Pinching Yourself

I had lunch with a colleague yesterday, a woman named Suzanne Zemke, whom I met through coaching. Having worked in big corporations for most of her career, Suzanne was given the "gift" of a layoff several months ago.

Instead of going back to the same type of job with the requisite steady paycheck, she decided to take a risk. Now this is someone who is very organized about everything in her life. So, she has done a budget to plan how much she will spend in a year, and has saved enough to cover her expenses while she checks things out a bit.

She's decided to become a management coach. And it turns out, she's an excellent one.

Within a few months she has created a plan, built a website, put together a seminar and has a small stable of clients. She has analyzed how many clients and seminars she needs to have each year to make enough money to support her lifestyle. She is flying.

She said to me over lunch that she never imagined, while toiling away at big companies over the years, that she could create the kind of life for herself she is now in the process of creating. She described the feeling of leading a coaching session and being in that perfect state of flow--like when she got to a certain point of her training for the marathon.

She jumped off a cliff, and she feels amazing.

So can any of us. It's all about creating and executing a plan that makes sense, one that enables you to take the risk, but limit any negative fallout.

I would love to hear your cliff story, if you'd like to share it with other readers.

Tips for Job Seekers

I am consulting with an organization called Nexxt Phase, for women in career transition. We are in the process of redefining the vision of the group and determining ways we can help women achieve their career goals.

We put together a list of tips for job-seekers, with special focus on women returning the workforce. I thought I'd share them here.

• Your career effort should be a PUSH, not a PULL. This means you should avoid getting absorbed in trolling the Internet and applying for positions, which will give you a false sense that you are doing something productive. Instead, the focus should be on determining what you want to do, what organizations might hire you and finding contacts in those organizations. This is a marketing effort and the brand is YOU.
• Put all of your information on your resume. You want to manage expectations about you, and that means including pertinent dates such as when you graduated from college. Hiding your age will not prevent ageism and may backfire since employers could make an assumption that you are significantly younger than you are and be surprised when they meet you.
• Be opportunistic, prepared and strategic. Get out and attend things, consider everyone a potential lead. It is typically your secondary contacts—friend of a friend, etc.—that become the ultimate conduit to a new job.
• Know that there is no one perfect job that will fulfill all of your needs. Know what your skills and interests are and seek out positions that meet at least 2-3 of your key criteria.
• Define what you are looking for and ask your contacts for what you need from them. Be specific, give people a hook. The onus is on you to define your own needs. You will get a much higher response rate this way than asking “for any ideas you may have”.
• Just get started. Get off the fence and commit to something and take steps. It is very easy to postpone a decision until everything is well-defined, but that day may never come.
• Establish criteria, test and modify as you gain feedback.
• Package what you’ve done and what you are seeking in an effective elevator pitch. This pitch should put into 3-4 sentences, your background and what you are seeking in a job. It should be polished, confident and memorable. The elevator pitch is designed to catch someone at a random moment and provide them enough detail and impetus to be helpful to you.
• Show your strength in interviews. Remember: You are interviewing them too, it is very much a two-way street.
• If you are interested in creating a flexible work schedule, define what that means to you and package it as a win-win for both yourself and the organization. Don’t rule out positions that are full-time; once you’ve gotten beyond the preliminary interviews you can begin to investigate flexibility.
• Create a personal Board of Directors. This should include people who care about you, are willing to speak the truth and who have complementary and desirable skills.
• Never turn down a meeting, you never know what will come of it. Network by joining professional associations and support groups where you can expand your circle.
• Be okay with where you are right now; be positive. And take steps to move forward. This process requires patience, commitment and discipline.

The Organizing Principle

As a consultant, I find it tough to get organized.

I am not shy about mentioning this, since I talk to other consultants all the time, and they usually have the same problem.

Not that being super organized about my work has ever been a great strength! My tendency is to work in a more stream of consciousness way, which means that I stay open to opportunities that present themselves, which can be good except...when the day ends and I scratch my head and think "What did I do today?"

This is not a great feeling.

So I've been working with a coach. Yes, a coach who is a project manager and clearly gets a lot done herself. With her help, I am disciplining myself to create some "chunky goals" during the week, and to write down the steps to getting there. And this has definitely improved my productivity.

This of course is not rocket science. But it makes me feel better.

The truth is, some of us are better at idea generation and some at execution. And when you work on your own, you have to learn to do both.

I'm a big fan of getting help when you need it--maybe that's one of the reasons I became a career coach. So I encourage all my clients to figure out what they're good at, and get support on the things that don't come as easily. There is no shame in this; we can't all be good at everything. And as Marcus Buckingham says, the more time we spend focusing on our strengths, the more impact we'll ultimately have.

If you're in the market for a coach and you'd like some advice, email me and I'll give you the names of some people I think are really good.

Lunching Ladies

Yesterday I was the lead speaker at a seminar for women considering going back to work.

This was the first in a seminar series called Mind Your Own Business Moms, started by two women I know through my kids' school.

It was held in a restaurant, and there were about 25 women there, prosperous and engaged in their lives but looking for a career to complete their fulfillment.

My presentation was entitled "Why Work?", which I felt was apt considering these women are making a choice to work, and income is likely a secondary factor.

I feel very passionate about women working as a protective measure. The truth is, 50% of us will get divorced and many of us will be widowed. Women outlive men by seven years, and that number is growing. A horrifying statistic: In the first year a woman is divorced her standard of living plummets by 73% on average.

So one of the things I always stress to women is this: You never know.

If you start planning your career now, in a few years you'll be making enough of a living to re-invigorate your earning power in the long-term.

I shared many, many thoughts and tips with this group, and I will share a couple here:

-Figure out what you want to do, what companies interest you, and then find the right person to contact at those companies. Never go in blind.

-Don't use the Internet to apply for jobs; unless you can prove that you fit the exact profile of what they are seeking in the ad, you will be ignored. Women who haven't worked in years and/or are seeking part-time work do not qualify. Answering ads only makes you think you're making progress when you're not.

-You never know where you might find a job so be prepared. Have an elevator pitch, and use both old and new networks to talk with people.

Anyway, there's lots more in my presentation. If you'd like to view more of it, just email me and I'll get it to you.

Happy hunting!

Making Your Resume Squeaky Clean

Today I was interviewing a search consultant for a project I'm doing: a series of interviews about the current hiring climate in various sectors, for the career management website BlueSteps.com.

We were talking about a common acquaintance who recently took a very senior job. It turns out that this particular search consultant had been considering this candidate for another very senior job, and at the very last minute the company withdrew their offer.

Why? Because in conducting their due diligence, the search firm found that the candidate had inflated his graduate degree. He said he had an MBA, but it turns out he had something different.

Now that's embarrassing. It turns out the search firm that ended up placing him in his new job either didn't check his credentials thoroughly or, more likely, he changed the description of his degree after his gaffe was discovered. So he got a job; no harm done, right?

Not so. The search firm that caught the degree detail will have notes in this candidate's file, and they happen to be the pre-eminent search firm in his industry. So the next time they have a hot opportunity, they're unlikely to get in touch with him. Too bad.

I mention this because it's a common occurrence. And when we've been working a long time, sometimes the early career details can seem a bit fuzzy and we find we're able to convince ourselves to tweak a resume detail to favor our current situation. My advice: Be careful. Don't do it. It could come back to haunt you.

When it comes to resumes, project a strong, positive image for sure. But don't embellish the facts--in the end, it's not worth it.

Get to Work

Lately I've been attending plenty of conferences, but not blogging as I should. Since I last wrote there was the IACPR conference where one of the panel discussions included a VP of HR for a major investment bank claiming that they couldn't find enough women interested in their re-entry program. Turns out the program welcomes women of all financial services stripes -- not only alumnae of that particular firm. Well, this is interesting. Name brand banks and consulting firms, among others, are welcoming back women to work on a project basis or on flexible schedules. The reason? We're in a Talent Shortage. Another speaker at the conference, Tammy Erickson, wrote a book called "Workforce Crisis: How to Beat the Coming Shortage of Skills and Talent" based on several years of research. She claims that companies still operate as they did in the 50's and show few signs of changing. But a few are paving the way out of need--the driver that will enable women to join up on new terms.

Linda Hirshman wrote her manifesto "Get to Work" on the premise that women do all women a disservice when they opt out of work, not to mention the impact on themselves. She speaks forcefully of the lack of power women have in their marriage when they stop bringing in income. It's hard to argue with her.

The trends surrounding the War for Talent will force companies to look to disenfranchised groups, such as formerly professional women, to provide some of the brainpower those companies lack. This is excellent news for those women everywhere who, as their kids get older, want to get back into the workforce.

Each time I discuss my work with women seeking flexible schedules or a way back in, I get a very strong reaction. It would be a win-win if more companies would hire those women to meet their needs. There's plenty of work to be done between an identified need, the search and camera-ready candidates, but it is happening. Both sides are becoming more motivated. If these conference topics are any indication, and they are all about the War for Talent, change is afoot.

Nexxt Phase

Yesterday I attended a lunch given by a group called Nexxt Phase: a networking community of women looking to get back into the workforce after a hiatus.

The group represents an elite Manhattan community of accomplished, polished, well-off women -- all of whom have decided it's time to do something in addition to raising kids and doing volunteer work.

The energy in the room was palpable. There was a warm-up exercise to get to know other people and then a guest speaker: one of the authors of the book "Back on the Career Track", which speaks to women relaunching their careers.

Everyone in the group is busy, most of them have launched projects of some sort. However, many of them appeared inflexible in how they would ultimately let work intrude on their busy lives.

The truth is: we can easily fill our time; there's always plenty to do. And if you haven't worked in years, you've of course been occupied with plenty of things, including raising a family in many cases. But paid work requires a different mind-set. If you really are serious about going back to work, you need to carve out the time and provide the resources to support your decision. And you need to organize that before you start looking for a job.

Many people have good intentions about working again, but if a real financial need isn't there, the motivation may not follow. However, there are plenty of people who are really serious about relaunching themselves, and are ready to make the job a
priority. I'm going to be interviewing some of those women who returned to work after "stopping out", on these pages. So stay tuned.

Do you have questions about relaunching your career? I'd love to hear from you.