The Company I Keep: Why Job-Hopping Isn’t Necessary to Succeed – Martha Hiefield

May 022016
 
Five Ways to Grow While Staying at the Same Company

It used to be that jumping around to different companies was a telltale sign of a bad candidate. Training can be expensive and employers weren’t interested in risking short-term talent. Many still don’t. But an influx of younger generations into the workforce has brought about a change of opinion. Short tenures are suddenly in vogue.

There are a lot of people who now believe that changing jobs more frequently can actually help your career. The thinking goes: 1. Switching things up shows employers that you’re not complacent or lazy; you’re willing to take risks and learn new skills. 2. You’ll have a much better shot at a higher salary when you apply for a new job, rather than waiting on a raise.

The math behind that latter point is hard to argue against. A 2014 Forbes article reports that “staying employed at the same company for over two years on average is going to make you earn less over your lifetime by about 50% or more.” That’s an alarming stat, especially for people just beginning their careers, and one that FastCo recently referenced again.

But do we really need to switch it up all the time to succeed? And is it really a new quandary?

To me, career advancement is about so much more than the number on your paycheck or the title on your business card. And deciding to leave or keep a job is a dilemma that’s always existed, for all generations — an age-old question — should I stay or should I go?

No two scenarios are the same, and each person must decide for themselves.

But as someone who just celebrated 17 years with the same company, I wanted to offer a counter opinion to the job-hopping frenzy.

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  •  May 2, 2016
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  •   Career Success, Social Skills

The Best Cities For Women In Tech Aren’t On The West Coast – Clare O’Connor

Apr 252016
 

San Francisco’s booming technology sector is a pretty great place to make a living if you’re a man. Men hold 82% of leadership positions, on average, at Google GOOGL -1.02%, Facebook, Twitter and the rest of the industry’s biggest companies. And they don’t have to concern themselves with that pesky gender pay gap. Men with bachelor’s degrees or better in Silicon Valley earn over 50% more than their female counterparts.

Luckily, the Bay Area isn’t the only place for women in tech to grow successful careers. Financial technology company SmartAsset analyzed U.S. Census Bureau data to come up with a list of the best cities for women in the tech sector. San Francisco didn’t crack the top 15.

SmartAsset looked at four metrics across the 58 largest cities in the country: women as a percentage of the tech workforce; the gender pay gap in tech; income after housing costs; and three year tech employment growth. 

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  •  April 25, 2016
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  •   Career Success, IT Trends, News

4 Misconceptions About Getting a Job After College – Arnie Fertig

Apr 182016
 
4 Mis-ConsCollege students shouldn’t wait until senior year to meet with a career counselor.

Make sure that your LinkedIn profile is complete, including full descriptions of what you’ve done, skills, volunteer activities and languages you speak.

Dialogues with college seniors in the midst of trying to figure out “what comes next” often reveal a disconnect between student life and launching a successful career. It’s easy to empathize with the cry, “I can get an A in my senior seminar but I don’t have a clue about how to get a job.”

Ideally, colleges and universities would fund career services departments with a full complement of savvy professionals. However, more often than not, budgets are cramped and the staff doesn’t have time to do as much as one would hope and expect from them.

To get the most out of this practical college offering, students shouldn’t wait until senior year to build a relationship with a counselor. Even when they’re freshmen or sophomores, students can take aptitude and other diagnostic tests to identify important traits and preferences to keep in mind when figuring out what career path to pursue. Still, sometimes professors and career services aren’t up with the latest in the realm of workforce development and staffing best practices.

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Greed Is Good For Your Career – Karie Willyerd & Barbara Mistick

Apr 112016
 
Greed 1When it means taking on more experiences.

Experiences are the ways in which we obtain knowledge and skills. That’s why anyone searching for a first job understands the conundrum that “You can’t get a job without experience, and you can’t get experience without a job.” When you have the opportunity to see or feel something, it has an effect on you that goes beyond what you can learn through observation.

Whether you are launching your career, considering a career shift, or simply wanting to stay relevant where you are, it’s important to have a plan to manage and acquire a variety of experiences. Being able to answer the question: “What kind of experiences have prepared you for this role?” with practical and tangible examples can provide you with surprising leverage and desirability. That’s why we advise you to be greedy about experiences.

The word “greedy” is almost never used in a positive context. However, when it comes to experiences, the best way to future-proof yourself is to be voracious in seeking out as many opportunities as you can. Experiences are the most effective way to learn new skills, reinforce what you know, and help you build on your strengths. People who have developed a repertoire of skills throughout their career know that this is a gradual and continuous process. It takes practice and repetition. People who are developmentally engaged look for new chances to stretch and capitalize on experiences, even when they don’t seem particularly relevant to their current role.Greed 2

While repetition aids in building expertise, when it comes to experience, you will want to seek out diversity to stretch to the next level. You must acquire new experiences, and not just repeat the same ones over and over again. A third benefit is that they are a great way to help you expand your skillset, especially when the experiences are a bit outside your comfort zone. Continue reading »

  •  April 11, 2016
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  •   Career Success

Career Coach: Want To Stand Out At Work? Take Some Initiative! – Joyce E.A. Russell

Apr 042016
 

Ask any boss which employee in their firm really stands out as a star, and they will most certainly bring up the person who shows initiative. Everyone wants a hardworking employee who does a good job, but the person who goes beyond that and shows initiative is rare indeed (and seems to be harder and harder to find, as I often hear from leaders).

Initiative is the power, ability or instinct to take action (to begin a task and follow through on it) without waiting for someone to tell you what to do. It means going beyond simply the “9 to 5” aspect of your job. It means taking the “next step” before being asked to take it. Getting in early, staying late, or looking for things to do when your own work is slow.

Whether you are a new employee at the firm or starting a new job in another part of your company, initiative is key. Most firms are explicitly looking for go-getters who can independently take action to get things done. And yet, few applicants talk about their strengths in this domain or realize how important it is in the workplace. Employers, on the other hand, are eager to hire individuals who want to keep learning and growing in their knowledge or skills. Think about the employee who takes additional courses or workshops in order to learn how to do their job better. This makes a positive impression on employers. Or those who volunteer to give back to the community. Those who do these things really stand out.

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3 Things Students Need To Do To Prepare For Life After College – AJ Agrawal

Mar 282016
 
Entering the “real word” is a frightening experience for many college students.  3 Things

The comfort of the dorm, dining halls, and constant social interaction with their peers will soon be over. As college seniors approach the end of their semester, many of them wonder what life will be like after college, and who they will be.

  • Follow your heart    I know this sounds corny, but this is really the best way to put it. I have met countless people who had cemented plans during college to pursue what they believed was the most logical, objectively sound career path. However, almost all of these people regretted making a decision based on what made sense on paper. The graduates who find satisfaction are those who pursue their true interests and passions. Many people worry that unless you pursue a traditional career, it will be hard to make money. Some students worry that if they follow their passions they can never make a living out of it. In my experience, however, the people who do what they are passionate about are the ones who make the most money. If you commit to something, then over time you will be successful.
  • Leverage Alumni Network    Alumni networks are key for finding jobs, getting mentored, making new friends, and making new professional connections. When students graduate it is imperative that they form a network based from their school. Being affiliated with a college or university is an excellent way to establish a network early on. Rather than relying on forming brand new connections, utilize the natural network that your school has created for you. Even if you don’t think an alumni will have immediate value for you, grabbing a coffee with a fellow alum is a great way to meet other people who can help you as you search for a career.
  • Use LinkedIn    LinkedIn is a powerful tool for finding and making new connections. Using it requires effort, but if done correctly college graduates can connect with a plethora of like-minded individuals.

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  •  March 28, 2016
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  •   Career Success, Social Skills

The 7-Minute Rule That Will Save Your Business Presentation – John Brandon

Mar 212016
 

7 min RuleAnything you have to say in a business setting should fit into a seven minute window. That’s my theory about business presentations, and I’ve devised a plan to help you get through a talk at a conference, your next board meeting, an investor chat, or even your daily team meetings. If you talk less than seven minutes, people won’t quite grasp what you have to say. If you talk more than seven minutes, you’ll drone on a bit too much and lose people. It’s the ideal length for holding the attention of a crowd.

Now, before I explain what to do for the seven minutes, let’s address the elephant in the room. His name is TED. The rule for every TED talk is to explain yourself in 18 minutes. Chris Anderson, the founder of the conference, has explained that 18 minutes is about the right length for the talks, and I tend to agree. That is, if you are Bill Gates or Elon Musk. However, for 99% of the people in business who need to hold the attention of the crowd, I’d cut that down to seven minutes.

I’m basing this rule on a few interesting findings of my own. First, when I created the seven-minute morning routine, I was relaying what I’ve done in my personal life for two decades. It works. And, as 200,000 people have read about so far and thousands have tried for themselves, it’s about the right length. My theory is that readers were drawn to the seven minutes. It isn’t such a long period that your work will suffer or you can’t commit to doing it consistently, yet it’s long enough to become truly contemplative. The same length of time works for presentations, especially if you are an entrepreneur. In hyper-connected world of texts and tweets, seven minutes is about the right time to make a point.

I’ve also given hundreds of talks, and seven minutes is about right. I’ve participated in dozens and dozens of startup sessions listening to entrepreneurs explain a new idea. In the first few minutes, you are still getting your head around the idea. After seven minutes you start tuning out. Your audience wants you to explain just the right amount to engage them.

So, seven minutes for a presentation. Here’s how to do it.

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  •  March 21, 2016
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These Are The Biggest Mistakes People Make During Interviews – Lydia Dishman

Mar 082016
 
Biggest MistatkesBody Language Faux Pas Derailed Candidates’ Chances Of Getting The Job As Much As What The Person Said.

According to a new poll, half of employers say they can size up a candidate within the first five minutes of an interview and determine whether they’d be a good fit for the job.

What happens during those first five minutes doesn’t have much to do with what the job seeker says. Indeed, as many interviews start with pleasantries or small talk, it’s often something the candidate does rather than says that’s a deal breaker. That said, there are plenty of ways for a job seeker to stick his foot in his mouth during the interview.

What to watch out for if you’re among the thousands of workers looking to change jobs in 2016? A brand new Harris Poll on behalf of CareerBuilder surveyed 2,595 hiring and human resource managers, the majority of whom work in the private sector, reveal the biggest job interview faux pas candidates have made, and how their body language blew any chance they had to move forward in the interview process.

Let’s start with the overt mistakes. Survey respondents listed five factors that immediately nixed the candidate from their talent pool.

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3 Basic Email Mistakes That Make You Look Really Unprofessional – Stacey Gawronski

Feb 292016
 

3 Email Mistakes

Like most of you, I cannot remember a professional life (much less a personal one) where I didn’t correspond via email. For the most part, it’s an efficient and simple way of communicating, and, when used correctly, it saves time, answers questions, and makes connections. Suffice it to say, I don’t believe I could live without it.

Unfortunately, with the ease of email and the speediness to which many of us are accustomed to sending, forwarding, or replying comes a few road bumps, if you will. I have little tolerance for careless errors like misspelled words (most programs alert you to these types of typos with a squiggly red line), and saying you’re going to CC someone and then forgetting to actually CC him or her. That’s amateur territory. (Although, my mother is forgiven for occasionally sending me messages in all caps.)

Seriously though, because the forum is often the number one way you have of communicating with a client, boss, or networking person, it’s imperative that you get it right. And not just for the sticklers out there, but for yourself—you’d hate for the recipient to miss the point of the message because he or she’s focused on an (avoidable) error. Today a typo loses you a little bit of respect with a co-worker, tomorrow it could very well lose you a job opportunity with a person you meet at a conference.

Ahead, three incredibly basic mistakes you may be making without realizing how very unprofessional they’re making you look to the reader.

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  •  February 29, 2016
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  •   Career Success, Social Skills

Don’t Use This Word In Your Resume – Diane Stafford

Feb 222016
 
MultitaskingBaylor University research says “multitasking” isn’t an asset
You can’t do multiple things well all at once
We’re not as capable at multitasking as we think. Bigstock

 

Have you talked on your cellphone as you drove to work and later realized you had no clear memory of the traffic, of stoplights — which, of course, you stopped at — or other features of the drive?

Of course you have. We’ve all been in situations where autopilot takes over when we’re absorbed in something else.

There’s been a lot of research about how we’re not as capable at multitasking as we think. Sure, we might do two or more things at once, but the real thinking is applied to only one of the tasks.

That’s why a Baylor University professor deserves attention for new advice about how this applies to your professional resumes. Anne Grinols, an assistant dean in Baylor’s master of business administration program, says prospective employers may not look kindly on your claims of multitasking.

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