Category: Charting Your Career for Success

Charting Your Career for Success:
Feeling a pull towards something different in your work life? This category is your compass for navigating the exciting and sometimes challenging journey of career change. Whether you’re contemplating a slight pivot or a complete industry leap, you’ll find guidance and resources here to help you:

Explore new career possibilities that align with your passions and skills.
Identify your transferable skills and how to leverage them in a new field.
Develop a strategic plan for making a successful transition.
Learn practical tips for networking, upskilling, and adapting your job search materials.
Find inspiration and real-world stories from others who have navigated career changes.
It’s never too late to pursue a more fulfilling and meaningful career. Let’s explore the possibilities together and help you confidently chart your new professional path.

How To Write Effective Business Letters

How To Write Effective Business Letters: A business letter does four things.

  1. Communicates information
  2. Creates advertising awareness
  3. Creates an image of you or your company
  4. Creates actions and decisions

Put your company name and return address at the top of the letter. If you are using letterhead, the return address is already in your business letterhead.

Here is the format. Note that some companies put the date in the right corner of the letter. Other companies put the date below the name of the sender.

Your Company Logo and Contact Information

Your information

Company name (for letters without letterhead)
Street address
City, state, zip
Phone number
Email address

Date

Contact’s information

Name, titles
Company name
Street address
City, state, zip
Phone number
Email address

Dear Mr., Mrs., Ms., Miss

Subject: (optional)

Start the body of the letter with a statement of the purpose of the letter.  For example, “I am writing this letter to order samples of your company’s products.”

State a call to action at the end of the body of the letter. For example, “Please send the samples today.”

Very truly yours,
Handwritten signature
Typed signature
Your title

Enclosures:  four pictures of samples

How to Handle The Interview Question What Is Your Greatest Weakness?

What Is Your Greatest Weakness?

I made the mistake of answering this question honestly during an interview for a promotion.  I did get the promotion.  However, my new supervisor had an annoying habit of reminding me of my answer to that question during our work together.

Being able to answer this question is part of standard interview preparation.  What should I have answered when he asked me about my greatest weakness?  Here are some options that would have helped me.

1. Know the requirements of the job well enough that you do not say anything that would disqualify your for the job.

2. Respect the need of the interviewer to ask questions that show whether you are qualified for the job.

3.  Avoid repeating the question in your answer.  For example, the interview says, “What is your greatest weakness?”  Do not start your answer with, “My greatest weakness is…”  You want to focus on positive things.

4. Prepare your answer based on something that is true about you.  False statements are costly eventually.

5.  Show how you have made adjustments so that your weakness has made your more effective.

Here are some examples that are actually true of me.

  • I dread being late so much that I would rather lose a little time by being early than experience anxiety over being late.  I find that I can easily use the time.  I simply take some things to work on while I wait nearby to enter for my appointment.
  • I read guidelines and prefer to use them to avoid conflict.  Other people focus on doing what makes sense at the time.  I have learned that sometimes it is better to go with the flow of the team than to question everything everyone says or does.  Guidelines are note rules or laws.  Creative people often offer solutions outside the guidelines.  When people want to know what the guidelines say, they do turn to me for advice.

Good luck with your interviews. You will do a great job.

6 Things to Know Before Accepting a Job Offer

6 Things to Know Before Accepting a Job Offer

When a company makes you a job offer, you have done a lot of hard work and now you are in control of the process.   You have the power to accept or decline the offer. You are also in a very important part of the process. This is the time for you to make certain that the job is as nearly right for you as you can find.
Here are some job offer questions as to help you evaluate the offer.

1. Have you met your supervisor?  When I went to work at Procter & Gamble, I did not meet my supervisor until the day I started to work.  I was in a division that Procter & Gamble had created to expand the field sales organization in the West.  Procter & Gamble conducted the interviews in an office of a recruiting firm in San Francisco.  The people who interviewed me were charismatic, outgoing, and personable sales people.   I had expected someone who was a fire-in-the-belly mentor who would raise my performance to new levels and teach me how to move ahead in one of the finest companies in the world.

However, on the first day at work, I met my supervisor, and he was anything but what I had expected.  He had been in the same first-line management job for fifteen years.  He was unenthusiastic about what he did.  He emphasized getting the job done as quickly as possible and heading home.  He was a good person, an excellent father and husband.  He was just different from what I had expected based on the people I had met during my interviews.

2. Is there anything in the job description you do not understand?  I have learned from working on recruiting assignments that job descriptions can create confusion.  Here are some things you might want to clarify before you take a job.

  • If the job involves travel, where will need to go and how often?
  • What are the reporting relationships in the new company?  If the job title includes a word such as “manager,” what does that mean?  Will you manage a budget or perhaps manager an overwhelming number of direct reporting relationships?
  • What is the job?  If you think that you are joining an innovation team and you find that you are joining a planning team, you will need to do a lot more analysis that creative thinking.
  • What is the promotion opportunity or expectation?  If you want promotions and there is little opportunity, you are facing frustration.  If the company expects you to take promotions and you want to settle into a career position, you could find that you face pressure to leave for people who can keep the promotion pipeline fluid.

I saw one instance at Polaroid where the company hired a person who quit when he found out he had to fly to a sales meeting in the Bahamas.  The man was afraid to get on an airplane.

3. Is the workplace right for you?

  • How long is the commute?
  • What type area surrounds the office?
  • Does the job allow you to work at home or require that you commute daily?
  • Do you have affordable transportation?

4. Do you have any special conditions that you want to set up?  Perhaps you sunk a few thousand dollars into a family vacation that will start six months into your new job.  If you cannot get your money back or if this vacation has special importance to your family, the time to raise the subject is before you accept the offer.  I married my wonderful wife four months after I started to work for Procter & Gamble.  The management team at Procter & Gamble fully supported my taking time for my wedding honeymoon.  I discussed the matter with them before I accepted the job.

5. Do you understand the benefits? There are a few things for you to consider about benefits before you accept a job offer.

  • When do the benefits start?  This information is critical to transitioning your healthcare coverage from your current coverage to the coverage at your new job.
  • What are the out-of-pocket costs for the benefits?  There are differences from one company to the next.  I placed people with a company that had terrific coverage for people who lived in California, the home state of the company.  However, the costs to people who lived outside of California were several thousand dollars a year.
  • What benefits are you giving up in the transition?  If you have prescription, major medical, primary care coverage, dental, and optical coverage at your current company, and the new company does not cover some of these things, based on your health, you might find a big gap between what you are getting and what the new company will give you.
  • What are the deductibles in the plans at your new company?  Insurance companies offer lower rates for higher deductibles.  You not need in any surprises in these potential gaps.

6. How often will the new company pay you?  If the new company pays you twice a month, you get 24 checks a year.  If the new company pays you every two weeks, you get 26 checks a year.  Companies often state income in the amount that the company will pay an employee per paycheck.

Finding and Verifying Email Addresses

Finding Email Addresses

A simple way to find an email address, put the name of the person and the domain name of the company in a search engine.  “email * * companyname.com”  *.edu, *.gov, *.net, *.com, *.org

Example: “First Name, Last Name ** examplecompany.com”

Verifying Email Addresses

Sometimes I find that I have an email address, but I am not certain that the email address is correct.  I could just try sending an email to the email address to see if I get a bounce back on the email.  However, some domains have a catchall feature where all the incorrectly addressed emails are held.  I may not get a bounce back and will have no way of knowing whether the email address is incorrect.  I have found this website helpful for confirming email addresses:

Follow this link:  Email Verifier.

The Power of Social Media for Employment Vetting

The Power of Social Media for Employment Vetting: Vetting means to investigate a person’s background thoroughly to decide if the person is a right fit for a job.

Yes, vetting goes two ways.  Employers can research applicants on social media.  Applicants can research employers and their companies on social media.

Some of the places to learn more about people include these websites:

  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • Flickr
  • Tumblr
  • WordPress
  • Blogger
  • Quora
  • YouTube
  • Reddit
  1. Stay positive in your comments.
  2. Stay away from subjects like race, religion, politics, or sex.
  3. Avoid the social sites when you are tired, grumpy, drinking, or any condition that might lead you to say things that can create controversy.
  4. Stay away from online discussions that are argumentative.

Social media is a real asset for promoting your career and your business.  Plan what you are gong to write.  Use good spelling and grammar.  Have a purpose to what you are writing.  Ask yourself, “What do I hope to do by saying this?”  Polish your personal profile to create the reputation you want to have.

When you are vetting other people, look at what you are reading in context.  If a person makes a joke on Facebook, the context might be right.  It is less appropriate for a person to make a joke on a LinkedIn profile.

6 Ways to Test Drive a New Job Before You Commit

Here are six tips to help you try out a new job.

See how jobs are working for other people. During a terrific vacation in Kona, Hawaii, my wife and    spent a day on the beach at the King Kamehameha Hotel. During the day, I bought lunch at a beachside sandwich stand. Later that year, my wife and I attended a comedy club near our home in Sacramento. Prior to the show, I chatted with the owner of the club, who told me that he owned a sandwich shop on the beach in Kona. His sandwich shop was the same place where I had bought lunch a few months before. The coincidence was interesting. However, what I found more interesting is that this man had success at finding things that he enjoyed doing in places that enjoyed traveling. He had a knack for starting low-cost operations that involved things he really enjoyed. He turned the things he loved to do into businesses.

Try taking vacation days to research your job. Before I got into the recruiting industry, I took a couple of vacation days and spent a day in the office of two recruiting firms. I learned that what the people were doing in these companies were things that I could do. One of the recruiters had the same background that I had. Seeing the similarity of his experience and my experience, I was able to know that my skills crossed over to the job of a recruiter. This type of work-with research is a customary practice.

You might consider an internship. Before signing up for an internship, find out the purpose of the role. If you see that the internship teaches you things that help you learn about types of jobs or prepares you for a job. During the internship, you can learn if that type of job is right for you.

For questions about compensation for internships see
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/71-flsa-internships

Volunteer work actually can lead to a job. Community service organizations, churches, hospitals, and schools are wonderful places to look for volunteer opportunities. I have an in-law who started working in a volunteer program a couple of days a week. She enjoyed what she was doing. She enjoyed working with the people. She enjoyed what the organization did. There was some magic in the connection and the volunteer project turned into a paying job.

Some companies pay people for project or consulting work. These types of jobs work great with companies that allow people to work from home. Freelance writers, programmers, accountants, researchers, and other skilled professionals find that this type of work through Internet search or through direct referral from other professionals. These types of jobs are great for deciding what you might want to do long-term.

Temporary to permanent is a fantastic way for people to find and test all types of jobs. I hired two temporary clerical employees who worked for me for over five years. Recent college graduates find that temporary to permanent is a wonderful way to break into an industry.

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