What Is Resume Strategy Anyway?

Today I completed my 600th free resume critique (wild-stab-in-the-dark estimate, but my point is it’s up there). I always take the time to review each resume in detail and provide very specific advice on resume strategy (unless you’ve given me something truly horrendous, I rarely comment on format). But it occurred to me as I was typing up my comments today that I am often repeating myself. It’s not that I’m getting lazy, it’s that I see the same kinds of mistakes being made again and again. So, as a procrastination move because it’s 98 degrees out and much too hot to pack for the trip I will be taking shortly, I’ve decided to put together some of the suggestions I’ve offered this year, as a kind of who’s who on resume strategy.

Objective Statement

• “Instead of using an objective statement, use the title of your target job. It’s okay to change it each time you send your resume out, but if you aren’t sure about the target yet, its premature to write your resume.”

Profile/Summary

• “Consider your resume as a marketing document, you have to write with a particular audience in mind, and you have to know what it is you are selling them.”
• “What is your ideal next company? Is it a mid-sized firm who is looking to take their enterprise infrastructure to the next level of integration and needs a Business Analyst who can bridge the language and thinking of business and technology? Is it a consulting company who helps other firms? What are you particularly good at, and who could use those skills? What ever it is, take the time to define your audience (if you have more than one, you may need different versions), and get really clear on their pain points. Then, write a summary that speaks to their pain points and demonstrates why your background and experience makes you the ideal candidate to solve their problems. In total it should take you less resume real estate to say than it did for me to explain it.”
• “It can be tempting to try to keep your resume general so that you can use it for several different positions, but this strategy will work against you. If you have several different interests or opportunities, then tailor a different profile for each of them.”
• “In today’s job market, everybody is describing themselves as a dynamic, problem-solving team player. It’s the equivalent of ‘new and improved’ in product marketing – nobody buys it.”

Skills

• “Your list of skills should only include things that are directly relevant to the target job.”
• “Put together a list of ten or twelve terms and phrases that describe your expertise – look at sample job ads to make sure you are hitting to top keywords”
• “Make the skills focused on your target job only – somebody who is hiring an IT sales guy doesn’t care that you are good at desktop publishing unless their product or target client is related to desktop publishing.
• You have 26 skills here, and the important stuff is getting lost. See if you can get it down to the top ten. Start by skipping the fluff, because your reader almost certainly will”

Education

• “Since you did a master’s degree, I’m guessing that there was a master’s project, this would be a good place to describe it (one or two bullets at most)”
• “The fact that you are a certified reflexologist is of no relevance to your career goal as an accountant. No, it doesn’t demonstrate your commitment to continuous learning, and no, it doesn’t show that you have a lot of interests other than accounting. Get it out there.”
• “Have your credentials, degrees and professional development in the same section, or at least close together, or a hiring manager may not notice that you have your PMP, MBA and CGA”
• The important part here is the degree that you obtained, not the school you went to. Make sure *that’s* the thing that jumps out.

Experience (New Graduate)

• “Instead of dividing your experience between volunteer and professional, divide it between Relevant Experience, Additional Professional Experience, and Community Involvement. For the items that fit under relevant experience, indicate whether you volunteered or were paid”

Experience (Seasoned Pro)

• “You’ve committed a lot of resume real estate to laying out your responsibilities, but there is nothing attention-grabbing here. Your resume should tell a good story of your career. What was your mandate when you came on board, and how did it change over time? What was happening in the company when you came on board, what challenges did you have to face, what kinds of problems did you help solved. Who did you help, and why did it matter?
• “As you consider what to write here, keep the target in mind, and ask yourself so what, because they certainly will.”
• “No idea what this means, and that’s a bad thing. Give a brief description of what you were actually doing, emphasis on brief. All these ten bullets can be consolidated into one tightly written description – leaves room to focus on accomplishments”
• “You held two different positions with *****. Was this a promotion? If so, its worth showcasing this point – why did they pick you?”
• “This is not a five-verb accomplishment. By over describing it this way, you are diluting it’s impact”
• “Read your resume out loud. Does it sound stilted when you say it? That’s the way it will be perceived by somebody else. Too many adjectives, adverbs and four-syllable power words makes it hard to read, and can come across as ostentatious. Remember, your goal is to make the reader’s job as easy as possible. “

Dated/Non-Relevant Experience

• “This takes up a lot of resume real estate, and unless this is an area you want to get back into, you can cut the details out and summarize this into “previous experience includes four years as a ***********. This will make room for more information/accomplishments on your more recent jobs.”

IT Skills

• “It’s going to be the rare hiring manager who cares that you’ve used Windows 95.”
• “Go through this list with a ruthless editing pen and leave in only the software, hardware, middleware, and methodologies that are in demand for your target job – unless your target company is one with out-dated systems, in which case, leave it in.”

Associations

• “Separate out the professional associations from the philanthropic ones.
• “For the professional associations, did you just pay the annual membership fee, or were you actively involved. If involved, briefly describe how.”

Other Interests

• Knitting reading gardening walks on the beach stamp collecting photography
• “International travel: Asia, South Africa, Brazil, Eastern Europe *** this is good to keep in if your target job could require business dealings with other countries”
• “Three-time Ironman competitor (2nd place and 4th place finishes) *** I like this. It demonstrates your drive to succeed and ability to set and achieve goals”

I will continue to provide free critiques, and I will continue to do them one by one, in detail, no template statements. But chances are that if the candidate wasn’t thinking like a marketer when they wrote their resume, my feedback will include some of the points above.

Tags: Canadian resume writer, career story, how to write a resume, job search, Karen Siwak, objective statement, Resume, resume mistakes, resume strategy, Toronto resume writer
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The Passion Myth

If you google “find your passion” you will get 39,000,000 hits. Go to the self-help section of any bookstore and you will see 50 or more volumes on finding your passion, following your passion, living your passion. Every other twitter bio or LinkedIn bio has a reference to “passionate about.” Passion, as they say, is the new black.

So I was hardly surprised when a young friend came to me for career advice, and started the conversation by saying “My job sucks, I’m bored to tears. I just can’t figure out what my passion is”. She spoke as if somewhere, out there, is a single career-related purpose that, if she could but find it, would lead to eternal fulfillment. This was her fifth “it sucks” job in three years, and it was clear that she had fallen for the passion myth.

Myth # 1: I’m not making enough money, so clearly I’m not on the right path.

Reality Bite – Passion does not equate with income.
If you are lucky, you have a passionate interest that feeds your soul and gives lightness to your day. But if you look outside yourself for affirmation or compensation for your passion, you may be in for disappointment. Don’t believe me? Watch the auditions for American and Idol or So You Think You Can Dance, and you’ll see thousands of people hoping that their talents will make them a star. For all but a handful, that dream will be crushed. Many of those crushed enthusiasts will be too embarrassed to ever sing or dance again and that, to me, is tragic. If you are passionate about singing, then sing. If you are passionate about dancing, then dance. But do it because you love to sing and dance. Not because you crave the applause.

Nearly every self-help book or website mentions turning your hobby into a career. Stories abound of people who did exactly that and made millions. Less often told, but exponentially more numerous, are the stories of people who tried to turn their hobbies into an income stream and things didn’t work out the way they expected. The woodworker who stopped getting any joy out of his art because all of his commissions were boring pieces for clients with no imagination. The cooking enthusiast who never got to do any cooking because they spent 95% of their time dealing with the mundane business details involved in running a restaurant.

More practical advice would be to “Find a Job that Pays Reasonably Well So That You Can Afford to Follow Your Passions Outside of Work – but that wouldn’t be a very sexy book title.

Myth #2: ‘Following Your Passion’ is doing work that has meaning instead of being a mindless worker ant.

Reality Bite – All work has meaning – even the boring stuff.
Stop approaching passion as if it were something that you can “find”, like the perfect lifestyle accessory, or something that you “do”, like saving the world. Start thinking of passion as a way of being, a quality that you can and must cultivate.

When it comes to our work, we choose to be passionate. Or not. We choose to be actively engaged. Or not. We choose to be conscientious. Or not. We choose to treat customers and colleagues with courtesy and consideration. Or not. We choose to give more than is expected. Or not. We choose to see ourselves as part of the big picture. Or not.

People who can manage to be engaged, conscientious, courteous, considerate, giving and enthusiastic even while slinging hashbrowns or counting widgets *have* passion. And that passion gets noticed. And that notice results in new opportunities to do something more challenging and interesting. You are only a mindless worker ant if that is how you choose to see yourself.

Does That Mean I Shouldn’t Leave My Horrible Job?!??!

Of course not. But take the time to honestly figure out what makes the job horrible. If the problem is your attitude, your expectations, your need for applause, your passion myths, then chances are good that the next job you find isn’t going to be any less horrible than this one, and you are not going to be one inch closer to finding your passion.

Tags: Canadian resume writer, career advice, career planning, changing jobs, finding your passion, following your passion, Karen Siwak, looking for a job, Resume Confidential, resume strategy, Toronto resume writer
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Whitewater Lessons that Jobseekers Can Learn From

In our child-free years of reckless abandon, my husband and I became avid white-water enthusiasts. What we lacked in finesse we made up for in tenacity, and we eventually honed our skills enough to spend most of our river time in our canoe rather than under it. But not before we spent a good deal of time up the creek without a paddle, trying to swim ourselves and our canoe back to shore.

One particular trip stands out – both for the sheer adrenalin-fed terror, and for the lessons I learned. We were paddling the Magnetawan, a river that in mid-summer is a lazy meanderer interspersed with waterfalls, but in early April is a torrent of spring runoff. Our trip guide, Tim, was an expert kayaker, and very motivational in a rah-rah you-can-do-it sort of way. We trusted him implicitly. He  had done this river many times before (albeit in a kayak, never an open canoe), and assured us that the river was totally within our capabilities. Tim was wrong. I realized this when I found myself in the bow of a 17 foot open canoe, trying to eddy out of a 6 foot standing wave. (Plot spoiler: we didn’t make it).

I thought about this trip recently when a contact on LinkedIn described his job search as a white-knuckle up-the-creek-without-a-paddle experience. I realized that some of the lessons I learned on the Magnetewan are applicable to a job search.

Lessons That I Learned When I Was Up The Creek

Choose Your Guide With Care

While solo-tripping can be exhilarating it is not for the faint of heart, so many of us will turn to experts for advice and guidance. When it comes to the right way to find a job, everybody has a strong opinion. Google “job search expert” and you will get 70,300,000 hits.  Some experts will be merely motivational, some will be novices, some will be jaded by their own failed trips, some will have advice that only works for a particular river (or industry, or discipline, or personality). Whether you elect to listen to a trusted mentor, a friend, a career counsellor, or a job search coach, choose your experts with care. Make sure that the advice they offer makes sense for you, your industry, your profession, your career stage, your personality.

Have Your Own Copy of the Map

Create a job search plan – a map – that will take you to your destination, and own it. The clearer you are in defining realistic goals for your next career move, the more useful your map will be. Whether you work alone or with a guide, become an expert on your skills, strengths, attributes, risk tolerances and weaknesses. Define what you are good at (your value proposition), so you can narrow down your map to kinds of companies and opportunities that are a good match for you.

Master the J-Stroke

However carefully you’ve researched your route, you have to get off the couch (or your computer) if you want to make the trip. Master the j-strokes needed to give your job search momentum and direction. Continuously develop your network. Get comfortable making cold calls. Follow up on leads.

Scout the Rapids Yourself

No two river trips are the same. No two job searches are the same. Experts can give you general guidelines, equip you with tools, teach you valuable skills, but you need to scout the conditions yourself, and adapt your route accordingly. What worked two years ago could be completely unproductive or even reckless today. And what was unthinkable last week may be exactly the right manoeuvre right now. You also need to be ready to make in-the-moment decisions when opportunities or obstacles suddenly surface.

Paddle Within Your Limits

Among the whitewater crowd we paddled with, it was a frequent topic of conversation: do you know your limit, have you met your limit? I’ve heard more than one paddler (and jobseeker) say “what have I got to lose” when deciding to push the limits of what they are qualified to do. In paddling the decision can be fatal.** In a job search, it’s not so dire, but it is still a mistake. You lose credibility with recruiters and hiring managers. You lose credibility with your network of contacts. Worse, you lose your focus. Your map becomes diluted, and your elevator speech begins to have addendums. You lose sight of the real value proposition you bring to the table.

The End of the Trip

Technically, our trip didn’t end with us up the creek without a paddle. I held on to my paddle (rule one of ‘how to survive’ a dump), and my husband eventually recovered his. We were able to finish the trip, although we walked a good many of the remaining rapids. We had bumps. We had bruises. We were chastened. But the Magnetewan didn’t kill us. And as the saying goes, what doesn’t kill you makes you wiser.

** Our Magnetewan trip leader once boasted that he had never met his limit, never met a rapid, or river, or river condition he wasn’t prepared to try. I should have paid attention to that before making him one of my trusted paddling experts. Eventually Tim me his limit, during a solo trip in Northern Canada. His body was never recovered.

Tags: job coach, job search, job search strategy, job seeker, Karen Siwak
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Jobseekers, Don’t Put All Your Eggs in the Social Networking Basket

As with many of my blogs, I will begin with a true confession. I’m a Twitter junkie. I enjoy exchanging banter and ideas with industry colleagues around the world. I use Twitter instead of RSS feeds to find interesting articles, blogs and people. I have lists of hundreds of recruiters and career services professionals that I follow daily. I am also on LinkedIn, and have a Facebook page for my business. So the advice I’m about to give may seem strange coming from me. But here goes.

Jobseekers, Get off the Computer Already!

The media is abuzz with news on social media, and a day rarely passes when some headline grabbing article doesn’t tout social networking as the next miracle cure for your job search. Don’t drink the kool-aid.

As somebody who is old enough to remember, it has the same hyped-up do-it-now-or-die, if-you-aren’t-doing-it-your-out-of-the-loop feel as the late 90’s when financial advisors pushed dot.com companies as must-haves in your investment portfolio. Sure, there are stories of people who social-networked their way to a new job, just as there used to be stories of dot.coms that actually made money. But now, as then, genuine success stories are few and far between.

On the job search front, you will find that the social-network-to-success stories tend to have a few things in common. The position for which the job seeker was hired had Social Media somewhere in the job title, or at a minimum in the first paragraph of the job description. More often, the job seeker actually found the job through connections they cultivated offline, but social networking helped to strengthen their credibility.

The real risk of social networking is it’s capacity to suck up hours of time in a blink of an eye, and at the end of a day spent entirely on the computer, you may be no closer to your job search goal.

Does that Mean You Should Abandon Your Social Networking Efforts? Absolutely not!

Social Networking is a useful tool in your job search arsenal. When somebody Googles your name, you need to be findable, and not just in your cousin’s wedding pictures. When a recruiter Boolean searches keywords in your area of expertise, you need to rank high in the search returns. The contributions you make to online conversations, the information you share, the contacts you make can go a long way to cementing your reputation as must-hire candidate.  Some of the contacts that you make online can evolve into strong, positive connections in the real-world.

But Social Networking needs to be one arm of a well thought out and executed job search strategy that includes cold calling companies (read Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters 3.0 for innovative ideas on how), conducting industry research so that can identify and even create opportunities, attending industry events, lunching with former colleagues and clients, and giving back to the community.

My Social Networking Recommendation for Jobseekers

Schedule time for social networking, and when the time is up, have the self-discipline to push away from the computer. Spend time each day working on the real-world connections that result in job offers. If you don’t, then chances are that while your job search competitor is being on-boarded for his new position, you will be trying to unglue eyelids that have lost the capacity to blink.

Tags: Canadian resume writer, Career change, job search strategy, job seeker, Karen Siwak, social media, Toronto resume writer
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Bad Professional Habits that Can Harm Your Career, and What To Do About Them

When I have a pause in my day, I slump. Literally. I lean forward in my chair, rest my chin in my hand, and ponder what I’m reading and writing about. It’s a posture that feels right to me. It requires no thought or effort. It’s the pose I used for my online picture. You might even call it my comfort zone. As it turns out though, my slump is not working for me, and has actually been doing me some harm.

I got my wake up call last week when I went to the chiropractor for a pinched nerve in my neck. By slumping in that particular position, I have managed, over time, to knock my neck, jaw and shoulder out of alignment. So now, in addition to enduring some sounds-like-gun-shots chiropractic adjustments, I am having to do ‘sit up straight’ exercises so that I don’t fall back into my slumping habits. I can tell you, it isn’t easy.

Our careers can be prone to slumps – professional bad habits that become our comfort zone, but are highly detrimental to our long term career health.

Ten Signs You May Be Career Slumping

1. Your answer to ‘How was your day?’ usually involves gossip or complaints about your colleagues and clients.
2. The last workshop you took was a company-mandated workplace safety course two years ago, and you can’t remember anything except the chocolate-chip cookies that were served.
3. You haven’t added any new people to your network of contacts in the last month, and some of the contacts you do have won’t take your calls anymore.
4. You used to belong to an industry association, but you dropped out because FILL YOUR OWN EXCUSE IN HERE.
5. Your response to people’s suggestions automatically starts with ‘Yes, but…’
6. When asked to get involved in a special project at work, your first thought is ‘oh no’, ‘why me?’, or ‘does this mean I have to stay late?’
7. Your boss’s boss has no idea what you do. Or worse: Your boss has no idea what you do.
8. You are under 45, and are already day-dreaming about your retirement.
9. The only person you’ve thanked in the last week was the person who handed you your change and cup of coffee.
10. Your reputation at works has started to include the preface, ‘Oh. He’s an interesting guy’.

If your answer is ‘Yes’ to any or all of the above, you are either in or headed for a career slump. The longer you let it go, the more painful will be the adjustment when you get the ‘sit up straight or else’ wake up call. The good news is that there are simple steps you can take immediately to de-slump yourself.

‘Sit Up Straight’ Exercises to De-Slump Your Career

• Hop off the gossip-train. The power trip you feel when you have ‘the dirt’ on somebody is nothing like the strength you feel when you really get to know them.
• Make learning a priority. If you can’t afford to enrol in a course, then look for free webinars and downloadable courses. Learning isn’t just about acquiring new skills and knowledge, it’s also about shaking up our stale assumptions and misguided preconceptions.
• Talk to somebody new each week. Ask them about their interests, their challenges, their families. Business may be powered by money, but it is nurtured by personal connections.
• Join an industry association – and not just so you have something to put under Professional Affiliations on your resume. The payoff in terms of networking opportunities, early insights on industry developments, and heads-up on emerging opportunities will be invaluable.
• Pay attention when people make suggestions. Fine, some of them will be just plain dumb or impractical, but some of them will contain a grain of truth or even brilliance, and you won’t know which is which if you haven’t taken the time to listen.
• Take advantage of the opportunity to do things that are outside of your job description or comfort zone. Not only can this be a chance to acquire new knowledge and skills, but it can be a great way to de-slump other people’s understanding of who you are and what you have to offer.
• Make sure your higher-ups understand how you are contributing to the big picture. Make sure YOU understand how you are contributing to the big picture. There is no employee easier for a decision-maker to cut when it comes to downsizing than the one whose job is a mystery to everybody else.
• Find something right now that turns your crank and energizes your day. Make at least one personal and one professional goal that is realizable in the near future, and put the action plan in place to achieve it.
• Adopt an attitude of gratitude. I’m not talking about being relentlessly and annoyingly chirpy, I’m talking about taking the time to recognize and acknowledge the people to whom you owe a thank you.
• If you are being described as ‘interesting’ in quotation marks, chances are you’ve slipped over the line of chronic sarcasm, cynicism or bitterness (acknowledgements to Dave Howlett for this insight). Bitter, sarcastic cynics may have funny and repeatable one-liners, but that’s just about all they are good for. They don’t make good team members, they can’t be trusted with referrals, and they don’t get promoted or recommended for new opportunities. Except in the ‘we’ll make him available to industry’ kind of way.

Tags: bad habits, Career, career management, job, networking, professional, reputation, Resume
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Win-win tips for hiring managers and job seekers

(Originally published CareerBulletin, CareerEdge Organization’s Quarterly e-Newsletter)

If you’ve monitored the social network over the past nine months, you may have noticed a litany of complaints from both candidates and recruiters about the challenges of the recruitment process in today’s job market. Recruiters complain that a single advertised opening is attracting hundreds of candidates, many of whom are unsuitable for the role. Job seekers, on the other hand, describe the experience of applying to advertised openings as “tossing my resume into a big, black hole”, and complain about never hearing back from employers.

Having reviewed the most common complaints from both sides of the hiring table, I can offer the following suggestions to reduce the tension and disconnect in the recruitment process.

Tips for hiring managers:

• Create job descriptions that clearly spell out your expectations. Too many job ads have vague descriptions or lack keywords that can help a candidate assess whether they fit the bill. This encourages “spray and hope” job searches from applicants who are ready to apply for anything and everything.
• Be realistic about the necessary qualifications to do the job. The opposite of the “too-vague” job description is the one that could be simplified to “Wanted – Superhero.” Rather than narrowing down the candidate pool, a lengthy list of over-the-top expectations can actually dilute the pool, as candidates say “Nobody can meet all these expectations, I may as well toss my hat in the ring and see what happens.”
• Provide the name & title of a contact person. Nobody wants to write a “dear sir” or a “to whom it may concern” cover letter.
• Get over the “passive candidate” versus “active candidate” mind-think. The talent pool of active job seekers has never been as rich as it is today, and there are many highly qualified, experienced and motivated candidates who have the flexibility and willingness to start immediately.
• Don’t make the recruitment process “a big black hole”. Let candidates know you’ve received their application and are seriously considering their candidacy. Special note to users of talent management software: A “form rejection” email less than 10 minutes after the resume has been submitted is still “big black hole” behaviour, it just has the finality of a thud as the candidate hits bottom.

Tips for job seekers:

• Read the job description. Too many applicants ignore the job description and focus instead on the Job Title. Titles can mean different things in different companies. “Operations Manager” can mean plant management in one company, sales management in another, logistics management in a third, and administrative oversight in a fourth. Use the description to figure out whether this is really a job you are interested in.
• Be realistic about your qualifications. Just because you think you can do it, does not give you the right to claim it as one of your core skills. Being part of a project team does not necessarily make you a Project Manager, for example.
• Don’t apply for jobs for which you are clearly unsuitable. It was this strategy that led to the wide spread adoption of impersonal software to screen hundreds of resumes in order to find those few candidates who actually matched the search criteria.
• Customize the resume to the specific job. Don’t apply for a Bookkeeper job with a resume that says your career target is marketing.
• Don’t submit “Resume.doc”. Make the hiring manager’s job easier by distinguishing your resume from the 100+ other applications he receives each day. At a minimum, use your name (JohnDoe.doc). Even better, use your name and the target title John_Doe_Operations_Manager.doc).

Tags: hiring managers, job ads, job search, Jobseeker, Karen Siwak
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Helping Johnny Find a Job – Career Advice for Johnny’s Parents

Over the past five years, I have helped more than two hundred new graduates prepare to market themselves for their first job, and I can tell you that some of them are woefully unprepared for the job search. It isn’t just that they don’t know how to write a resume or how to behave in an interview. It’s that they lack basic work skills and life experiences, and this puts them at a huge disadvantage over others in their peer group, especially in today’s job market.

Before I go on, I want to set the record straight. I’m not normally one for ‘shoulding’ on parents. Child rearing is hard enough without having a whole lot of experts tell us everything we are doing wrong. I know from personal experience that we are doing the best we can while mostly flying by the seat of our pants.

But several incidents over the past two months have put me into full-blown “what were your parents thinking” mode:

• The following question was posted on Careerealism’s Twitter Advice Project: “Q# 367 I’ve taken all the tests and can’t find a single job I’m excited about. I can’t imagine a job I would find interesting and no amount of money will drive me to do work that I hate. How does one turn around their complete distaste for work?” (My response: Try going hungry for a while. It can turn around your complete distaste for work pretty fast. )
• I had a consultation with a soon-to-be university graduate who has absolutely no work experience. I mean zero. Never worked a day in his life, either for pay or in a volunteer capacity. “My parents told me getting an education was my job.” He (and they) can’t understand why recruiters aren’t beating a path to his door.
• I came to the startling realization that by the age of twelve I was riding the Toronto subway system on my own, while my soon-to-be-twelve year old son is still not allowed off our street alone (granted, our street is a dead-end country lane that connects to an 80 k/ph road with no sidewalks, and the nearest town is 5 kms away, but still).
• I witnessed the completely avoidable failure of a business venture that was launched by a young woman who, at the age of 32, has been rescued by her father from every single roadblock in her life, and has never discovered the need to negotiate, compromise, or develop a business plan.
• I read an article about the negative impact that helicopter parents are having on their children’s job prospects, which included an anecdote about a father who hired a PR firm to complete his nine year old’s school project.

Motivated by these incidents and my experience as a career coach, psychotherapist and parent, I have created my very own
Top-ten ‘should’ list for parents who want to prepare their children for career success.

1. Networking & Communicating: By the time your child is 3, stop answering on their behalf in social situations. Too many mothers (and fathers) are tempted to jump in when an adult asks their child a question. Don’t. Good communication skills – the ability to hold a conversation, respond intelligently to questions, ask for customer service, stand up for one’s thoughts and ideas, actively listen while others are speaking – are invaluable life skills that should be learned almost as soon as we can talk. They are the foundations of good networking, and are essential to landing a job.
2. Dreaming & Planning: Don’t squash every enthusiastic but impractical idea that your child comes up with. Encourage them to think it through, and help them work out solutions to potential obstacles. As in the adult world, much of the fun is in the dreaming rather than the doing, and in the process of exploring an idea your child will learn for themselves what is practical, what is improbable, and what is possible if you have the right tools, information and attitude.
3. Money & Financial Management: It is never too early to start teaching children the basics of money management and the power of delayed gratification over impulse spending. Understanding how money works is essential no matter which career path you choose.
4. Fail. Learn. Grow: Don’t try to shelter your child from every painful experience, or rescue them from every mistake. One of the most valuable gifts you can give your child is the knowledge that there are consequences for their decisions, and that from our failures we are given the chance to learn, develop inner fortitude, and survive, overcome, move on.
5. Contribute to the Community: By the age of 13, your child should be volunteering somewhere. Whether its in an animal shelter, a church, or a service organization, your child needs to have the awareness that “it’s not all about me.”
6. Start Early to Develop Work Skills: Nobody should hit the double digits without knowing how to prepare a basic meal or do a load of laundry. By the age of 15, your child should have a part-time job. If they can’t find a job with somebody else, they can start their own business – babysitting services, tutoring, yardwork, dog walking. Yes, your child’s priority is their education, but some of the most important lessons in life can only be learned outside of the classroom (the correlation between hard work and income ranking high among them). Your child is less than enthusiastic about the idea? Think about cutting them off financially. At a minimum they should be paying for all or part of their entertainment costs, their cell phone fees, their gonna-die-if-I-don’t-get-it-right-now toys and accessories. Ideally, they should be saving for the future.
7. Experience Sweat-Inducing Hard Work: At some point between grade 9 and university graduation, steer your child (and especially your daughter) toward a summer job that requires physical stamina – planting trees in backwoods Canada, swilling manure out of barns, painting houses. Why? They will discover that they are stronger than they think, and they will learn why tenacity matters. They will acquire personal stories that are the stuff of legends. And (from my personal experience), every job they get after that will seem like a breeze by comparison.
8. Take a High School Victory Lap: If your high school graduate is vague about their university/college goals, don’t push them. One in six university students will drop out before they start their second year. With tuition fees of $10k+ annually, you both can afford to give them an extra year so that they can get clear on their goals. But make sure the year is spent productively. Use it to work, contribute in the community, learn a new skill, travel.
9. Study Business Fundamentals: Regardless of one’s major or ultimate career objective, every student will benefit from taking at least one business-related course. Ideally, it should involve a practical project that requires team work and is based on a real-world case study. Even artists and writers need to understand business fundamentals, if they don’t want to be at the mercy of unscrupulous agents.
10. Learn Another Language: We live in a multicultural world, and jobs in the future will require the agility to navigate a multicultural business environment. Those who can think in more than one language will have a distinct advantage. Notice that I say think, not speak. Ask anybody who speaks more than one language, and they will tell you that they think differently, depending on which language they use. There are some thoughts, some ideas, some concepts, that can’t be expressed as well in English as in, say, French, or Spanish. Even if English continues to predominate as the language of business, learning how to think from another cultural perspective will be critical for building bridges to international clients and developing global business partnerships.

Tags: career planning, Gen Y, job market, Karen Siwak, parenting
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Job search & career branding – How to stand out from the crowd

One of the many things I appreciate about the web is the opportunity to connect with a really interesting and diverse group of people. Typically, we stay in the realm of cyber-networking, but occasionally we transcend the limits of the computer to connect in person. Last week I had the chance to talk with one of my favourite bloggers, a finance executive who writes meaty articles on leadership, governance, risk management, staffing, finance – the nuts and bolts of what it takes to be in business. He isn’t afraid to challenge conventional wisdom, to ask the tough questions, to point out the nakedness of the emperor, and he isn’t afraid to create content that requires readers to exercise their scroll-down finger.

Eventually, as I always do, I turned our conversation to my favorite question. “What is your biggest challenge?” His answer, to use my son’s vernacular, left me gob-smacked. “My biggest challenge is convincing CEOs that, as a Certified General Accountant, I am just as good as a Chartered Accountant.” To understand my reaction, I need to provide some background details that perhaps verge into TMI territory.

When I was pregnant with our youngest child, my husband went through an archetypal mid-career crisis. Unhappy with his job, not seeing a lot of opportunity for growth, he decided he needed a change. Personally, I love change. Thrive on it, in fact. So I was ecstatic, and encouraged him to figure out what his passion is, and go for it. Over the next few weeks, while he considered his options, I was already mentally making plans to sell our house and backpack with our kids around Europe. It came as a bit of an anticlimax, therefore, when he finally announced his life-changing plan. “I’m going to become an accountant.” For the next seven years DH balanced a full-time career with 30 hours a week of brutal and sweat-intensive study in order to earn his Certified General Accounting accreditation. All of which is to say, I have some inkling about what it takes to become a CGA, and have a tremendous amount of respect for the designation.

As a career consultant and resume writer, I have worked with 4,000+ clients over the past five years, including more than 200 accountants of various stripes. This gives me a unique perspective on how CAs and CGAs differ. The typical CA I have met has been an accountant, through and through. Accounting is all they’ve done since graduating university. It is a rare CA who has ever run a company other than an accounting practice, or even a department that wasn’t strictly accounting & administration. CGAs, on the other hand, typically have five years or more of professional experience under their belt before they even start the program, and typically earn their accreditation while working full time. This means that a newly accredited CGA probably has more than 15 years of business experience, both accounting-specific (a prerequisite to earn their accreditation), and more broadly based in operations, strategic planning, supply chain management, production management, human resources.

So now, back to my Finance Executive. Unfortunately, he allowed himself to get dragged into a suckers game. I’m not talking about the territorial shoving contest that competing accounting bodies are currently engaged in for the right to be called Public Accountants in Canada. I’m talking about a no-win branding strategy that starts with the phrase “I’m just as good as.”

Any good marketing expert will tell you that there is no credible way to end the statement “just as good as” except with the phrase “at a fraction of the cost.” Knowing what I do about typical career profile of CAs versus CGAs, I could see half a dozen stories that my Finance Executive could use to distinguish his career brand, without ever having to resort to “just as good as.”

He could recount his superb track record for bringing companies back from the brink of bankruptcy, not only through good accounting practices, although they were definitely part of the picture, but through good financial and business practices. He could talk about cashflow optimization and cost management strategies that make good business sense, and how he used them to drive successful turnarounds. He could also discuss the company that called on his services too late to be saved, and what he can teach other companies from this experience. He could describe his understanding of the language of money – not merely from an accounting perspective, although he has that in spades – but from a business perspective: what it takes to attract investors, build confidence among creditors, safeguard shareholder interests. He could emphasize his approach to ensuring that a company doesn’t just look profitable, but is profitable, and stays profitable, both in the short term and for the long haul.

In professional branding, as in product branding, its all about differentiation – finding a way to make yourself stand out from the crowd. I’m a firm believer in the power of a good story for creating a distinctive brand. What do you have to bring to the table that is unique, one-of-a-kind? What stories can you tell to back it up? How can you make those stories relevant and interesting to your target employer, so that they recognize you as the perfect solution for their challenges?

If you can do this in your resume, your cover letter, your interview, your networking meetings, your blogs, your LinkedIn profile, your web presence – you’ve got it made. If you can’t, you may be left in the unwinnable position of trying to justify why you are “just as good as” the other guy.

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The Art of a Good Resume: Everything I Know About Storytelling, I Learned in a Canoe

I have yet to meet a client who doesn’t have at least one fascinating story to tell. Whether it’s the Administrative Assistant who pulled her boss’s ass out of the fire through some exceptional behind-the-scenes public relations work, or the Operations Executive who orchestrated a pre-dawn helicopter evacuation of his expat employees, it’s the stories that make each of my clients “one of a kind”. And it’s the stories that energize my days and keep me passionate about my work.

Uncovering the stories isn’t always easy however, and it can be a mind-altering experience for clients who are not used to talking about or even thinking much about themselves. I liken it the “third day” phenomenon of canoe tripping.  Anybody who has gone wilderness canoing with a group of strangers will know exactly what I mean.

On the first day, we are all on our best behaviour, our conversations are polite, the topics of discussion all fact based and superficial. By day three, all pretences are gone, and each of us has been revealed for who we are, in all our glorious colour and complexity. We will each have had at least one FGE**, perhaps involving a misjudged river rock, a portage from hell, a close encounter with wildlife, or a dispute with a canoe partner (typical conversation: “Go left… Left…. NO OTHER LEFT!!!”).

These FGEs are character building. They cause us to confront our foibles and take ownership of our strengths. They create the emotional space for self examination and questioning. Why am I here? Where am I going? Who do I want to be with? What do I want next? A five day canoe trip can do more for a couple’s relationship than six months of marriage counselling.

A kind of quietude descends at the end of the third day as each tripper sits in introspection. Any traces of the rat race have been shed, and when eyes connect there is a glow of authenticity that comes with self-awakening and a new sense of self assurance. It is usually around the campfire on the third day that the “good” stories come out, the ones that will ultimately transform a group of strangers into life-long friends and trusted allies.

My goal as a Resume Strategist is to fast-track this process of self discovery, and I love it. I love getting people to open up about themselves and reach a place of personal authenticity from which truly unique and distinctive career stories can emerge. I love asking the probing questions that create “aha” moments. I love working with my clients to find exactly the right words to tell their stories. Any good marketing professional will tell you that stories sell. Ask any recruiter about a memorable candidate, and chances are that it will be some element of their story that stands out.

I sometimes read career columns advising people that they shouldn’t pay for a professional resume writer, but do it themselves with the help of  a “reverse chronology” formula or template.

Resume strategy isn’t just laying out a reverse chronology of your career path. It’s about telling a clear, succinct story about who you are and why you are the perfect solution to some company’s problem. It stirs interest and invites connection. It creates the opening for an interview, and lays the groundwork for you to be able to expand on your talents, strengths and insights.

A recent client summed it up well after landing an interview with his new resume. “Karen, I know we got it right. This is the first time that I didn’t spend the whole interview defending my resume. We jumped straight into my story – what I can do, what I can offer, how I will fit. It didn’t even feel like an interview.”

And that, as the saying goes, is why you pay me the big bucks

** FGE: (Expletive Removed) Growth Experience

Tags: Canoe, Career, Career Stories, how to write a resume, Karen Siwak, Resume, Storytelling Resumes
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Unpaid Intern: To Be or Not to Be?

Over coffee recently, I listened as a soon-to-be new graduate lamented the fact that there were few job prospects for somebody in her field. She was asking for advice on whether or not to accept an unpaid internship in order to get her foot in the door. To help with her decision, I laid out my personal experience as a soon-to-be graduate.

By fourth year university, I had a diverse and storied portfolio of part time and seasonal positions under my belt:

• Sorted Christmas overflow mail for Canada Post; learned the meaning of the phrase “go postal”.
• Took messages in a call answering centre whose clients ranged from restaurants to call girls (yes, really); learned that you have to pay really close attention to whose line you pick up before you answer the question “what’s on the menu.”
• Sold encyclopaedias door-to-door; learned that some people will buy anything.
• Solicited participants for market research studies; learned that some people will say anything.
• Flipped burgers and pushed French fries; learned that some people will eat anything.
• Painted house exteriors with College Pro Painters; learned that the top of a 45-foot ladder is not the place to be when the wind picks up from Lake Ontario.

While my “career” path thus far proved that I was willing to tackle anything, it did not give me a whole lot of marketable skills for a Mass Communications and Computer Science graduate who would soon be launched unceremoniously into a job market that was recovering from 9.6% unemployment rates.

In my final year of university, my fortunes turned. I was offered an unpaid internship with a university-based research group. Through this internship, I learned how to design research studies; how to prepare grant submissions; how to source hard-to-find information & resources that aren’t available in the college library; how to edit research papers for publication; how to collaborate with a team of professionals who had conflicting interests and perspectives; and how to think critically about complex issues and prepare cohesive arguments so that I could be heard above the voices of 15 intellectuals. I also developed a network of connections who were able to help me when it was time to land my first full-time job as a Policy Analyst with the Ontario government.

Many successful CEO’s started their careers as interns (see the Forbes article “From Intern to CEO” ). One of my favourite stories involves Robert Herjavec, who waited tables while working for free for six months in order to get practical experience in the computer industry. As he described it in an interview with TVO’s Paula Todd, “I realized that nobody was going to pay me to learn the skills that I needed in order to get ahead.” He went on to earn millions from the sale of his internet security software, and is best known as one of the venture capitalists on the Dragon’s Den.

I have often heard the argument that unpaid internships are exploitative, that they take advantage of students. I tend to disagree. (I say tend, because I am completely against the pay-to-work model offered by Dream University, in which wealthy off-spring pay thousands of dollars for the chance to attach a corporate name to their resume).

Some internships are better than others, and the deciding factor is not the money, but the kind of experience that is offered. A well-designed internship can provide invaluable professional growth opportunities. In an interview in Fortune online, Christi Pedra, President and CEO of Siemens Hearing describes what I would consider an ideal internship model:

“First… we make a big deal for our managers to get interns. Department managers submit a proposal for a project that can be completed in 10 weeks. It must have a measurable outcome and benefit to the business. The best proposals are granted interns…. Second, we make it challenging. We give interns assignments that matter to them and to us…. Third, we make it real…for example, our interns simplified manufacturing tool kits, audited and redefined work instructions, developed internal communication campaigns and validated software.”

I recommended to my young friend that she seriously consider the internship offer. Yes it would mean a few more months as a part-time waitress to pay the bills, but it could also represent the turning point in her career. As Pedra describes it, “Ten weeks ago, they entered as students, and now they will be leaving us as professionals.”

There are hundreds of links to sites that offer advice and listings for both paid and unpaid internships. Here are some of my favourites:

Career Edge: Internships for New Graduates (Canada)
Ability Edge: Internships for People with Disabilities (Canada)
Career Bridge: Internships for Internationally Trained Professionals (Canada)
Campus Access: Directory of Internship Programs (Canada)
International Youth Program Internships
United Nations Internships
USA Internships for International Students
CollegeRecruiter Internship Listings (USA)
Interns Over 40 (USA)
USAID Volunteer Internships (USA)

Tags: Career, Gen Y, Internship, Karen Siwak, Resume, unpaid internship
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