Month: September 2014

by

This Week’s Workshop: Implementing Your Personal Marketing Plan… Thursday, October 2nd, 8:45 AM @ The Egg and I Restaurant in Addison

This Thursday we will ‘conduct’ a job search in real time, drawing from actual experience of our participants.  Our focus is on effective time management to create focus and efficiency in job search efforts. The session will be CO-facilitated by Clay Tarpley.

NETWORKING

Building a network is a vital part of today’s strategic career development. Each planned contact can lead to others if you ask the right questions and explore the possibilities.  Networking is a two-way street, sometimes with you, the information seeker, being able to provide information to the same person from whom you are seeking it, and at other times being a source of information to other people. In order to get information from others, we must be a good source of information. All it takes is being willing to share information, ideas and resources.  It’s the INTER-ACTIVE, front-end of relationship building.

To put it another way, “What goes around, comes around.”  A network is not something you establish overnight. It requires work and time, but the rewards are incalculable. If you are in a job search mode and do not have a good network already in place, there are several ways you can begin to build one.

  1. Start with people you know from previous employment.    However, most jobs are not found at the first level of networking.  In fact, very few jobs are found simply by calling the people you know.
  2. Constantly build the layers of your network.  Even at the second level, the number of job openings you will find is still modest. Networking does not usually start to pay off until about the third level, and sometimes even beyond that.
  3. Attend professional association meetings and network.   Most of us probably work in a line of work that has a national professional association to which we could belong, and most of these associations have local chapters.Get the Most From Networking…

Remember TIME MANAGEMENT…

Allow for regular time in LinkedIn in order to direct and focus your networking activity.

Make networking calls in a block of time.  Each call is more comfortable than the one before. Do not call people and ask them if they have any openings at their company… This is almost always totally non-productive.

Be sure to ask the person if they have a minute to talk to you, and when finished talking thank them for their time.

Who Should Attend this value-packed Workshop?

  1. Anyone who wants to create a strategic plan for the rest of their working life… job changes will occur!
  2. Job seekers who find themselves in a rut…rapidly crashing into the black hole of depression
  3. Any job seeker looking to create focus within their search efforts
  4. Any professional to give substance to their next steps
  5. Newcomers to DFWCareerpilot… including tire-kickers

Please SHARE this post with your friends.

by

NEXT WEEK’s Workshop: Developing Your Personal Marketing Plan… Thursday, September 25th, 8:45 AM @ The Egg and I Restaurant in Addison

Are you TOTALLY Prepared For an Efficient and productive job search?  This session provides an excellent, albeit quick, OVERVIEW of preparing for an efficient job search, for regulars and new comers alike.  Our focus is on effective time management to create focus and efficiency in job search efforts. We also look at the importance of personal accountability to ACTION!

We meet regularly at The Egg and I Restaurant in Addison (NW quadrant of Arapaho and Montfort… 1 block east of the Tollway)

Who Should Attend?

  1. Anyone who wants to create a strategic plan for the rest of their working life… job changes will occur!
  2. Job seekers who find themselves in a rut…rapidly crashing into the black hole of depression
  3. Any job seeker looking to create focus within their search efforts
  4. Any professional to give substance to their next steps
  5. Newcomers to DFWCareerpilot… including tire-kickers

Please SHARE this post with your friends.

by

THIS Week’s Workshop: In-Synch Personal Marketing Collateral Materials… Thursday, September 18th, 8:45 AM @ The Egg and I in Addison

Building on the concepts of ACHIEVING CareerFITness, this week’s Event will focus on content issues for high impact, productive collateral materials like a job seeker’s resume, verbal ‘pitches,’ and their LinkedIn Profile.

Actions requested:

Bring hard and soft copies of your current resume draft… bring your laptop (or other wi fi-enabled editing tool) if you want to do some self-inflicted, hands on editing of your resume or LinkedIn Profile… everyone will have the opportunity to practice their verbal collateral materials.

The 411…

Consider the difference between good and GREAT.  Why agonize over the creation of “the perfect resume?”  You’ve seen sketch artists capture the real you in a matter of minutes… A traditional resume communicates what you have already done… sort of a historical epitaph of your past.  It is very easily written from old job descriptions.

However, Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), a Dutch painter, was NEVER in a hurry.  A masterpiece takes time.  I have never known anyone, including professional resume writers, who are capable of developing and writing a high impact resume within an hour or two.  The upside of getting a resume out quickly is that you don’t sacrifice early opportunities.  Such a “quickie” may work well… especially if you’re seeking a commodity job in a soft job market.  You need a job fast, right???

  Wrong.

  • The time that you spend developing a GREAT Resume Template is some of the most valuable time that you’ll spend while in career transition.  A “GREAT” Resume is a dynamic documentation of your communication strategy, the vital epicenter of your Personal Market Plan. 
  • The downside of a “quickie resume” — when your true objective is to find work requiring professional talent and skills — is that the output is seldom very compelling and persuasive, truly fitting your career objectives.  And in today’s digital marketplace, your quickie resume may have extended shelf life, once “mined” from the giant, online resume/job banks.  It’s a monster of a problem.
  • Developed in parallel with your two-minute drill strategies and your LinkedIn profile, your resume will have clearly positioned and targeted marketing collateral that will serve you well.  Yes, written and verbal collaterals that are in synch with each other, will create and dispense your marketing message.

This week’s workshop encourages you to communicate what you are capable of and motivated to do in the future, using your past as supportive evidence.  Its easy to make a resume look and read well… but does YOUR resume truly “FIT” your career objectives?  By learning and following the guidelines suggested this week, you will find the “journey” to your destination, successful career transition, to be smooth sailing.  

Plan to attend this THURSDAY at 8:45 AM…

Who should attend:

  1. Job seekers who have not achieved productivity in their ONLINE efforts
  2. NEW Job seekers who need to develop their collateral ‘arsenal’
  3. Those that understand they must ‘tweak’ their resumes from time to time… but don’t understand HOW
  4. DFWCareerpilot ‘regulars’ with specific questions

by

THIS THURSDAY’s Workshop: Achieving CareerFIT… Thursday, September 11th at 8:45 AM @ The Egg and I Restaurant in Addison

Just what IS a good CareerFIT for you?

To achieve a good “fit” between you and any future opportunity, you have to ask yourself some basic questions about yourself and your prospective employers. The fit depends on how well the jobs meets your needs and how well your skills and abilities meet the employer’s needs. The employer will make a decision and extend an offer to you: now it is time for you to make your decision.

SHARE THIS POST with your network… and let them know about the scheduling AND content changes at DFWCareerpilot!… THX

***

This week Thursday, September 11th, we will focus on a strategic, more career-oriented, definition of FIT,  answering your questions and concerns at each step of the way…  My colleague, Brian Allen will co-present.  Your Careerpilot has created collateral development: resumes, correspondence, etc. as a separate topic for our next event.

This is a great place to start for new-comers as the other Core Topics will follow in sequence… THIS WEEK’s Workshop…  Achieving CareerFIT brings focus to those elusive decisions regarding positioning and targeting your efforts.

The first five steps of the 12 step process, from assessment to beginning the evolution of your LinkedIn Profile, will be discussed.

***

Write out the factors that are important to you in a job… actually write out your list.  During your career transition, learn the value of setting your offer criteria, a key element of your Personal Market Plan:

  1. Creates an objective target for your efforts ahead;
  2. Gives you a meaningful set of questions to ask during research and networking;
  3. Provides an objective way to analyze and react to offers as they occur.

To manage your career wisely has you extending the same concept.  Consider some of the factors listed below … Examine each factor through the questions listed – and then ask, “does this opportunity fit me?”

Work Requirements and Expectations: What is the next  appropriate work for you? Is the work process or project oriented?  If it’s process oriented, are the requirements and expectations clear?  What kinds of projects will you work on? Will you work on one project at a time, or multiple projects? Are the projects long term or short term? Will you work on a project long enough to see the end result? Is it important to you to be able to see the project as a whole, including the result? Or will you be content to do the work without a big picture understanding?

Work Environment: Will the work space be a source of comfort and confidence for you? How formal or informal is the environment? Hectic, fast paced? Will you have the opportunity to have flex time, or to tele-commute? How many hours a week does the employer expect you to work? Will you have the freedom to wear casual clothes? What is a typical day like at the company you are considering?  Would they allow a “trial visit” or at least a site visit?

Career Path: Is there a defined succession plan? What position(s) can you move to next? How long do new hires generally stay in the same job? How quickly do people get promoted? Are your opportunities for professional development well defined and available to you? Are mentors available?

Training and Personal Development: what kind of training will you get from the employer to do the job? What kind of training will you get to stay current in your area of interest? Are the answers to these two questions different? Does it matter to you if the answers are different?

***

Please let me know you’re planning to attend by filling out this quick RSVP… THX

by

So…What IS the OTHER Job Market?

Tomorrow’s session, Thursday, September 4th, will address the age old question… and an excellent one to constantly revisit: How do you make yourself stand out against the other candidates in the marketplace?

My ‘ANSWER’ hasn’t changed in 30 + years of both many years in Corporate recruiting -and, more recently- many years of providing career consulting and job search assistance in the digital age of social media and ATS…

Simply stated, the traditional ‘job market’ is loaded with traps for the normal job seeker: Applying on-line along with your competition, increasing the odds of rejection and causing a premature, YES-NO-MAYBE judgment…The digital HR screen that judges you by keywords instead of value proposition… and, by the way, what ARE the ‘right’ keywords?

At DFWCareerpilot we learn to “Embrace The OTHER Job Market,” the one driven by hiring authorities who seek the most qualified and affordable candidates (would you expect less?)… the one driven by the choice of pre-qualified candidates who have already established a relationship with appropriate professionals–with and surrounding the hiring authority!  A job seeker can ‘stand out’ because there is much less rejection (less competition) and controllable yes-no-maybe judgments.

MORE?  See this handout in the Resources Tab above.