a nationwide retained executive search firm located in Suwanee, Bob Rodgers has seen many bad resumes over the years.

“The greatest mistake I see are ones where an executive has had someone else write it,” he says. “The material, written in third person, is not reviewed very closely by the candidate for accuracy and contains generic information and flowery words.”

For a C-level visionary who has strong abilities and a history of exemplary results, this style of resume doesn’t translate accomplishments effectively. Unfortunately, independent C-level job seekers often pay $1,500 to $5,000 for such collateral, unaware there are other options.

Worse yet, the typical corporation utilizing outplacement services to aid high level executives can pay from $7,500 to $20,000 for an outplacement package that could hinder instead of help a transitioning VP or CEO. “The resumes created by these types of companies are typically not worth the ink on the paper they’re written on,” notes Ed Shammas, president of Atlanta Career and Resume Center, located in Duluth.

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Make your mark with your ‘brand’ when job hunting You only get one chance to make a first impression, the saying goes, and that’s never so true as when you’re interviewing for a new job. And while it’s not easy to stand out in this uber-competitive world, employment experts suggest one way jobseekers can do just that is by creating their own "brand." "Wait a minute," you’re thinking. "I have to go to Martha Stewart-like lengths just to land a good job these days?" advertisement Well, not exactly, but it doesn’t hurt to send that potential new employer a clear message about what it is that you - and you alone - can bring to the workplace. Think of it this way: If you excel at being organized, make that your brand. Then carry that message over into your resume by including that organizational theme in each of your accomplishments.

Plastic surgery could be the key to rejuvenating a sagging career

Plastic surgery can cure both a sagging face and a sagging career, according to research in the US.

The American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery reports that from 2000 to 2004, the number of facial plastic surgery procedures and injections increased 34%.

In 2004, the academy found that 22% of men and 15% of women who had plastic surgery did so for business purposes.

According to US government statistics, a growing number of people are seeking cosmetic surgery to get ahead in the workplace. Cosmetic procedures for men more than doubled from 2003 to 2004, and surgeons said they have requests from estate agents, lawyers, airline pilots and business executives, among others.

Previous studies in the US have indicated that attractive and younger-looking people are more successful and earn more.

Cosmetic surgery dilemmas - what should be included in your sick pay policy? See April’s issue of Employer’s Law magazin

Changing Careers

Is your IT job feeling a little stale? It’s a great time to switch companies or even industries, and some emerging fields and technologies could make a change all the more intriguing.

Not long ago, Michael O’Brien, a man with 10 years of service as a Java programmer and software design expert for a major investment bank, started to reconsider his future. Departmental reorganizations, the pressures of working in financial services, and the specter of outsourcing all convinced O’Brien to seek a new position in a different industry.

“I grew tired of constantly having to reapply for my job,” says O’Brien. “Most of the coding work was getting sent to Houston, and later most of that work was going to India. I got stuck with project planning and started to feel like my programming skills were getting rusty.” Within four weeks’ time, O’Brien, who began his search in February, interviewed with several companies in industries spanning dot-coms, publishing, and technology. “There’s a lot of hiring going on. It’s a good time for IT job hunters in New York,” he says.
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Not All Profiles Click With Employers Lisette Szeto thinks she’ll have a lot to offer an employer when she graduates in December. The English major will hold a degree from the University of Tampa, and she has a bubbly personality and an exciting social life. But it may be more exciting than she wants the world to know, now that she’s job hunting. Szeto, 22, soon plans to shut down her Web site at MySpace.com, where she reveals quite a lot about her social adventures. "The photos are of me, typically drinking with friends, and I don’t want future employers to see that," Szeto said. She also plans to delete her dating stories and confessions of her fondness for bikinis and reading CliffsNotes of novels rather than the books. "Every single person I know has a MySpace page. … Everything is up there for everyone to see." "Everyone" includes potential employers and career recruiters.

Successful interview takes preparation

Questions in a job interview follow a predictable pattern, career experts say. Preparing brief and carefully considered responses in advance increases the chances of making a good impression and reduces “pre-interview” jitters.

Consider how you would answer the following five common questions.

What are your weaknesses?

The interviewer may be attempting to find out if you can accept and follow instructions and feedback. Answer specifically and directly, advised Holly Parsons, branch manager at Express Personnel Services.

“Try saying, ‘The only time I’ve been counseled in the past has been when the instructions were unclear,” Parsons said. “In those rare instances, I adjusted my performance once I clearly understood the requirements.’ ”

Susan Shultz, with SSA Executive Search International in Phoenix, said that the question can be viewed as an opportunity to show where you want to grow.

“Job seekers can answer, ‘I would like to gain more experience in finance (or technology or another area where skills are weaker),’ ” Shultz said. “In other words, you are indicating your interest in learning and growing in the position.”
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Dig deep for information about job, career changes

When most people are in the thinking stages of whether to change jobs or careers, they make two common mistakes. They first call or e-mail someone they know or have been referred to and ask, “What would it take for me to be a writer?” or “What’s it like to be a physician’s assistant?”

Then they only talk to one or two people and based on that, make up their mind that this career is perfect or the stupidest idea they ever had. As a result, they end up either going after a career they hate or never digging deep enough to know whether it could have been a match made in heaven.

If you’re in that “just curious” stage of making a change, here’s what you need to know and do instead.
In general, people are eager to help you. But they don’t like surprises — a call or e-mail out of the blue asking them to tell you everything you need to know about your next possible career endeavor. They’re busy and there’s too much ground to cover. You frustrate people when you approach them with such a broad request. They probably want to help, but there’s not enough time in the day to give you a complete education.
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Use interview to ferret out signs of nightmare job

You get to the new office, this place of new and exciting opportunity, but it’s just not what you were told it would be.

People often land in such a position because they are simply too eager to take that new gig. People spend their work lives trying to show why they should be hired. But they forget that they have to do a little careful shopping, too. And so sometimes (perhaps oftentimes) workers go from a bad situation to a worse one because they are so excited for a new opportunity.

A few questions might help an interviewee figure out if this particular workplace is just right, according to Gregg Stocker, author of the book Avoiding the Corporate Death Spiral: Recognizing and Eliminating the Signs of Decline.

“They’re just too desperate to get the offer. And they’re so busy selling themselves, they don’t see if it’s a good fit or not,” he said. He understands this all too well.

Years ago, Stocker — now director of performance improvement for plastics company Ico Polymers in Houston — jumped at the chance to work for a Japanese company when the general public was obsessed with the way Japanese companies were run. Within about a week “I could see this was not Toyota,” he said. The managers “managed by fear,” and he was required to work 50 or more hours a week. He knew this wasn’t good for him but decided to stick it out as long as possible because he didn’t want a short-term job on his résumé. He lasted six months.
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Baby boomer exodus

Just as they have for 60 years, baby boomers are throwing their weight around again.

This time, though, it’s not a matter of how to educate, house and employ the mass of 78 million Americans in that generation, but rather how to replace their skills and knowledge in the workplace as they begin to retire.

The oldest of the baby boomers turn 60 this year, on the verge of traditional retirement age.

The percentage of workers older than 65 will increase from 14.4 percent of the work force in 2004 to 19.7 percent by 2014, meaning the fastest-growing part of the U.S. work force will be retirement age, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Yet few companies welcome older workers.
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