Dipping into adjoining swim lanes, not new pools

A follow up to my blog post, The Problem With Changing Swim Lanes, posted November 23, 2009:

I hope this post wasn't taken as advice to pursue ONLY what you consider to be your "center of a bullseye" perfect fit positions - that's as defeating of a job search strategy as "Carpet Bombing" - firing at / applying to anything that moves.

Broadening out ring by ring from your bullseye to jobs that at their core use your already proven transferable skills is how to generate more opportunities than you can find by only focusing on the tight center of your perfect fit.

Upping your volume of opportunities by broadening out from your center and dipping into ADJOINING swim lanes is the way to overcome the very real fear associated with securing your next paycheck.

My comments about people who inappropriately apply for Exec Admin positions were geared toward those that I've seen apply who have never done that job and/or are NOT fast typists or good on other commonly used office computer programs (direct quote: "If they hire me I'm sure I could learn Excel, PowerPoint, and scheduling in Outlook...") who may be organized at home but have never scheduled for and organized someone else. But they somehow think their "excellent customer service skills" will make all those other pesky elements of the daily job duties as described in the posting go away.

This is delusional and self-defeating thinking.

Especially in the current economy:

a. If you DO have the majority of the transferable skills required in a specific position, by all means increase your quantity of opportunities you are considered for by applying.

b. If you do not have the requisite skills outlined in the posting, (unless the hiring manager is a dear friend) it is very likely that you are wasting your time and would be a stronger candidate for a different position that DOES use more of your transferable skills. (in my example, perhaps a customer service rep or call center position?)

If you are panicking, you would be well advised to pause for a moment and reflect on what your transferable skills are. Then go back to applying generously, but out from the center of your bullseye and into adjoining swim lanes to yours, not entirely different pools.

12 reasons this holiday season is a GREAT time to land your new job

1. Most people consider the holidays the worst time of the year to find a new job. This completely false myth cuts down on your competition, as other job candidates back off on their job search until January. Staying on course can help you jump out ahead of everyone else.

2. Hiring is starting to perk back up. Buzz with my career coach buddies from around the country is that they share my experience of prepping more clients for interviews, because in November many of us saw a significant uptick of our clients getting interviews.

3. Economists predict first quarter hiring. Smart managers are planning for 2010, including staffing needs. It's a perfect season for job creation: get in front of the person who should be over the job you'd do, and show them how you can save them money, make them money or solve a problem. Help them build you into their Q1 2010 plan. (Note: offering to work on contract even sweetens the deal by reducing the risk to put you on the payroll)

4. The holidays offer a natural reason to reach out and reconnect with lost friends and business acquaintances.

5. It is also the season to touch your network again and offer them good wishes.

6. There are always fantastic, single day or short-term opportunities to volunteer during the holidays. You'll feel good helping those less fortunate, have something positive to talk about at holiday social events, and just might meet someone who can help you land that job you want.

(Note: 4 and 5 replenish your reserves of social capital by reaching out to people just to wish them well, without requesting anything of them. 6 replenishes your coffers by giving back. )

7. Catching up with others gives you a perfect, natural occasion to plant the seed of what you are looking for. When someone asks what you've been up to, be upbeat, clear and concise about what you offer/are looking to do. Let them know what you’d appreciate them keeping an ear out for.

8. The holidays offer a high concentration of social events and opportunities to network. More than any other year, there is no stigma to being out of work, so get out there and chat with people. Don’t shy away from events and occasions to network!

9. At holiday events you have easier access to talk to literally anyone you'd care to meet, including higher level managers.

10. It can be easier to get informational interviews when work slows a bit and only a percentage of staff is left in the office. Managers are also more likely to answer their own phones and emails.

11. People are generally feeling more good will toward others. If you've been stalling about asking a networking contact for an introduction, the holidays are a great time to ask for that favor.

12. Many companies have a "use it or lose it" policy regarding open positions rolling over into the New Year. I've seen hiring decisions move at lightning speed when the right person was found and the deadline to get them on the books was approaching fast.

In previous years I've helped a client iron out the particulars of an offer that included a company-preferred start date of December 30. I've had a client receive his written offer by courier on Christmas Eve, and another that was invited to the company Christmas party as his first introduction to his new staff.

Be of good cheer! The 2009 holiday season holds a lot of promise for those job candidates with initiative and a positive, consistent approach to their job search.

Everyday gratitude: its not just for Thanksgiving anymore

Let's start with a nifty exercise I wrote about on August 3, 2009, to kick off a "Week of Happiness."

Write down five things you are grateful for. Without thinking much at all, these pop out for me:

1. I am grateful for my loving and supportive family.
2. I am grateful that I get to do meaningful work.
3. I am grateful for being in good health.
4. I am grateful for good friends.
5. I am grateful for opportunities to help others.

Probably about what you were expecting. Its easy to come up with a nice little list once a year to honor Thanksgiving Day. But let's go beyond Thanksgiving to being grateful as a way of life.

Many experts swear by DAILY gratitude as a prescription for happiness. A nice exercise circulated on Facebook over the last few weeks: people committed to using their status every day to share one thing they are grateful for. Those that did this exercise reported that the first few days were easy, but after that it got increasingly difficult for most to think of new things without repeating themselves.

Defining at least one thing per day that you are grateful for is an awesome practice to increase your overall happiness - and your health!

Go ahead and start the process this Thanksgiving with everyone else. But do one better - adopt gratitude as a daily habit. I have a friend who years ago was diagnosed with something and told he only had a short time to live. Having long outlived his doctors' diagnosis, he is a model and inspiration of being grateful every single day. And sharing his gratitude with others.

The Chain of Gratitude
(first published Wednesday, July 23, 2008)

The other day I thanked my sister for a note she gave me decades ago. She was surprised and delighted that I remembered it and took the time to tell her how much it meant to me. It brought back a lot of fond memories for her. It made her day.

Yesterday, out of the blue, I received a phone call from a client who just wanted to say, "Thank you!" for how much I've influenced her attitude, behavior and career over the years. She was getting dressed and realized how much she was looking forward to the day ahead, and it hit her just how very much I had helped her get where she is now. She called just to express her gratitude. It made my day.

"Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it." - William Arthur Ward

I intend to keep the chain going, and make someone else's day today. We're all presented with more than enough opportunities each day to be grateful. We don't always remember to, or risk expressing it.

A client shared this technique recently: she carries a journal, and repeatedly throughout the day stops to write down everything she is grateful for. What a great practice, especially for anyone going through a trying time like a job search!

Like my 20 minutes of positive reading and reflection each morning, reminding yourself throughout the day of how much you have to be grateful for will help thoughts of gratitude edge out negative thoughts, and bring more to you to be grateful for. We are what we practice.

Have a grateful day, and share your gratitude - you will make someone else's day!

The problem with changing swim lanes

I use the term "changing swim lanes" in a job search to indicate moving away from jobs that utilize your unique experience and skills in some way to apply for "I could do that" jobs - ones you have never done before.

I have known a person here or there who has gotten a job in a new swim lane through a very solid networking contact. But applying to postings this way is a self-defeating strategy. Trust me on this - you haven't felt rejection till you've been rejected for a position that in the back of your mind you "know" you are too good for.

Executive Administrator jobs are quite popular for swim lane jumpers. I have seen applicants who "think they are overqualified so they must be a shoe-in" for these jobs. Some with very impressive bodies of experience in another swim lane: from project and program managers to senior Sales Account Executives to seasoned HR professionals. You name it, everyone in every swim lane seems to think they can do an AE job at the highest levels, and get hired for it.

Sure, they can interact at top levels of the organization and provide customer service. But they are totally discounting the work itself as a profession in its own right, and some very critical requirements of the job description, including: multi-tasking to manage another's schedule and travel; word processing at a fast rate and cranking out Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations like nobody's business...

What they also fail to realize is that they are upping their competition exponentially to include every other lane-jumper from every single walk of life, as well as EA pros who have spent as much time in this profession as they have in their own.

Then when they don't get a call to interview for the job they are devastated. I have to ask, seriously, would you have hired you vs. someone who has held this exact position successfully at a different company?

A friend and business acquaintance who is a senior manager for a very large company is looking for an Executive Administrator. Reviewing the posting on their website I noticed that his job requirements are fairly standard, but include five years as an Executive Administrator reporting to a senior executive.

Believing that there are a lot of quality candidates out there, the hiring manager doesn't want to train a new hire on the particulars of the job, including running the trap line for him as a "C" level manager and the special nuances of scheduling and travel that come with supporting him in doing his massive job in a very large organization. Nor should he need to train at his level... there should be plenty of skilled Executive Administrative professionals who have been promoted over the length of their careers to support higher and higher level managers.

He wants to hire a candidate who has done the job before; someone who has proven success at the same level in a similar sized organization to his own.

You'd think there would be a lot of quality candidates in this job market, but the problem is that his job is also a particularly attractive one to prospective lane-jumpers. He shared with me that the first 150 applicants were ALL people who "wanted to" do the job, but NONE that had done the job before.

He's not interviewing any of the hopeful lane jumpers, because he doesn't have to. There are quality, experienced Executive Administrative professionals out there, and he can wait for one of them.

Good news on the job front?

I love good news. And according to AP writer Mercedes M. Cardona, "The job market is beginning to show a pulse." Chatter is up on Twitter among my career coach peers across the country that we are prepping more clients for interviews these days. The trend may not be moving the needle very far yet, but insiders can feel it.

Could we really have finally bottomed out and are now turning the corner?

Ms. Cardona quotes some statistics that go beyond gut feelings in her article "Return to routine" in the Seattle Times Sunday NW Jobs section:

According to recruiters Challenger, Gray and Christmas, the number of layoffs announced by major U.S. corporations dropped by 21% in August, below July levels and 14% below a year ago.

She also references a recent Robert Half International / CareerBuilder survey as showing that managers are planning to hire a combination of workers during the next 12 months. Of those surveyed:

• 53% of employers plan to hire full-time employees
• 40% plan to hire contract, temporary or project workers
• 39% plan to add part-time employees.

Additionally, 61% said their companies were willing to negotiate higher pay for qualified candidates, and 40% said they plan to give raises after the economy improves to retain top performers.

People may be starting to plug back in. But the fact is, things have changed on both sides of the table.

Employees will return to a different environment, as every organization has done its share of hunkering down and making tough choices to ride out this economic downturn. The "survivors" who are currently working have very full plates, and the jobs that are being offered now tend come with more responsibilities, as other positions have been cut.

There has been a sea change in the returning employees as well. As much as they are anxious to get back to work, a lot of my unemployed clients have talked about not wanting to re-enter the workforce defining their relationship to their job the way it was when they exited.

A common theme among those who want a change is wanting either (or both) more meaning to their work or work-life balance, even if that means not matching their last salary.

So, the jobs are coming back. But they are bigger now, offered to people who want more balance in their lives. Should be interesting!

Thank You, Veterans and Military Families

Lt. (jg) Jean L. Porter, my mother

In honor of Veterans Day, November 11, 2009, a break from my usual subjects:

My grandfather was an Army Colonel who landed at Normandy and led troops across Europe during World War II. My Aunt Mary Lou was a very rare and pioneering female Army officer. My Uncle is a West Point graduated retired Lieutenant Colonel.

My cousins lost their father when we were all just kids. A military pilot, his plane went down with the rest of his squadron during a training mission.

Both Navy, my parents met playing bridge in an Officer's Lounge on base. My mom did coding and decoding, and my dad was a sweep-you-off-your-feet Navy pilot and flight instructor. A definite Top Gun Maverick of his time.

My mother had to get a special permission form signed by her chain of command to be out of uniform and in a wedding dress on their big day. The pictures show her beauty matched by my dad's dashing presence in his Navy dress whites. Her father missed her wedding and the chance to walk her down the aisle. Grandpa was somewhere in France he couldn't name, leading troops on their march toward Austria.

When asked why she went in the Navy instead of following the family tradition of service in the Army, my mother always said it was because she looked better in blue than green.

Only after she passed away, at age 82, did we discover papers indicating that she was too young to be accepted into the Army, but not the Navy. World War II was raging and she wanted to do her part, so she enlisted in the branch that would take her.

I'm terribly proud of my brother for carrying on the family tradition of military service, as a Green Beret HALO (high-altitude, low-opening) paratrooper.

I did not serve in the military. But I want to take the opportunity of Veteran's Day to share just a bit of our family's story. So many families have given more and sacrificed more than ours. We owe every single one of them a debt of gratitude.

Thank you, Veterans and military families everywhere - for your immeasurable service and sacrifice.

An interview fable

This is actually a true story, but makes a great fable on the subject of interviewing.

A while back I worked with a client who had been let go from a family-run cemetery when it was purchased by a major national chain. His unique strengths included a combination of ethics, integrity and compassion that enabled him to establish rapport easily, and help people make difficult decisions at a very vulnerable time in their lives. He worked hard and landed a job he loved: selling powered wheelchairs and van conversions for an ethical, family-run company.

About a year into his new job my client called me to ask if I knew anyone "just like him." Business was good and his boss needed to hire another sales person.

I was excited to tell him that I did! I had just finished writing a resume for a client who had the same unique set of strengths, albeit cultivated through an entirely different path. For years she had delicately helped clients through all the financial arrangements of home foreclosure. She also volunteered providing spiritual counseling to hospice patients. She was a bit older, which we all thought would be an asset for the position selling mobility devices. She even lived near their store.

I helped her write a great cover letter, which she sent with her resume directly to my client, who hand-carried it to his boss, who was excited to receive such a hearty recommendation, and would definitely be calling her for an interview.

Two weeks passed, and she hadn't heard from the company. I called my client, and it turns out that shortly after he had handed his boss my other client's resume, another job applicant had dropped his resume off in person. He arrived in a wheelchair, as he was missing one leg. My client's boss decided that using a wheelchair himself, the other candidate would easily establish rapport with customers - and hired him on the spot.

The moral of the story: it's not always about you; sometimes you won't get the job, even when you did so well you wouldn't change a thing. You can be absolutely PERFECT for a position and company, and even see "buying signs" in an interview. But you can't predict who will come in right after you. The hiring manager might perceive the next candidate as an even more perfect fit for the job.

No one gets offered every job they interview for, or even gets to interview for every job they apply for. Actors quickly learn that to survive they can't give up every time they go to an audition and don't get the part.

It's not fair, but acknowledging that it isn't can help you not take it personally when even though you've given it your best shot a job goes to someone else. It's not always possible to compete against a one-legged candidate.