Author: Jay Wren

Every Business Meeting is a Job Interview.

I have written other articles on how to prepare for job interviews and how to prepare for business meetings.  The things that you do to prepare for both meetings are the same.

Once you land a job, you are competing with other people inside and outside your company to keep your job and to progress in your career.

If you want job security and, especially if you want to get promoted, treat each day as a job interview.

Before starting your business day, make a list of five things you want to accomplish that day.  If those five things include business meetings within your own company or outside your company, preparing for those meetings is very simple.  At first, you may find that making these preparations may seem complicated and burdensome.  I know that I did.  However, I found that repetition made these preparations easier and the habit of making these preparations made them feel natural, even necessary.  I also found that when I encountered new situations, these habits made preparation for those situations much easier as well.

Before going to a meeting, write down the following things.

  1. The purpose of the meeting
  2. Presentations you need to bring to the meeting
  3. Names of participants
  4. Location, time, and date of the meeting
  5. The things you want to accomplish in the meeting

During the meeting take notes.  From your notes you can send follow-up emails and take action on your commitments resulting from the meeting.  You will do a better job for your employer and your peers.

Finding New Industries for Your Job Skills

If you find that you have skills that are no longer needed in your current industry, you feel discouraged.  The ever-changing employment landscape often leaves people with industry-based skills and no employment market for those skills.  You are not alone, and you do have options.

The first week I worked as a recruiter I received a call from a man who had just lost his job from a reduction in force.  He worked at General Foods in the Jello™ division.   General Foods had merged the Jello™ division with the cereal division and fired half of the sales organization from those two divisions.

The man faced a large challenge, because companies across the food industry were merging divisions and merging with other companies.  However, he was fortunate to get a sales job in the medical industry.  The training at General Foods gave him the skills to sell.  A medical company considered those skills as transferable skills for selling their equipment.

There are challenges to changing industries.  Most people have transferable skills.  However, headhunters, hiring managers, and staffing people often face mountains of resumes.  They are focusing on close fits.  Scrutinizing resumes closely for crossover skills is a challenge for these people.  Also, professional networks lose value for most people seeking to transition into a new industry, because most people build professional networks around people who work in the same industry.

The first challenge is to find companies outside your industry who hire people with your skills.   

  1. Make a list of companies and industries that appeal to you.
  2. Determine if other people at those places have a similar background to your own.
  3. Evaluate the overall experience of these people in terms of other skills and experience that you might have in common.

The second challenge is expanding your network to the new industry.  You will probably find better success in getting an interview if you know the hiring manager and can get your résumé directly into that person’s hands.  Here are some suggestions.

    1. Ask a member of your network to give you an introduction to the hiring manager.
    2. If you can not get an introduction to the hiring manager, attempt to network with that person through the Internet.
    3. Join professional organizations that can give you introductions.
    4. Attend trade shows where you can make new connections.
    5. Backtrack through your network to find people who have transitioned from your current industry to a new industry.
    6. When you do send out your résumé, make sure that it markets your transition skills through highlighting your experience and your other training.
    7. Edit your résumé and interview agenda to highlight your qualifications for each specific company you are seeking to join.

    A third challenge is that your skills are just not as strong as those of people already in the industry you are seeking to join.

    1. Strengthen your marketable skills with more training.
    2. Become an expert on the new industry you are seeking to join. Write your cover letter and résumé to show what you know about that industry.
    3. Head back to school to get a diploma, degree, credential, certification, or advanced degree.

    Keep your chin up and think positive.  At one point in my career, I called a Procter & Gamble sales manager to introduce myself.  He informed me that I did not need to introduce myself, because he and I had spoken.  A few years earlier, he had called me to get help with his career.  At the time, he was working for a small regional company.  I told him that I would not be able to help him, because I specialized in recruiting sales people who worked for large consumer products companies.   He said that I had mentioned Procter & Gamble specifically.  Continuing to work for the regional company, he got an MBA and then applied at Procter & Gamble, where his career progressed rapidly.

    Remember that you are not alone nor unique.   Many people find that they need to consider transitioning to a new industry.   You are not alone in your trials.  If you concentrate on building your network and your skills, you do not have to work alone in your efforts.

3 Short, Powerful Meeting Practices

3 Short, Powerful Meeting Practices

There are some simple business practices that will make your business meetings more comfortable and more productive.

Think of your surroundings. Save your elevator pitch for nearly any place but the elevator.  People are confined and often feel awkward in elevators.  Also, there is a risk that someone could walk in on your pitch.  You never want to discuss your client’s business in front of strangers.

Wait until you step out of the elevator and start your presentation with a question that will focus attention on your pitch.

Carry a pen and paper to every business meeting.  Nearly everyone takes notes on a laptop or cell phone.  This skill is effective for safely and conveniently saving your notes.  The skill is also efficient.  However, when you get an idea during a meeting and want to press a point that is not included in a prepared presentation, passing your electronic device around at a meeting or across a table at a business lunch is probably not in your best interest.

Learn the art of the pen and paper presentation.  Sometimes abandoning your prepared presentation may be more effective than sticking to it.  A simple note on a piece of paper may be very powerful  I know doctors who explain complicated conditions by turning over pages of lab results and jotting a few notes for patients to see what the results mean.

In my own career, I have saved countless sales for advertising support and product purchases by using the same method of writing a few facts and figures down in front of the buyer to help the person understand what I was saying.

The Types of Recruiters and Agencies

The Types of Recruiters and Agencies

There are four types of staffing agencies.

  1. Temporary Agencies specialize in referring people for positions that are temporary or part-time.
  2. Placement firms specialize in placing people in hourly positions.  These firms may charge you a fee for their services.
  3. Contingency firms get paid by the employer upon filling a position and typically place people in management and middle management positions.
  4. Retained search firms specialize in filling positions at the executive level and are paid for a scheduled period of service plus an override based on the income of the position filled, and receive reimbursement for their expenses.

Recruiters usually specialize.

Individual recruiters and, in most cases, recruiting firms specialize in a particular industry such as healthcare, consumer products, technology.
Also, recruiters and firms may further specialize in the type of jobs they fill.  For example, they may only staff for jobs for nurses, accountants, engineers, sales managers, marketing managers, and so forth.

Recruiters specialize, because by specializing they are able to build a network of hiring companies that recruit applicants with similar profiles.  Quite often, recruiters have worked in similar positions and industries in which they recruit.  Because recruiters specialize, they can contribute added industry information to help an applicant prepare for a job and plan a career path.

What do the different titles for recruiters mean?

People refer to recruiters with a lot of different names:  employment agent, headhunter, corporate recruiter, executive recruiter, career or recruiting consultant, and other titles.   There is little difference among recruiters in their basic functions.  They typically spend most of their day contacting companies to get job listings, interviewing applicants, scheduling interviews, checking references, and sourcing applicants.

Should You Work with a Recruiter?

Should You Work with a Recruiter?  Whether or not you should work with a recruiter depends upon your personal comfort in working with other people.

  • Resume guidance
  • Interview preparation
  • Company information
  • Access to hiring companies
  • Industry knowledge
  • Income information and guidance

When working with a recruiter, you should set up an understanding about how the recruiter manages your information.  Depending on your need for getting a job relative to your need to keep your information confidential, you and the recruiter can set up guidelines on whether you need to approve of each place the recruiter sends your resume.

I recommend that you be selective in the number of recruiters you use.  If you place your resume with several recruiters who are competitors, you will not be expanding your opportunities, but will discourage recruiters from wanting to help you.  Never send an email with a “Send to” list that displays the name of more than one recruiter.  You will appear thoughtless, desperate, and will probably discourage the recruiters on the list from trying to help you at all.

The type of firm you need to contact depends on a two factors:  the type of position you are seeking and the firm’s client base relative to your experience.

Most recruiting firms have websites.  You should be able to determine from the information on the website whether the firm is right for you.  In addition, you may know people who have worked with recruiters and who can recommend recruiters and firms you might want to use.

How to Write an Effective Job Description

How to Write an Effective Job Description

Job descriptions have multiple purposes.

  1. Job descriptions are essential when posting a job. For job posting purposes, a job description is promotional material used to attract people to apply for a job.
  2. The job description should enable hiring managers as well as the applicants understand the requirements and expectations of the available jobs.
  3. Job descriptions are effective guidelines to help all employees understand what a company to does to fulfill its goals.  If all the job descriptions within a company were pinned on a corkboard, the documents should create the pyramid that describes the role and relationship of each person within an organization and list every duty required for a company to achieve its goals.
  4. Managers and the people they manage should be able to use the job description to understand and evaluate a person’s performance
  5. As companies change with changing circumstances, requirements in employment levels and roles will change as well. By monitoring and revising job descriptions for existing positions and by creating jobs descriptions for new positions, a company’s management can become focused on what will be necessary for each employee to meet new requirements placed on the company.

There are six elements to a job description.

COMPANY DESCRIPTION
The company description has useful and positive information about the industry, goods and services, and accomplishments of the hiring company.  This description is in a block paragraph, which means simply that the first word in the paragraph is not indented.  The paragraph you are currently reading is a block paragraph.

ORGANIZATION SECTION
The organization section of the job description includes the following information:

  1. Title of position
  2. Department
  3. Location
  4. Supervisor’s Title (reports to)
  5. Supervisory Responsibilities
  6. Job status: full-time, part-time
  7. Status under the Fair Labor Standards Act
  8. Pay grade

PURPOSE SUMMARY
The statement of the position purpose should be a summary of the broad job requirements and responsibilities.  This section spells out in a block paragraph what will be expected of a person who takes on the responsibilities of a position.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
The list of duties and responsibilities should provide company-established guidelines for performing the duties of a position.

  1. A specific line-by-line statement of each duty
  2. A statement of the frequency with which the duties will be performed
  3. A statement the departments, employee titles, and outside parties involved in performing the duties
  4. A statement of flexibility in terms of helping with special tasks as these tasks may become necessary for the company to reach its goals

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE

  1. Education
  2. Licenses
  3. Certifications
  4. Credentials
  5. Skills and abilities
  6. Training
  7. Knowledge
  8. Professional training
  9. Equipment or technical skills
  10. Experience

PHYSICAL/LEGAL REQUIREMENTS

  1. Lifting
  2. Standing
  3. Walking
  4. Hearing
  5. Near and color vision
  6. Fingering (computer keyboard)
  7. Travel
  8. Work environment
  9. Authorization to Work in the United Status

I am not a lawyer. This information is based on my experience in recruiting for dozens of major consumer products companies for over thirty years.

Published
Categorized as Success
error: Content is protected !!