Category: Charting Your Career for Success

Business Meeting Tools:  Meeting preparation is important.  Equally important is having the right tools.  What should you bring to a meeting?

Cutting a diamond starts with having the right skills and the right tools. Likewise, for business meeting success we need the right tools to support our skills. ~ www.jaywren.com

Business Meeting Tools

What you bring to a business meeting is as important as the things you say or do in a business meeting.  Getting to a business meeting to discover that you do not have the things you need is not only embarrassing, it is often a business-meeting killer.  I recommend that you buy a portfolio case or a briefcase that you use just for meetings.  Keep the case stocked with the materials that you will take to every meeting.

When organizing your meeting case, make sure you bring the following items.

Bring several copies of presentations.

You should have a copy for your own use and a copy for each person on the meeting schedule.  Take extra copies for people who are not on the schedule but who might come into the meeting unannounced.  Sometimes having unexpected people join the meeting is a sign that the people are interested in what you have to say or show.

Bring a list of the attendees.

Having this list will help you organize your notes about questions people have.  The list can also help you remember people’s names and the role of the people in the meeting.

Bring a list of recommendations.

Having a list of recommendations adds power to your professional credibility and creates excitement about the quality of your work.

A Word of Caution: In an interview, be careful about leaving a copy of your recommendations with the hiring company.  Companies should not be contacting your references without your approval.

Bring a brag book or portfolio.

This book has samples of your work so that people can see the range of your success.

Bring your laptop.

If you have powerhouse presentations that you can show more examples of your work, you can use your laptop as a dynamic tool.

Bring business cards.

Some people see business cards to verify employment and job title.  The cards show people that you are who you say you are.

Bring a notepad.

You need to keep track of contact and company information that you learn during your meetings.  A notepad is an effective way to make notes without distracting people the way using a smartphone or laptop might distract people when you are taking notes.

Bring three or four pens.

The extra pens help you relax that you have a pen that works.  In addition, it is wise to make sure you can help an attendee who does not have a pen for taking notes.

Purpose: Why is it to some companies and people fail to achieve their goals. How can they define their goals better with an understanding of why they want to achieve those goals?

The benefits of knowing the purpose of a business or a career include increased understanding and greater engagement.

Goals and  Purpose

Goals are the things we hope to accomplish.  Purpose is the reason that we want to accomplish them.

I once heard a sales executive say that the only way to measure a company’s success are sales and earnings.  Pressed with the goal of increasing sales profitably, his view of the purpose a company was to make money for the owners and shareholders.

His focus on sales and profits as the purpose of the company was short sighted.  This company later failed, because the leadership didn’t understand that company’s purpose was to serve their customers with products their customers demanded.

So, Why Does It Matter?

Successful companies start with an idea of whom they will serve and what these people want.

Most companies set goals for what, when, how, and where they will deliver to meet consumer demand.

However, only the best companies focus on the purpose of the company, that is, consumer demand.  And, these companies beat competitors who focus strictly on goals but fail to remember the needs of the customer.

Illustration

Two peanut companies (not real companies) compete.  The goal of each company is to meet consumer demand for peanuts.  However, Company A realizes that consumer satisfaction is the purpose that will create demand for the company’s peanuts. Company A focuses on taste, price, and availability to exceed consumer perfection. In doing so, they create their purpose as a company.  As a result, Company A, also, excels above its competitors.

The less successful companies set and succeed in the achieving the same goal of meeting consumer demand for peanuts. However, they fail in some way to achieve customer satisfaction.

Career

In creating and updating your career plan, take a different view.  If it is your goal to make a lot of money, ask yourself, “What purpose can I serve to earn money?”

Another example is your long-term goal. Your career goal may be to become the president of a company. To achieve that goal, ask yourself, “What is the purpose of my company and how can I help my company achieve that purpose?”

Your answer might be, “I want to achieve the purpose of creating the largest and, in time, most profitable customer base in my company’s industry.” The goals you accomplish are the steps in achieving the company’s purpose.

On this basis, you will understand why your company needs you.  You will become engaged and purpose driven.

Case Study

I knew an hourly employee who hated having to redo work.  This person couldn’t grasp and an understanding of the purpose of the work.  That is, completing the work was not the purpose.  Completing the work was a goal in the process.  Delivering successful results was the purpose.

This person became unable of engaging in work and left the company to find another job.

Job-Listing Websites:  Everything is easier to find when you know where to look. ~ www.jaywren.com.  Job Boards and Job Search Engines, how they work and what to expect from both of them.

Job-Listing Websites: Everything is easier to find when you know where to look. ~ www.jaywren.com

Are job boards useful?  In some industries, job boards and job search engines are helpful.  I have spoken with people conducting a job search who found job boards and job search engines a waste of time.  However, in some industries, great companies rely heavily on job-listing websites.

The Types of Job-Listing Websites

There are two types of job-listing websites.

• #1 Job Boards
• #2 Job Search Engines

Job Boards post jobs listed with their company.  When you enter job search criteria into these website, the results return only the website’s listing.

Job search engines also list jobs posted with their company.   Plus, job search engines return results for jobs posted elsewhere on the Internet.

Because of their ability to scour the Internet for jobs, jobs search engines have gained tremendous popularity.  However, these job search engines naturally list their own job-listings first.

Google – The All-Inclusive Job Search Engine

A third option for finding jobs is Google job searches.  To find jobs on Google search, simply list the job title, the location, and the word ‘jobs.’  Google will return results for jobs under that job title.  Similar to job search engines, Google will list Jobs based on your search parameters and your location.

For example, I entered “district manager jobs” into Google search and got this statement “About 8,890,000 results.”

In these results, I got job listing from job search engines and job boards. In other words, I found listing wherever Google found them on the Internet.

Additionally, I found these search results refinements.

• District Manager
• Past 3 Days
• Fulltime
• Region Manager
• And other search refinements

Google Custom Search

I built a custom Google job search engine Jobs.JayWren.com for maximum effectiveness in Google search.

On this site, I have customized a Google search engine to scour the Internet for jobs listed on job boards, job search engines, and websites for hiring companies.

Google is far more effective than job search engines and job boards at finding jobs on any website from anyplace on the web.  By using Google search to find jobs, you can work more quickly to find jobs that fit your skills.

Browser Tip

A helpful tip is to open the job listing links on Google in a separate tab or separate window.  By using that technique, you will be able to work your way through the Google search results without having to re-enter you search.

Interview Practice: What can you do to prepare and practice for your job interview? Here are some ideas that will help you.

What good are your talent and skills if no one can see them? ~ www.jaywren.com .com

How You Benefit from Interview Practice

No one can know with any certainty what questions to expect in an interview. However, interview questions tend to fit into categories.  For the most part, these questions fit into a range of questions.

Essentially, interview preparation come under four categories:

• Everything about you
• Everything about the hiring company

These points will become clearer in the discussion below. Here are examples of questions under these two categories.

Everything About You

Workplace Relationships: Keep your answers positive.  The interviewer is trying to understand how well you work with others.

• How would you describe your workplace relationships?
• Who was the best supervisor you have ever had?
• Tell me about the worst supervisor you ever had?
•  How would your peers describe you?
• Tell me about a conflict you faced at work and how you dealt with it.
• What do you expect out of your team/co-workers?
• describe your expectations of your future manager?
• What qualities to you seek in building a team?

Your Character and Emotional Intelligence: These questions help the interviewer understand your individual professional and personal qualities.

• What is your management style?
• Have you ever told a lie?
• What motivates you? Whom do you most admire?
• Tell me about yourself?
• How do you deal with stress?
• To what do you attribute your success?
• How do you describe your perfect day?

Qualifications:  In asking questions about your qualifications, the interviewer is looking for specifically skills and experience that qualify you for their job opening and your potential for long-term success with their company. Here are some sample questions.

• What is your greatest strength?
• Describe your greatest achievement?
• How do your qualifications make you the best fit for our job?

Your Growth Potential:  In this case, the interviewer is examining how well you can grow short-term and create long-term value to the company.

• What are your long-term goals?
•  Describe the things you do you do to grow professionally?
• What are your career passions?
•  When you were a growing up, what did you want to become?
•  Can you describe your typical day?
• Tell me about your greatest weakness?
• Where do you see yourself in five years?
• Are you willing to relocate?

Questions about Why You are Making a Job Change:

• Why are you leaving your current job?
• Were you laid off?
• What are you looking for in your next job?

Everything about the Hiring Company

Taking all of the questions above, you should direct your preparation on how your answers to those questions show why the company should hire.  You must show that understand the opportunity.  Additionally, you must know the company’s products, distribution channels,

Putting your knowledge of the opportunity together with your knowledge of company, you must show how you fit the company’s short-term and long-term goals and needs.

The answers should show, based on your knowledge of the job opportunity and the conditions at the company, that you are the companies best possible hire.

Here are some sample questions.

• Why do you want to work for [insert company name]?
• What is your dream job? Should indicate why you the hiring company is the place where you want to work?
• Could you describe your plan for the first 90 days on the job at our company?

Mental Attitude and Interview Practice

Interview practice will help you think more clearly.  Furthermore, the practice will strengthen your ability to think on your feet.  Interview role playing with another person and in front of a mirror will help you feel more poised.

Going to the Interview

Interviews are like batting in baseball. Who knows what pitch is coming next? Often the pitcher does not know where the next pitch is going until it gets there.   As professional baseball players do, take a deep breath. Stay loose. Trust yourself.

Resigning Gracefully: When Leaving a Company, knowing how to say goodbye gracefully is important. What are the do’s and don’ts of an exit interview?

When Leaving a Company, there are things to do and things not to do.

One of help you resign gracefully. The other with burn bridges you may need later.

Using these techniques will reduce the stress for you and avoid burning bridges with the company you are leaving.  First, here are some things to do when you leaving a company.

Do prepare for the things to do in an exit interview.

Despite what some headhunters will tell when they are preparing you to leave your current company, there are benefits to attending and even excelling in the way you handle your exit interview.

Before resigning, weigh the pros and cons of leaving your current company.

Once you are committed to leaving, give the company two weeks’ notice.  Two weeks’ notice is common courtesy.  You owe your company no more.

Also, before you resign, remove your personal property from your workplace and download or delete your personal files from the company computers.  You do not want to run into your company holding your property until someone gets around to doing an inventory of what belongs to you and what belong to your employer.

Do prepare to return company property.

When you go into an exit interview, bring the company property to the interview: e.g., keys to a company car, company laptop, mobile phone, etc.  Since you have already recovered all your property, put the burden on your employer to give you an inventory of any other property they believe that you need to return.  You may not have to offer to turn over the property during the exit interview.  However, having it on hand will make things simpler if your company decides to walk you out the door.

Do prepare for questions that you have about compensation and benefits you receive when leaving.

Prepare for to discuss compensation due you upon leaving the company: unpaid vacation time, unpaid bonuses, and unpaid salary.  Your company should explain to you what money you have coming and when they will pay you.

Know the questions you need answering in transitioning or continuing your health benefits after you leave the company.

As you will discover from the DOL website, your employer owes you information on the way that your benefits extend beyond your employment.

Using these techniques will reduce the stress for you and avoid burning bridges with the company you are leaving.  First, here are some things to do when you leaving a company.

Do be positive but firm in your resignation.

Politely explain that it is time for you to move on.  Thank your employers for the support they have given you.  Ask for your employer’s’ direction about how you can transition your material and responsibilities smoothly and promptly.

When Leaving a Company, avoid some things.

There are things not to do in an exit interview to make sure that you leave on good terms.  Somewhere down the road, you may find that the company you are leaving will help you with a strong reference in seeking another job.  Avoiding these things will make you exit go more smoothly.

Don’t discuss counter offers.

One of the purposes of an exit interview is to prevent losing employees who are critical to the company at the time.  I emphasize “at the time,” because people known for disloyalty have a mark against them in future evaluations and layoffs.  Counter offers can drag out the length of the exit interview, perhaps into days.  Counter offers just increase the stress in your exit interview.  As I have written elsewhere, they are offers that are too good to accept.

Don’t make the exit interview a gripe session.

If you are unhappy with the people or practices of the company you are leaving, an exit interview is not the time to express them.  The time to express your concerns is before you start looking for another job and you can still make a difference at your current employer.

Don’t discuss your new job.

Don’t say where you are going to work or how much money your new employer is paying.  Avoid giving any details about the function of the new job or your capacity in the new job.  The information about your new job is confidential information between you and your new employer.

Resigning Gracefully: Don’t be rude or disrespectful.

Whether you are going through an exit interview with your supervisor or an HR person does not matter.  Remember that the person who is conducting the interview is simply doing a job.  They are not your whipping child.  They are human beings you may or may not like.  However, being rude or disrespectful will not help you garner respect from people who may read or hear about the interviewer’s experience with you.

As I said in the first paragraph, somewhere down the road, you may need the people involved in your exit interview to help you find your next job.

Career Change:  Below are powerful tools and suggestions others have found helpful in making an effective career move.

4 Essential Steps to a Highly Successful Career Change

• Resume
• Resume Cover Letter
• Interview Preparation
• Thank You Letter

You don’t have to do everything for success. But you do have to do the right things. ~ www.jaywren.com

First, a Resume is Basic to a Career Change

Here is what you put into a resume and the order in which you put this information.  If you replace this information with your information, you will have written a resume.

Your name
Street address
City, State Zip
Phone
Email address

Rule 1: Never refer to yourself in the third person in the body of the resume.
Rule 2: Use factual accomplishments and not subjective opinions of yourself.

• Example of a fact:  exceeded assigned sales goal by 30%
• Examples of opinion; goal-oriented, creative, tenacious, strategic, honest, loyal:  For a person to
  use adjectives about themselves puts human resource people to sleep

Objective:  This is optional and often redundant.  Your resume has the objective of getting you interviews with an employer who sees a match in your location, your compensation, and your experience and that employer’s needs.  It is conventional to state an objective here but you can probably find a better use for the space.

Employment History (Most recent job first)

Company Name, Location, and Period of Employment (From to)
Most recent title:

• Use bullet format.
• List things you have accomplished.
• Do not waste space on your just giving a job description.
• List things that showed you made a difference.
• Include increasing sales, reducing costs, promoting people, saving time, increasing productivity,
  etc.
• Employers and recruiters search their databases for specific words.
• List successes with specific industry words or functions.
• Include the actual name of your product categories, product names, sales accounts, functions (e. g, Profit & Loss, Market Research or Software Names, New Product Development, Market Insights, Innovation), etc.

Next List Previous Titles at this company and again bullets on successes:

• List your accomplishments.
• Do not waste space on your just giving a job description.
• List things that showed you made a difference.
• Things you have accomplished include increasing sales, reducing costs, promoting people, saving time, increasing productivity, etc.
• Companies and recruiters search their databases for specific words.
• Include the actual name of your product categories, product names, sales accounts, functions (e.g., Profit & Loss, Market Research or Software Names, New Product Development, Market Insights, Innovation), etc.

Then include Previous Companies going back in time from most recent.

Education goes next after you have listed the first job you held after college or in your career:  Part-time or vacation jobs held while in school are sometimes not listed except as a bullet to the education experience.

Do not put references or salary information on your resume.

Second, Resume Cover Letter

Suggestions on writing a cover letter

Your Name
Street Address
City, State Zip
Phone Number
Email Address

Date

Name of person receiving your letter
Company Name
Street Address
City, State Zip

Dear First Name:

(If you come recommended by someone, list that person’s name here).  Name of person referred me to you.  I am writing to apply for as position as a (fill in name of position) with your company.  My resume is attached.

In my resume, you will find a record of success in (list competencies)

When may I interview with you?

Best regards,
Your Name

Third, Interview preparation

Here is what you can do to have a better interview.

1) Prepare an agenda for the interview, things you want to cover.
2) Research the company.  Find articles on the company and use information from these articles in your interview presentation.
3) Research the job and be prepared to talk about how your skills fit the job.
4) Review your skills and the information in your resume.
5) Be upbeat and positive about the world, the way you might be on a Friday afternoon.
6) Take with you extra copies of your resume, a typed list of questions, and paper and pen for notes.
7) Bring examples of your work that show your skills and successes.
8) Be factual about the work you did and the work others did to make you a success.
9) In the interview, listen to the questions you are asked and be sure that you understand the question before answering.  If the question is too broad to enable you to give a good answer, ask the interviewing to help you understand better what he or she is trying to learn.
10) Be positive when you talk about your current company, your boss, and your job.  Emphasize that you are looking to make a change to get more of what the company interviewing you has to offer.
11) Write stories of your successes as preparation to discuss how you can contribute to a company’s business.

Outline for an Interview Agenda

Candidates have found that the following outline is effective in getting the job.

In using this type of outline to prepare for an interview, a person will have anticipated and practiced how
to handle many of the questions and contingencies that may arise in a job interview.

WHY I AM INTERESTED IN WORKING FOR YOUR COMPANY

WHAT I BRING TO A COMPANY IN YOUR INDUSTRY

MY PLANS FOR DEVELOPING YOUR BUSINESS

WAYS THAT I CAN ENSURE THAT THIS HAPPENS

WHY I AM INTERESTED IN WORKING FOR YOUR COMPANY

•        The reputation of the company
•        The long history of success of the company
•        The appeal of the industry
•        The opportunity to work in an environment that enables me to use my skills
•        The company commitment to respecting and honoring their employees with programs
•        The opportunity to work in the field of my choice

WHAT I BRING TO A THIS INDUSTRY

•        Creatively and enthusiastically use the knowledge I gained in college to make the organization
  more successful
•        Have a range of appropriate skills
•        Have developed marketing strategies to include customer service, pricing, and product selection

Fourth, Thank You Letter

Your name
Street address
City, State Zip
Phone
Email address

Date

Mr. /Ms. Interviewer
Name of company
Street address, City, State Zip

Dear Mr. /Ms. Interviewer:

Thank the person for meeting with you.

Express your impression of the company.

Express your interest in the job.

Best regards,

Your name

Extra Tools and Tips Summary

1. Reference material
2.  Work your network by making a list of every possible contact you have ever made in business and contact these people for ideas and opportunities.
3. Ask for referrals of every person you contact.
4. Lay out your goals as specifically as you can, but be aware that the more flexible you are in terms of money, location, and opportunity the more opportunities you will have available to you.
5. Contingency recruiter or retained recruiter?  In practice, how a recruiter is compensated is not nearly as important as what contacts the recruiter has.  Typically, retained recruiters are conducting searches where the salary is above $750,000 and involve “C” level managers.
6. Be organized.  Make a list daily of your contacts, what you discussed what action you have taken and what action needs to be taken.
7. Read the want ads in the local newspaper, national publications, and especially trade journals. Become an expert on what is in the job market.
8. Before approaching a company directly, research it thoroughly.  How is it structured?  Bottler, distributor, direct, or broker sales?  Public or private?  Do you have a referral to get your foot in the door, etc.?  Who are the key managers for the job you are seeking? To whom do these people report?
9. Prepare for an interview the same way you would prepare for a major sales call, business review, or planning session where you are the key presenter.
10. Follow up on contacts you have made.