I review and rewrite resumes every day. It’s fun and similar to taking a diamond in the rough and polishing it to reveal the inner brilliance and it is the same with a person’s career. Over the years, I have noticed that too often resumes fall short of adequately presenting a person’s brilliance. People seem to write their resume as either a list of competencies or accomplishments but rarely as achievements. What’s the difference, especially between the last two? A lot. It is enough to make the difference in gaining an interview or a recruiter's attention. At worst, a professional is inadequately branded and doesn't show their best potential. You tell me which category does your resume fall into? Competencies Resumes Technical people tend to list bullets of competencies either hardware, software, tools, techniques, or applications. This is true of all types of engineers, accountants, doctors and other health care practitioners, film/video/audio engineers and producers, as well as programmers, oil and gas and manufacturing types. It is so easy to write lists of competencies for these specialties. It is natural to itemize the tools, methodologies, procedures, and techniques in these fields. Anytime you have a list of things you have mastered and know how to apply and use, then a competency-driven resume is the result. They aren’t bad but simply incomplete as they tend to be strings of words without being attached to a task or action with a beginning and end e.g. an accomplishment. You don't stand out with a list that can be checked off. Accomplishments Resumes A short reach beyond a list of competencies is a list of accomplishments. Most seasoned professionals can do resumes like this with ease. They tend to be historically written in reverse chronology. Accomplishment bullets are set in time with a beginning and end of a task, job or project. These bullets are complete sentences that start with action verbs such as designed, delivered, sold, produced, wrote, managed, etc. Of course there are thousands of action verbs as there are tasks to complete, jobs to do, and projects to finish. Some professionals are so adept at delineating and capturing every action and task throughout the course of their job that the bullets trail down the page overwhelmingly. Accomplishments can be simple or very demanding being completed in a short time-span or over a long period. For example, conducting and completing clinical trials for a new drug can take months to accomplish. This type of resume may be sufficient for an entry level position or an individual contributor. It is not sufficient if you seek more responsible roles that entail leadership, decision-making, and responsibility as it lacks achievement. Achievements Challenging and prestigious are often words used to describe achievements. Achievement implies reaching goals. The difference between accomplishment and achievement is subtle but distinct. For example, completing a series of clinical drug trials is an accomplishment of a project or task. Completing those trials in a way that expedited the drug’s successful approval by the FDA for commercial distribution that will grow the company’s profits is an achievement. An achievement statement on a resume is quantified in some way by demonstrating data, naming names, and using words such as increasing, decreasing, growing, expanding, approving, containing, innovating, improving, succeeding, etc. Turning accomplishments into achievements ties the efforts of tasks and projects into overarching results that impact the organization. Writing a resume that ties your contributions to the greater good of the company is integral to building a professional brand and growing your career. You incrementally grow your reputation one achievement at a time.
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Looking for jobs in the new IoT economy? This handy chart on Firstmark Capital's blog and on Techcrunch provides a pretty comprehensive starter list!
Matt Turck | 12.02.14 The Internet Of Things Is Reaching Escape VelocityBy Matt TurckThe frenzy around the Internet of Things (IoT) should be reaching its final countdown. There has been a period of extraordinary activity in the IoT space since this original attempt at charting the ecosystem for TechCrunch. See the actual interactive chart at FirstMarkCapital's blogsite. You can click-through to the website of every company's logo Sometimes it seems nigh impossible to move the dial on an established, but obsolete, traditions like applying to a job posting and spreading your resume all over the Internet to find a job. The article below confirms this with statistics. It doesn't matter that more management and executive level professionals get hired through their networks than through job postings annually. That executive search consultants account for less than 10% of the executive positions placed annually in the USA. It doesn't matter that even before anyone sees your resume, they will see your social profile first. And, even if they get your resume first, they will look you up on Linkedin and search you out on Google to get tmore depth about you. And when they find something they don't like online, more than 50% of the recruiters surveyed say they drop you from their candidate list. People persist in using their resumes to apply to job postings. Why? Because it has always been done that way and because when it comes down to the actual interview, HR wants some kind of document to provide to hiring managers for reference. When will the transition to social profiles and personal websites take hold? If Linkedin has anything to say about it, it will be sooner not later. LinkedIn survey details 'new norms at work' Matt Kapko May 8, 2015 A new survey of 15,000 LinkedIn users with fulltime jobs, 1,000 of which reside in the United States, draws some interesting conclusions while also reinforcing common perceptions about the "new norms" within the modern U.S. workplace. More than a quarter (26.6 percent) of the people from the United States who were surveyed said it's important to maintain separate social media profiles for work and personal. One in five U.S. respondents (20.5 percent) said they make initial impressions based on a person's online profile picture. And one in 10 respondents said they worry about what their colleagues may think of them based on content they shared on social networks that may not seem professional, according to the survey, which was conducted by Censuswide for LinkedIn during the first week of April. Catherine Fisher, LinkedIn's career expert, says the findings stress the fact that people need to be mindful of how they portray themselves on social media. The U.S. responses also highlight notable difference between women and men in the workforce. Almost a third (30.9 percent) of women respondents said they are friends with colleagues on non-professional social networks, while only 16 percent of men said the same. Nearly a third of the women (32.5 percent) feel as though they're judged by what they wear to work, and more than a quarter (26.8 percent) said they believe men have it easier when it comes to the threads they don at work. And more than four in 10 women (41.6 percent) said they tend to dress up more when they have meetings during the day, while only 25.5 percent of the men step up their dress for meetings. Work experience, education and volunteer history are the three top factors U.S. users weigh to gauge a colleague's LinkedIn profile, according to the survey. More than one in five (21 percent) of those surveyed from the Unites States said it's more appropriate to self-promote now on social media than in years past. Almost 13 percent said they feel more comfortable sharing their opinions on industry matters via social networks, and nearly 9 percent think doing so is a great way to raise their professional profiles. Perhaps most surprising of all is that only 12.8 percent of U.S. respondents think a good LinkedIn profile is just as important as a good resume. Last year, Linkedin opened up postings to the general membership. Prior to that time only Influencers (famous people, leaders in their field) designated by Linkedin were allowed to write those short, pithy articles that accumulated and archived on their profile pages. The rest of us had been relegated to ephemeral Linkedin Updates that disappeared into the news thread once posted. In July of 2014, the little pen icon appeared on the update box, and intrepid trail blazers began posting on their Linkedin Profiles. What is a post exactly? On Linkedin, a posting is short article, essay, or observation on a topic of your choice with an accompanying image. The posting image along with an attention-getting title are important because your posts will be displayed on your profile by image and title as well as sent to all your first degree connections. Further, if you have written an interesting post that attracts Linkedin’s attention, they may choose it for redistribution to millions of Pulse subscribers, the site’s in-house news magazine. What you have to say might just be the differentiator for success depending upon your career goals and employment circumstances. Aside from writing posts because they attract attention to your profile and raise your visibility on the site, there are three compelling career motivators to do it as well. 1. Thought Leadership Build and demonstrate your knowledge and expertise in your current business sector and professional field. Anything you do outside your company will reflect back positively inside your company. Writing on your observations, insights, and unique perspective improves your stature in your field. Your post’s topics can open doors to consulting opportunities, creates visibility for potential board positions, and generates invitations to speak at conferences. You can position yourself as the go-to expert for media interviews. This all becomes a virtuous circle that continues to build on your reputation within your field or business sector. 2. Career Transition Making a career transition to a new industry more often than not requires some background in the new sector. That experience is the unspoken key criteria in a recruiter’s search that could be the deal breaker when it comes down to the choice between you and another candidate for a position. Hands-on experience is not always easy to come by up front, but postings helps build the bridge to the new industry or sector. Write about where you want to be not where you are. Write about the companies that you have targeted for employment. Yes, it takes some research and digging, but then you will be better prepared for interviewing. You will have demonstrated your knowledge up front, and established your credibility in advance by easily accessible postings on your Linkedin profile. 3. Gaps in Experience Writing on topics that are gaps in your knowledge or experience can move you past objections for a promotion and enable a career move. Rejection for employment and promotion typically lies in a skills or experience gap that doesn’t enable a complete “fit”. The bigger the company the less likely they are to overlook that. For example, you may have a solid background in retail marketing for bricks and mortar entities but no experience in e-commerce. Or, you have been a CIO for a very traditional company who had no need to use big data, data analytics, and social media in their business. Whatever the gap, the missing hands-on experience can be supplemented by writing posts about various aspects of it. Rather than trying to sell your value proposition past that gap objection during an interview, write about it in advance to leverage your credibility. Since 2008, Linkedin has gained critical mass with now over 1/3 of a billion members. It is the 800 pound gorilla in the job search room. What it decides to do in terms of their profile presentation, content and style drives the modern-day professional’s career marketing and branding initiatives. This is not to be trifled with as hiring decisions are rarely made now without at least a glance or even longer review of your profile. Worrying about privacy and jeopardizing your current employment status should be a non-issue now. The loss of momentum in your personal marketing out- weights your employer’s critical judgement. Once you have a robust profile in place, as your career progresses it is easy to use it to enhance and facilitate your success. Selling a service is like selling heroin...you need to get your customers rapturously hooked. Linkedin is the consummate example of this. When you think of your job search and how you present yourself, are you offering engagement with a set of services or are you presenting you, the product? Seems to me that the more valuable course would be to present services to a company that they can partake of through a free advisor role, short term immediate consulting, or a longer term engagement. Thinking not about you the candidate to be hired as a product frees you to creatively present scenarios where engagement is win win for both you and the company. The Product-Service Shift – Transforming Your Operating Model by Geoffrey Moore (via Linkedin Pulse) As digital devices, cloud computing, and smart phone apps permeate more and more of our interactions, the product-service shift is overtaking more and more of our economy. This is a good thing from the point of view of lowering barriers to adoption and delivery costs, but it is a real challenge for vendors to transform their operating models to leverage the new infrastructure. A big part of the problem is simply getting our heads around the new paradigm. So much of the language of business is stuck in the old vocabulary, and that is causing us to make wrong choices without even knowing it. Let me show you what I mean. Take the combined notions of product marketing and product management. In a product company, although we often argue whose job it is to do what, we know overall what scope of work is involved. You have to spec out a set of features customers want, work with engineering to get them built into the product, work with marketing to get the product promoted, work with sales to get it sold, and work with customer support to get it serviced (and to collect a set of enhancement request for the next spec). But that is not at all how a service business works. Service customers don’t want features, they want outcomes. They don’t trust marketing that is outside the service experience; they expect to learn, try, and buy from inside the service delivery envelope. They don’t expect to be sold to, nor do they expect to use customer support unless somehow the service fails to deliver, which is more likely simply to cause them to churn out. So product marketing and management now equates to creating a completely contained environment within which both the prospective customer and the service vendor can experiment with each other across a digital interface to see if they have something of value to exchange. In this model there are no product releases. That is an obsolete notion that radically disrupts the low-latency give and take of a digital service engagement. Instead, the rhythm of that engagement is set by the spinning of four gears—Engage, Acquire, Enlist, and Monetize—all of which happen inside the service envelope. That means that engineering has to design and build the marketing directly into the service infrastructure, including whatever branding is needed. And the whole thing has to be built to evolve as A/B testing teaches us all what’s to, or not to, like. And that brings us to the freemium business model, in which there are no free trials because that concept implies that, if you like the trial, you will buy the product. That is not how a service model works. If you like the product, you will continue to engage with it, for free! Only after you have engaged deeply enough to be interested in a greater level of service can monetization be introduced. Here again the product mentality creates the wrong mindset. Product thinking says withhold the really valuable features, or give people a thirty day window, or do some other semi-coercive tactic to give you leverage in a purchase negotiation. These are dumb moves in the world of digital services, where losing the lifeline of user engagement costs you much more than continuing to support free. You have to learn how to woo rather than to bargain. And when it comes to purchasing, we think we want consumers to sign a license agreement, but that is a product concept designed to put power into the hands of the product vendor. What we want service customers to do instead is activate an account, something that keeps the power in their hands while creating a medium by which they can indeed spend money with us. The verb here is activate, not install, and our customer servicer outreach has to be structured accordingly. Similarly, when it comes to training, there can be no training. That is a product concept. Instead we need to orchestrate an onboarding process, one in which the user is guided through an experience instead of explained the intricacies of an interface. That’s why the hot new job title is called user experience design, no longer user interface design. And so it goes. All language is metaphorical to some degree. It is amazing how little it takes to put you in jail. Everywhere you turn it seems the legacy of a product-anchored vocabulary is insinuating itself into our thinking, leading us to make choices which are at best irrelevant and at worse self-defeating. So let me encourage you to engage your team in a language acid bath experiment, the goal of which is to root out as many product-centric phrases as you can and subject each one to a ruthless analysis of its implications, and then find a substitute phrase that will get everyone onto the right track. I think you will be shocked by what you find. Either way, I hope you report back. That’s what I think. What do you think? _________________________________________________________________________ Geoffrey Moore | Crossing the Chasm | Geoffrey Moore Twitter | Geoffrey Moore YouTube This article in the ERE newsletter, written for HR and recruitment is even more true today. With the job market heating up, and recruitment focusing on digital profiles and information, a resume for most, but the highest executives, just gets in the way. Why “Name-only” Employee Referrals Produce Dramatic Results by Dr. John Sullivan Oct 29, 2012, 5:42 am ET Employee referrals provide the highest quality and the highest volume of hires, but you won’t receive as high a level of results if you don’t minimize roadblocks to referrals. Requiring a current resume for employee referrals is a major “under-the-radar” detriment to reaching the goal of having referrals exceed 50% of all hires. Requiring a resume to start a referral process might not seem like a big deal (because the resume is “the currency” of recruiting) but it can be. Although “active candidates” all have current resumes, employed people who are not actively looking (some people call them passives) don’t have an updated resume available and they may have little interest in creating one. Requiring an updated resume in order to move forward slows down and occasionally stops employee referral efforts. Consider an alternative approach, which is offering an option to employees, so that all they must submit is a prospect’s name and contact information in order to begin the referral process. This approach is known as a “name-only” referral. read full article here The article goes into the details if you are interested. I would think this confirms what everybody knows already.
Rarely do I promote an event especially to global readers. But, this one is cool and will be recorded to watch later from wherever. The news is that companies are going to hire you now based on comprehensive set of data points gathered about you online that are nowhere to be found on your resume. Forget transferable skills, folks. This is far more comprehensive, intrusive and penetrating into your personality/style, mannerisms, predictable behaviors, competencies/abilities, and unstated accomplishments. None of these are even touched on your resume but they are online. What if they knew the articles and quotes you shared on social sites? What if they could scrutinize the people you interact with all over the Internet? What impact would that have on how you present yourself for employment opportunities.. The solution? Manage your message and your privacy settings. They will be searching for the most recent information on you.My guess is less than a year and two years max. Start now and build a brand/marketing image/ reputation online that delivers the message you want them read. Algorithm Alchemy: Turning Talent Search into Gold Thursday, June 19, 2014 LOCATION: Stanford Graduate School of Business Knight Management Ctr - Cemex Auditorium, Zambrano Hall 641 Knight Way, Stanford, CA (Parking and Directions) 6:00 pm – Registration, Networking Reception & Demos 7:00 pm – Panel Discussion (Q&A) Startups are turning the tables on recruiting with targeted prospecting algorithms. Applicant search is transformed intoprecise talent-matching through the collection and curation of data from numerous sources. The new platforms level the playing field, reshaping the interaction between job seekers, recruiters, and hiring managers. There is a new gold rush in the global talent acquisition market! According to Bersin by Deloitte, the global talent acquisition market is now worth over $150B annually. While online job boards and aggregators continue to hold the largest slice of the pie, new entrants are poised to take away significant market share. Join us on Thursday, June 19th to find out how today’s alchemists are exploring new frontiers in the job market, disrupting an industry that has become inefficient and unwieldy:
Alex Dévé, Founder and CEO, Whitetruffle Sheeroy Desai, Co-founder and CEO, Gild Steve Krausz, General Partner, U.S. Venture Partners Demo Companies: Readyforce | Venturocket | Whitetruffle ** More panelists and demo companies to be announced soon. Please continue to check back. ** Follow (@VLAB) on Twitter and Event Hashtag #VLABtalent After reading the article below, I could only agree. Of course companies want to hire great people, and they do have a key set of attributes that they look for. But how do they really go about finding these A Players? They sure don't ask you in an interview, "Are you a self-disciplined, champion with foresight, and a drive to compete, who operates at high integrity?" The A-player college screen starts before the interview, way before, as in what is your GPA, SAT score, leadership participation on campus, and the pedigree of your degree and college? The last one is the biggie. And, how much work experience do you have in your chosen field, as in years not days or months. Seriously, the degree alone won't do it. That's for new grads. If you are a seasoned professional as an A-player, you will need to be employed (not self-employed or unemployed), in an identical position and equivalent level to the company's opening. You will be working already in the company's business domain or industrial sector. Finally, do not be looking for a job, as they do want to find you. How to they screen for the characteristics below? Well if they are smart hiring companies they will do 3 things to all hires: new grads to experienced executives.
Forbes Magazine: The Five Characteristics Of An 'A' Player For many startups, hiring the best and the brightest is not an option — it’s an absolute necessity. You’ve probably heard this sage, albeit generic advice before: “Only hire ‘A’ players.” Of course! Who doesn’t want “A” players? Who doesn’t want people who have the talent, skills and drive to make a company successful? But the real question is: Can you recognize a top performer when you meet him? We all like to think we can, but even the best can overlook real talent. Think back to Facebook and Twitter. Both companies failed to hire Brian Acton, cofounder of WhatsApp, which was recently acquired by Facebook for $19 billion. Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO, shows off the new messaging system in Facebook. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Simply put, “A” players are great competitors. Avoid overlooking one in your midst by understanding these five characteristics:
What characteristics have you found in your best hires? Mary Ray is the co-founder of MyHealthTeams, which just closed a Series A round. She is always on the lookout for A-players. She drives the product vision and product development of all the MyHealthTeams’ web and mobile applications, oversees marketing, UX, design. The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched StartupCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses. Read article here
photo thanks to autoguide.com
No the title is not my line. I am not that clever or cool. But I was impressed by the top executive search consultant based in Dallas who did use it. And the point she was making? In searching for candidates for positions, she is able to recover much data and information that people leave in their wake online. Some of it is good and some of it is preferable to be gone. Your reputation is a piece of your brand, and anything found online that would tarnish it would be better removed or buried down multiple search pages in Google. Unflattering or uncomfortable Facebook photos are obvious culprits. But other items are more stealthy like political donations, real estate sales of multi-million dollar homes, complaints to the City Health Department by your neighbors, prayer meditations you led, lawsuits, participation in sports and events. You get the picture and so do the hiring managers. You have to decide how much you want to show to the world of your private life. If the answer is not much, then you must systematically and persistently work to push down the offending content. How is this done? The easiest way is to put brand-building content up that is fresher and newer, thus older material is pushed down. This will not work for listings in Wikipedia and IMDB but one assumes they have value for you. Posting content on sites like Quora, Vimeo and Tumblr would be helpful as well as profiles on the Linkedin competitors such as Viadeo, Xing, Apnacircle, Tianji and Orkut. They will give you a global reach as well. Of cours Google is top billing thanks to its algorithms to a named website and a named blog. What do I mean by named? Look at the URL name at the top of this blog. It is mine and therefore when Google sees it it gives it preference over other types of posted content. I did not mention how much work it is to put up good content and keep it there but it is a really small price to pay for being screened in for a job and not out. I have wondered by people don't use Linkedin requests more than they do. They don't know how to do it in a way that generates a response. A Linkedin request was the original function of Linkedin to get people who were separated by degree to connect and exchange value with each other through intermediary introductions. However, most people have turned to the Groups function to find opportunities and people to open doors for them. And that works until you need to get to someone not in a group who is integral to an opportunity or business deal you want to consummate or explore. Then you must turn to the original way of reaching out to someone through the requests system. They are not easy to do successfully unless you are in sales and coming up with a pitch is your second nature. You have to give the intermediary a good reason why they dhould pass on the request even if you know them well. Why? Because the recipient of the request will be seeing what you write to the intermediary. The messages have to seam together with a congruent and compelling thread that incites the recipient to accept your request. It is not easy. People are busy and they don't want to be bothered. Read the suggestions for contacting him that the Linkedin founder Reid Hoffman writes in his profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/reidhoffman. Advice for Contacting Reid: Unfortunately, I'm extremely busy. First: if you have an interest in getting my attention for an investment, working at Linkedin, a business development deal (for Linkedin or another portfolio company), then I *highly* recommend that you get an introduction to me. I am almost certainly not going to engage without a reference/introduction. Second: I am generally not available for new projects. If it’s a new project, you must have a great introduction. Otherwise, I generally recommend you indicate who you would like to be connected with at one of my organizations to proceed. Third: sadly, because I’m busy, if your communication to me is just a generic “ask” of me, I’m very likely just to decline it. Nevertheless, I wish you the best success if your project is a good improvement in the world. A generic "ask" is the kiss of death for any request especially if it self-interested. When making a Linkedin Request, especially job opportunity related, the more important the person is in the scheme of things the better the story you have to make to get a piece of their time. This is not about you and what the recipient of the request can do for you, but rather what you can do for them. There are two different messages to write and both will be read by the intended recipient of the request. Here is what to write:
This is essentially an abbreviated elevator pitch and your Linkedin summary should echo the messaging delivery and style as it is a full-blown elevator pitch about you. The better you get at this kind of deliver, the more improved will be your networking and interviewing results as well. Too often we rely on the kindness of contacts who make introductions that go nowhere when we follow up and tell an uncompelling story. Top 10 Tech-Influenced Hiring Trends for 2013 How Today’s Tech Trends Translate to Talent By Kathryn Ullrich 1. Renewed Focus on Innovation Now more than ever, rapid advancements in digital interconnectedness, big data and other technologies mean that tech companies need executives who can innovate and envision the next generation of users and devices. We’re seeing this even from leading tech industry clients who are already innovators but realize that innovation requires constant attention and reinvention. Execs who can see beyond today to visioning the future are in high demand. 2. Strategic Nimbleness Rules Working in Silicon Valley for early stage companies requires what I call "strategic nimbleness" – the ability to take a business model and adapt it to what the market is saying now. I’ve handled some VP Sales and General Manager searches recently where the company believes it understands the sales model and why customers are buying. But the company may need to strategically pivot a product and/or sales message based on the latest marketplace learnings. Entrepreneurial companies need executives who can strategically pinpoint new opportunities and then execute for results. 3. Emphasis on Selling Services I’ve long specialized in finding executives who can sell services for consulting company clients who place a premium on strong skills in this area. Most tech salespeople are experienced at selling products or software applications. But as more tech firms start offering high-margin information-based services, companies are seeking sales execs who know how to sell them. It's a different animal requiring hybrid skills of a consultant who has installed services and who can communicate their value to customers. Today’s most in-demand sales execs know how to sell both products and intangibles. 4. Analytics Acumen a Must Companies now have huge amounts of customer data available to help boost targeting and efficiency. That puts a premium on execs who truly understand analytics, and – more importantly – know how to use data-based findings to improve performance. Whether the field is general management, marketing or engineering, executives who learn how to harness data analytics will have a bigger role going forward. In my view, marketing – typically a non-tech function in the past – will become an increasingly technical role based on an explosion of marketing analytics. 5. Social Media Marketing Goes Next-Gen Marketing executives must keep pace with the changing digital landscape of web advertising, social media, SEO/SEM, and myriad of new owned, earned and paid marketing channels and techniques. One VP Marketing tells me she reserves budget specifically for advances she doesn’t yet know about. Companies are well beyond simply trying out Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms. Now it's about turning engagement into sales. The only sure thing is that social will keep evolving. 6. Enabling Technologies Hold Sway During the California gold rush, the suppliers – or enablers – made the most money. In similar fashion, various tools and technologies that support and amplify the Internet and social media will be the "pick axes" of our connected world. Executives understanding and producing these enabling technologies will continue to derive value rather than competing for the next generation of users. 7. Execs Embrace Gamification A half dozen years ago, one CMO candidate distinguished himself by finding innovative ways to market through cleverly imbedded games and product placements deep within targeted search results. Now we even see companies such as Salesforce adding gamification in the form of badges for increasing sales. With millions of casual gamers and a growing percentage of those paying for games, executives who understand gamification can find ways to increase revenue through this mechanism. Who knew countless hours of game-playing could pay off? 8. More Asia/America Leadership Connections With China’s explosive growth and Silicon Valley's already strong manufacturing relationships with Asia, I’m seeing a lot more inter-region hiring activity. Several multi-billion dollar Asian companies have engaged our firm to start or enhance Silicon Valley offices. And we’ve been hired to find Asian Americans to fill critical leadership roles in Asia for US-based firms that want US-style leadership skills infused into an Asian office. I’m already brushing up on my college Mandarin! 9. Resume Keywords Get Real Companies look for talent by searching for resume keywords such as cloud, SaaS, Big Data, mobile applications, etc. But some candidates go overboard with job titles saying, for example, "VP Sales Cloud Computing" in 2000 – long before the term cloud computing was ever used. I find it’s better when executives list the predecessor technology they worked on. My advice is to use “software defined” language such as client server, thin client, hosted software or others. It shows me – the recruiter – that you understand the underlying business models. 10. "Value-Based" Interviewing Takes Hold Interviewing can be subject to trends and has, itself, moved beyond behavioral and case interviewing. The trend now is toward probing the specific value a prospective candidate can bring to the company. What would the candidate do today? At the executive level, candidates should have a well-defined point of view on what skills and experiences they bring that can make a difference. Companies are asking candidates to present a 90-day business plan for the job. Candidates may weary of providing "free consulting" but that’s the new price of admission. Current Searches Kathryn Ullrich Associates' recent search work has included a VP Sales for a hosted software company, VP Sales Cloud Computing for a $35 billion technology company, Regional Sales Director Asia Pacific for an electronics distributor, and VP HR for an ecommerce company. We are currently working on the following searches:
For more information, visit www.ullrichassociates.com. Kathryn Ullrich Associates, Inc. focuses on C-level, VP and Director hires across the functions of Sales, Marketing, Product Management and Consulting for technology and services companies. News Kathryn Ullrich and Getting to the Top have been quoted extensively in the news this past year! Read details at http://www.gettingtothetop.com/MediaKit.aspx Follow us… Twitter at http://twitter.com/GettingtotheTop LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/ullrich, and Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/gettingtothetop. More Information For more information on Kathryn Ullrich Associates, Inc. and our executive recruiting services, please call 650-458-8775, email [email protected] or visit www.ullrichassociates.com. Yes Linkedin has a new layout and we all still look the same, but prettier. However, since recruiters are paying $8000 USD annually to find us, let's do what we can to help them. In fact let's make it easy on them. Here are 5 simple and quick things to implement that will put you in a recruiter's headlights. It will wildly improve your visibility to recruiters on Linkedin. But before you go crazy, on Linkedin go up under your name and click on Settings in the drop down menu to close down all you visibility. You really do not want Linkedin to announce to the whole world every time you join a group or add a contact. Yes, you have to set your privacy as the default is total public nakedness on Linkedin...not good.
These 5 tasks will not take long and the rewards you will reap will be astonishing. Linkedin is really a numbers game to be seen and found. My client who connected to over 500 recruiters on 3 continents in less than a month ended up with 2 interviews. He is at the top executive level so those searches are not plentiful. He got a good return on his investment. Further, every time he posts a blog that highlights his expertise, it goes to his Linkedin updates. His LInkedin updates remind all his recruiter-connections continually of his talents and availability. This is a virtuous circle of creating a reputation and having it be seen on If you want help in building out the content to make your Linkedin Profile really shine, contact me at [email protected] All resumes are digital, but people still don't seem to get that. I don't care if you are CEO or a Barrista at Starbucks. Nobody will see your resume on a piece of paper unless : A. you carry it into them, or B. you walk in for an interview. Your resume gets passed around from computer, to tablet, to cloud database. If you are going to be networked, connected, and screened for jobs online then why not think out of the box and emulate the best at the same time? I give you the madly gone viral "resume" for Philippe Dubost that is a direct send up of an Amazon product page. And, yes, it is being called a resume in an article by Will Oremus at Slate.com I think Philippe is funny, brilliant, and creative. I'd buy him. View Phil's resume here TalentBin Takes On LinkedIn By Targeting Recruiters By David Zax | January 14, 2013 .....That’s because TalentBin doesn’t compete with the services LinkedIn offers to the average user. Rather, TalentBin competes with the behind-the-scenes services LinkedIn offers a very specific, and lucrative, segment: recruiters. You may not have known this, but LinkedIn makes the majority of its revenue by serving recruiters who want to scoop up talent for their companies. In the third quarter of 2012, fully 55% of the company’s revenue came from what LinkedIn calls “Talent Solutions.” (Premium subscriptions, by contrast, only make up 20% of revenue.) LinkedIn largely achieves this by digesting resumes into what Kazanjy calls “this master database that recruiters pay a pretty penny to essentially get God rights to.” TalentBin digests data from ... many others. For hackers, it stalks sites like GitHub or StackOverflow; for designers, it scans the likes of Dribble and Behance. It even trolls the U.S. Patent Database, looking for inventive types. Most recently, says Kazanjy, the team “indexed the entirety of the PubMed Life Sciences Publication Directory,” some 20 million articles, to glean information about talented medical researchers and their interests. “It starts to show this approach doesn’t just work with software engineers,” he says. “It also works with physicians, researchers, biotech people, and so forth.” That project was just completed in December. Gradually, TalentBin has built a “search engine for people,” as Kazanjy puts it, one which he charges $6,000 per year for the privilege of accessing (undercutting LinkedIn’s reported price tag, which can climb to $8,000). Read more While TalentBin may nibble at the edges of Linkedin to do specific, niche searches for gurus in the esoteric fields, Linkedin is a runaway train for talent search. The reason is that recruiters for less esoteric positions like the interactive search of Linkedin. They like being chased by candidates who may turn out to be a good fit for something. Recruiters like developing a "presence" online and a following. That makes future, non-esoteric, searches easier and quicker. One of my executive clients literally went from 50 to 600 connections in less than a month by sending invites to recruiters in all of the 50 groups he had joined on Linkedin. Recruiters never turn down your offer to connect. We pushed him past the magic 500 number and made him look well-connected virtually overnight. Once he was over 500 then professionals he did not know more readily accepted his invitations to connect as they perceived him as a valuable networking contact. People like communities, even recruiters, which explains why Linkedin groups, even with all their spam, are so popular. The only recruiting category killer lurking on the horizon is Facebook. And it's method for data capture has to be improved to give Linkedin a run for its money. How long is long? Is the perception of length different in a print document vs an online page? What is the big deal about a one or two page resume when your Linkedin profile, if printed, can run upwards of five pages? Why are you still worried about having a short, tight, brief, truncated, abbreviated resume to not tax the time and mental agility of a recruiter? They, meaning search firms, contract recruiters, hiring managers and HR dedicate considerable time and energy to comb and cull through LInkedin profiles looking for the perfect candidate. In fact they pay $8000+ for a seat license to so do. They read through the recommendations, the summary, each job description, skills lists, projects, honors/awards, interests, education, group membership, certifications, languages, lists of connections, and, of course, the updates. Why is there still such archaic rules around resumes? Resumes are held to different standards than an online social profile because the hiring powers, especially the search firms, still see a resume as a page or pages printed on paper. They have this unique twist of mind that can rationalize the fact that a resume lives entirely a digital life except for a brief appearance on paper during the interview. They still see a resume's online state as temporary because they do print it out when they bring in a candidate. It is this historical, traditional, head-in-sand viewpoint. It is pretty ridiculous to say a resume has to be short since people are being hired every day on the basis of their very long and detailed Linkedin profiles that are referred to and viewed on a tablet or laptop screen during the interview. Ironically, your resume is stored in the clouds or on a server database for further reference, key word searches, and archive records. Its life in print is very temporary indeed. What do you do? Make your Linkedin profile as robust and informed as possible? Maybe with great care as it is very public given the networking nature of Linkedin. It matters that you fill out most categories fully and with captivating information. But, that information should be designed to elicit further contact with you, not as data to screen you out. The important idea to keep in mind is that both your resume and Linkedin profile exist for one purpose to attract positive attention that results in you being contacted for an opportunity that would be of interest to you. They both, to that end, should be as long as it takes. This is a new twist. I have been saying for several years now that recruiters and hiring managers are looking in Linkedin first for potential hires and then Google searches. They bypass resume searches out of their own website databases in favor of prowling through online profiles. Now some HR experts, notably the esteemed Dr. John Sullivan, have realized to require an employee to submit someone's resume to make an employee referral is a really dumb idea. And he tells you in this article all the good reasons why. Time to just burn that resume and build a professional website instead? I think so. Why “Name-only” Employee Referrals Produce Dramatic Results by Dr. John Sullivan Oct 29, 2012, 5:42 am ET Employee referrals provide the highest quality and the highest volume of hires, but you won’t receive as high a level of results if you don’t minimize roadblocks to referrals. Requiring a current resume for employee referrals is a major “under-the-radar” detriment to reaching the goal of having referrals exceed 50% of all hires. Requiring a resume to start a referral process might not seem like a big deal (because the resume is “the currency” of recruiting) but it can be. Although “active candidates” all have current resumes, employed people who are not actively looking (some people call thempassives) don’t have an updated resume available and they may have little interest in creating one. Requiring an updated resume in order to move forward slows down and occasionally stops employee referral efforts. Consider an alternative approach, which is offering an option to employees, so that all they must submit is a prospect’s name and contact information in order to begin the referral process. This approach is known as a “name-only” referral. read more
A headhunter by definition is an employee or an external vendor who works to search, source, identify, and place the best possible available talent fit into a company's job opening. Known as HR staffing, contingent recruiters, and employment agencies, they are paid by the companies who engage their services to hunt talent for them. Hence the nickname, headhunter. Everybody knows this, right? Why is it that headhunters are too often the first avenue used by professional and executive job seekers especially when unemployed? They are the least helpful resource when trying to make a big career transition. They are the most helpful when you are looking for the exact same job, industry, and position level in a different company. Most people are not. The reason why we have this knee jerk outreach to search firms is habit long ingrained into us. Our first experience with any kind of recruiter is when they appeared on campus to recruit new graduates and interns. They hosted pizza nights, gave away bling and cool toys at career fairs. They got some of us our first jobs. We make mistaken assumptions about them due mainly to a long, satisfactory history and pattern of relationship with them. Often, it was a headhunter who lured us out of a current position and into a new opportunity. In time, we used their help to fill our open openings. They continued to cultivate relationships with us as we grew in title and responsibilities. It is the the nature of their business. It only makes sense to let them know that we are looking when it is time for us to move on. But, don't assume that they may actively work in our behalf to help place us by way of reciprocity. Sometimes they will try to help but we cannot expect that they will act to our benefit. We tend to lose an objective perspective of the demands made upon them by their corporate and organizational clients. They are looking for the absolute best fit for a position in terms of industry background, professional experience and position level. Transferable skills are not a significant factor because they don't consider someone making a career transition the best possible fit for a position. Yes, the whims of the economy affect all hiring, as a headhunter may have the perfect position when we aren't looking or desiring to make a move. Timing is everything. Do make connections with headhunters, but don't expect what they simply may not be able to deliver...a job. Green Mountain Train Wreck, March 21, 1910 Kudos to the article author, career strategist John Lees, as he is absolutely spot on in his assessment of how we become our own train wrecks. If You're Looking for a Job, Get Out of Your Own Wayby John Lees August 15, 2012 Why do some job hunters give up when they are just in sight of their goals? I've just seen Simon, a client who has been looking for a job for 6 months. Like many people on the market, he started out optimistically but has given up — not officially, mind you, but he's suddenly taken an urgent interest in redecorating his house. His argument to hire a career coach is summed up in this comment, "By insisting that job searching is logical, simple and hardly worth thinking about, we don't think about it at all. We act as if it's as simple as making an online purchase. Yet it's an activity which is all about influencing, communicating a brand, eliciting support, and making connections — skills that can take half a lifetime to perfect." Here are his 5 Ways to Derail a Search Summed Up:
I would add a 6th Way Often my clients come to me after they have committed the article's five top job search errors and lost valuable search time. But, I would add a sixth as well. The job hunter who expects and assumes that their next position should come through a search firm because their last four did. Time changes executive opportunities in marketplace as career growth raises position level and the corresponding availability jobs at the top. Successful job hunters respond with new approaches, tactics, tools and technologies that meet the current status quo. ResumUp is a new tool that is a graphically social based view of your experience and talents. Whew, graphically-social based, now that's a mouth full. But how do you describe the new image driven content style of cloud apps coming up online now? It is an interesting concept and of course it remains to be seen how they will monetize this but I like the look. Hint, sign up using your Linkedin profile not Facebook as it populates the data fields from the site you choose. I am not sure I would want a future employer to take a look at my credentials presented in this fashion. However, the resume is a dying breed we need to stay ahead of the curve and manipulate these tools to our advantage. If you want to sign-up for the free best click here. Business Insider has 23 examples of cool resumes using Instagram, the image-based website that Facebook just bought for $1 billion. They said in their intro: It seems like a boring black and white resume won't get you very far anymore. Inspired by 7 cool resumes we found on Pinterest, we scoured Instagram for some more. Here are the most creative resumes we found. View all 23 here Some of the examples are stunning, others quirky, and all are young...very young. This really can work for you if you are under 30 and fighting for visibility in this very tough job market for early professionals. Certainly it can give anyone in the creative arts, digital media, and technology an extra edge and opportunity to showcase their talents. But will Instagram and Pinterest work for mid-career experienced professionals and senior executives? A qualified yes. It depends on the sector, the role and position level. In heavy equipment manufacturing at the C-level it would not be advisable. At least not this year. But in consumer packaged goods, fast moving consumer goods, hospitality, sports, recreation, entertainment, consumer electronics, fashion, advertizing, and technology sectors, those sites could well be a differentiating addition to your online branding. The position is important too. Traditional fields of finance, insurance, risk management, facilities management, for example, don't lend themselves, right now, to this kind of treatment. This kind of personal branding would not be expected nor accepted in more conservative sectors or professions. With all of the above caveats, in the parade, it is far better to ahead of the elephants and horses than behind. In 2003, when Linkedin launched nobody had ever heard of it let alone wanted to join and connect. Back then it was easy to get thousands of connections (and I did) and now you have to buy them. My advice is to register your name on Pinterest and Instagram to just hold a place for your profile. Eventually they will become acceptable social sites like linkedin is now and you then can leverage them for online branding. See all my blogs and website on Pinterest boards . Instagram is next. from About.com video coaching interviewers How to Judge Potential Employees on Behavior and Mannerisms This is the title of a video from About.com Human Resources that says,"A potential employees behavior and mannerisms can be the most telling part of the job interview. Learn how to gauge actions and behavior to see if the candidate would be a successful employee." Hopefully, I have successfully reverse engineered the process advised in this video so that my clients display appropriate interview behaviors to match any interviewer. Our goal is always to do what it takes to turn the interview into an offer. You can always turn down an offer if you think your are not a fit or it isn't quite the right opportunity. But you don't want to hand over that power to the interviewer. You control your total delivery during the interview, not just what you say but how you look, sound and move when you respond. The most scary statement a recruiter can make is to tell you to relax and be yourself. Do not do that! But this does put you on the alert to be very attentive to the recruiter's body language, mannerisms and the non-verbal feedback to the answers that you supply to their questions. That's exactly what they are doing to you! Interviewing as an art should be a well choreographed dance between you and the interviewers. How many times have you lost out on a great position because you didn't read the interviewer correctly or rubbed them the wrong way? Record your voice as you practice answering questions. Use your laptop to video your practice interviews. Microsoft OneNote will actually record the screen as you to this so you can track your improvement. If you get really good at interviewing in any situation, with any style of interviewer, and any company then you can afford to be your self when you want to not when they want you to. http://sachachua.com/blog/p/23203/ We all know by now about very successful launch of The Startup of You by the founder of Linkedin. It has good tips and advice for the Social Generation's job search. But that's not my point here. I have been mulling the changes that 20 years can make in how we have careers, look for work and create our success. In 1990, Tom Peter's published in Fast Company, The Brand Called You. During the past 20+ years, people, with the help of the Internet, have figured out and mastered how to brand, pitch, promote and market themselves to get or stay employed. Everybody is on Google+, Linkedin, Viadeo, Xing, and FB pages with profiles describing their accomplishments. Many professionals (all my clients) are setting up professional websites, iPad profiles, and even Presumes. Yes, we have got the branding part down to the point that everyone is sick of hearing the word used. Unfortunately, being well branded, positioned and marketed isn't enough anymore. The Startup of You addresses the really salient career challenges that the Social Generation faces today. How do you find a job and stay employed in a global marketplace for talent where there aren't enough jobs, the competition is fierce, and everybody is a brand? Well the message is threefold:
Some reading this may say that this is all old news that is just repackaged. I don't think so. What is interesting to note is the shift in emphasis over 20 years from the sole individual with a brand to a person as part of a collective network. As we all live digital lives, building a the global village around us to support our career survival has become a most efficacious route. The following excerpt from the CFO article underscores the need for all job seekers to get beyond the fill in online application,social profiles, and the emailed resume to inculcate themselves into hiring opportunities. The cloud app described below turns any candidate into one of many to be screened, scrutinized and culled from the herd. That process just doesn't get you hired. I agree with CFO's title but in a different way. For you to get a job, make the resume an afterthought, leave behind paper at the on-site interview. Don't put it between you and an employer. They just might make you fill in a form anyhow. In a recent survey, more than a quarter of the responding CFOs said they increased accounting staff in the past two years. Indeed, the biggest growth in jobs right now seems to be occurring in the professional- and business-services sector. But chances are the majority of those organizations are still hiring the old-fashioned way: posting openings and sifting through piles of résumés. Not Esker, a French-based document-automation company that has gone from 220 full-time employees to 280 in the past two years. “I haven’t looked at a résumé in nine months,” says Esker managing director and U.S. chief operating officer Steve Smith, “and I won’t look at résumés anymore.” Instead, Smith uses Unrabble, a cloud-based, software-as-a-service hiring tool that eliminates all the paper, résumés included. “If a candidate approaches me the old-fashioned way and sends me a résumé, I send the person the link to the tool and tell [him he’s] got to go through this process,” he says. “Within 30 seconds, I can tell if it’s worth my time looking into this person.” Unrabble is browser-based. Instead of submitting a traditional résumé, candidates fill out an online form, and the hiring company can then sort applications based on qualifications for the position. The Unrabble tool is searchable (job experience and companies can be checked), interactive (candidates can be ranked), and easily shared with any number of people. It also enables users to search a candidate’s Facebook page and Linked-In profile without having to hunt for them on the web. Smith chose Unrabble over two other tools; one required a software installation, the other lacked desired functionality. He estimates Unrabble has reduced the amount of time Esker spends on hiring by 20% to 30%. The premium service costs $49 a month for 10 open positions; more than that, the price goes up. “I haven’t run it through an ROI calculator,” Smith says, “and I haven’t calculated the dollar savings. But if you figure just my time alone, and what I’m paid, and the time I’ve saved — it’s more than paid for itself.” Read the entire article This is your new blog post. Click here and start typing, or drag in elements from the top bar.
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