#resumes #JobInterviews #managers #prospects #jobs #workers
In separate ads for Wavely, the job-searching platform, a hiring manager is looking for that special something in a prospect that his or her resume does not reveal.
The second ad shows the prospect hoping the hiring manager will find her to be the perfect candidate.
Thus, we have the competitive world of hiring.
In the past, resumes were seen as a tool to hire or get hired. Prospects tried to craft a resume that would make him or her stand out in a pile.
The resume evolved from simply listing job titles, duties and years of experience to trying to convey how the prospect brought value to the company he or she worked for. In other words, the resume turned from a roster of experience to a story of experiences.
In today’s hiring world, in many cases, there are fewer prospects for every job.
So, how does one stand out? One has to tell his or her story, as briefly as possible.
Hiring managers, in most cases, do not want to read long narratives. But they want to know not only what the prospect did – job titles seldom reveal that – but how effective the prospect was. That involves telling the hiring manager how the prospect’s effort(s) either made money for the company, saved the company money or added some other value to the company.
That’s a tall order for many applicants. Many see themselves as a performer of routine tasks – tasks the employer finds vital, but not necessarily game-changing.
How does a prospect who has experience as a clerk, for example, convey his or her value?
Perhaps the prospect can tell, briefly, how he or she helped his or her boss succeed.
Or, he or she could spell out how much time he or she saves his or her boss.
In short, stories sell, and everyone has stories.
In the past, many hiring managers didn’t always know what they wanted in an ideal candidate. They had to know it when they saw it (in a resume).
Today, hiring managers largely know what they want, and it’s up to the prospect to display that. Certainly, a hiring manager can still stumble upon an unusual candidate. But, generally, the managers have pictures in their mind of what the ideal candidate is.
For the candidates, overselling oneself can be fraught with peril. Truthfully telling your value is usually the best avenue.
Confidence is also a good trait for candidates. It’s not easy to display confidence in a resume, but, if a prospect gets as far as the interview, that’s when he or she can display confidence.
Hiring is not always easy. Getting the right job is not always easy.
For the prospect, the job description does not tell you everything. For the manager, the resume does not always tell you everything.
But both can give some clues about the job, or the candidate. One may have to get further into the process to know whether a job and a candidate are a match.
In summary, if you are looking for a job, have your resume tell the employer what you did, rather than what job you had. For the employer, look to find out what the prospect did, rather than the job he or she held.
May all managers and job seekers find the perfect matches.
Peter
Tag Archives: managers
QUANTIFYING THE BENEFIT OF A GOOD ATTITUDE
#atttitude #GoodAttitude #QuantifyingAttitude
No rah-rah speeches, please.
That’s what Sam Glenn, a worldwide expert on attitude, was told by a company representative who was considering hiring him to give a speech.
So Glenn tells the story of how much a good attitude is really worth.
Glenn was going to buy a TV, but only had $500 to spend. The store clerk says $500 won’t cover that. Glenn asks to speak to a manager. When the manager comes over, his first response, rather than “may I help you,” or something akin, was, “what’s the problem?”
When all was said and done, the manager could do nothing for Glenn, so he took his $500 and walked out of the store.
“That unhelpful attitude is reflected in the level of work they do in the workplace,” Glenn writes in his book, “The Gift of Attitude: 10 Way to Change the Way You Feel.”
Good attitudes have a benefit that can be quantified. If one customer per day leaves a business without spending money, because he doesn’t like how he was treated, that’s real money, Glenn asserts. Multiplied over a week, month or year, you can see the cost of a bad attitude.
The book also talks about attitude “warriors,” people who make it a point to ALWAYS have a great attitude, and attitude “termites,” those that eat away at people’s good attitude.
So, the question becomes, are you a warrior or a termite?
If you are a warrior, you probably are intentional about how you feel. You insist on not just displaying a good attitude, but genuinely creating one. If you are a termite, you work diligently to make happy people miserable. But, if you run into a warrior, chances are the termite tactics won’t work on that person because he or she has made it a point not to let a termite taste victory.
Circumstances differ day to day in most workplace settings. Warriors don’t allow those circumstances to affect their attitude. They make good situations great and bad situations better.
They treat everyone as if he or she is special.
If your (pick one: work, financial, personal) circumstances are causing you to be an attitude termite, think about what’s good in your life, and try adjusting your attitude using those things.
Think about ways to help others. If you are looking for a vehicle to make your life better, and help others, there are many such vehicles out there. To check out one of the best, message me.
If you are an employer, devote a priority to an employee’s, or prospective employee’s, attitude. The right attitude can yield real productivity. The opposite is also true. An employee’s bad attitude can really cost you.
If you are an employee, make sure you create a good attitude going into work. A good attitude reduces stress and allows you to better deal with any circumstances that cross your path. You may not solve every problem, but you’ll find many more possible solutions – or create a solution.
If you are having a bad day, and it’s affecting your attitude, think about a time when you were treated badly by a store clerk, or some other person you were hoping would help you solve a problem. You do not want to be like that person. You want to solve your and others’ problems.
Leave home thinking you’re going to save the world – one person at a time – by treating that person the way you would want to be treated.
Peter
HOW GOOD IS YOUR BOSS: PART 2
#BadBosses #leaders #managers
Most of us who’ve had jobs have seen different styles in managers.
There are some that left us, as employees, pretty much alone to do our jobs. They interfered only when necessary and appropriate.
Others wanted to know everything, have a say in everything, be copied on everything etc. They are known as micromanagers.
Debra Auerbach, a writer for the Advice and Resources section of CareerBuilder.com, issued a few tips on dealing with micromanagers. Her article appeared in the Feb. 21, 2016, edition of The Tennessean newspaper in Nashville.
Her first tip in dealing with a micromanager is to be on top of your game. You don’t want to give that boss more reason to nitpick, she writes.
Secondly, she suggests determining whether you are a target. See whether the manager picks on others he or she supervises, as much as he or she picks on you.
Thirdly, she suggests building trust. The manager has to trust you if you have any chance of getting “more space” from that manager.
She also suggests providing frequent updates to the manager, trying your best to adapt to that management style and deciding whether working in this environment is a deal-breaker for you.
We’ve all either worked for, or have seen in action, micromanagers. As discussed previously, leaders don’t micromanage. Leaders hire the right people and provide the environment in which the employees are empowered to do their jobs the best way they know how.
Ideally, the boss is doing what he or she does best, so he or she doesn’t have the time or inclination to worry about what the employees do best. Sure, there are certain expectations. But, if the leader has done his job correctly, he or she has no worries about those expectations being met or exceeded.
What kind of environment do you work in? Do you work for a micromanager? Many of them are not necessarily hostile toward you, but they annoy you and make your job more difficult than it should be.
Most jobs have stressful components. Micromanagers add to that stress. Leaders do their best to relieve as much of the stress as possible.
Micromanagers will still be all over your case when you are shorthanded because someone is out sick or on vacation. Leaders will understand that you are working shorthanded, and pitch in to help pick up some of the workload.
A micromanager can ruin the career of a perfectly good person by nitpicking. That manager may even set out to hold his or her people back from advancement. A leader will encourage his or her people to move on, when the opportunity is better for that employee, and even help that person get what he or she wants.
If your boss is nitpicking you to death, you may have to take time outside of work to find other opportunities to earn income, so you can make such nitpicking a deal-breaker. For one of the best ways to do that, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. Eventually, you could be the leader that helps others advance.
Remember, some nitpicky bosses don’t mean you harm. It’s just who they are. You are who you are. If you understand them, you can better get along with them, until you are able to move on. Don’t stop looking for new places to go.
Peter
HOW GOOD IS YOUR BOSS: PART 1
#BadBosses #leaders #managers
The Peter Principle is alive and well in many companies.
In a nutshell: A person becomes very talented and skilled in a certain area. He is promoted to manage that area. He becomes a terrible boss.
Jeff Vrabel discusses this in an article about bosses in the August 2015 issue of Success magazine.
“Some people are natural-born leaders. Others are cruel, inhuman monsters,” reads a sub-headline over Vrabel’s article.
We’ve come to expect, and Vrabel’s article points out, that those employees who perform well are rewarded by moving up to management. In most organizational structures, that is the only way to move up. But a good engineer, a good technician or a good marketer doesn’t always make a good leader. Too often, the opposite is true.
It’s important here to understand the difference between a manager and a leader. Managing is learned. Leadership tends to be natural.
So what happens? The promoted employee is given a list of procedures, a system, if you will, to learn. So he learns to be a manager. And, he or she isn’t even that good at managing.
“Leadership is personal. There’s no single way of leading, no silver bullet,” Vrabel quotes Deborah Ancona, faculty director of the MIT Leadership Center. “We can’t be perfect at everything. So if you’re someone’s boss, the trick is to find out what you’re really good at and what you need to ramp up on, and getting better at both,” Vrabel quotes Ancona.
As a boss, you could be doing everything YOUR boss is telling you to do, but your staff may still hate you. It’s human nature to like some people better than others. It’s also human nature to give more positive attention to some employees, and more negative attention to others.
When you mix the two traits of human nature, it can sometimes turn toxic. You may have a good employee, but, for some reason, you may not like him or her as well as you like some others. The employee senses that, and feels as if he or she is not being treated fairly. That puts added stress on the good employee, and that could manifest into the loss of that employee, or discord within the organization.
More importantly for the employee, he or she may not advance as far as he or she would like, or is capable of. That, too, could ruin a good career.
Managers have to work at treating everyone underneath them as fairly as they can. Leaders have to lead in their own way, as Ancona put it. It’s great to have high expectations of your staff. But if they don’t see you as having those high expectations of yourself, you won’t get the production or cooperation you want.
Many organizations foster competition among employees, rather than cooperation and teamwork. A good rule of thumb: If you are after the same goals, competition wastes energy. If each person or group in the same organization has different goals, it’s a recipe for disaster.
Have you been, or are you still, being frustrated by bad bosses? Are you feeling stuck under the duress of someone who doesn’t inspire you? You may have to look at developing a way to eventually fire that bad boss. There are many such ways out there for anyone. For one of the best, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. Who knows? You could turn into the leader you’ve always wanted, or wanted to be.
The best players almost never make the best coaches. The best employees don’t always make the best leaders. If you run a company, look for ways to reward your good employees without taking them away from what they do best, and most love to do. If you are a good at your job, and love what you do, don’t be afraid to say NO to a job you don’t want, even if it pays more. There are many other ways to add money to your coffers.
Leaders, often quietly, make themselves apparent. For instance, beware the person who wants to take credit for everything. Look for the person who wants to always GIVE credit to someone else.
Peter