Just got off the phone with Howard. He was disappointed that he did not get an interview for a role as the senior writer of Executive Communications. He has years of writing to and on behalf of the F25 C-Suite but he had not done enough in this pitch to establish just how good and unique he is.

As a writer, Howard is used to the role of a support person, who reacts to assignments but doesn’t originate them. As a Minnesotan, he is not sure it isn’t a sin to strut his excellence. Yet he is frustrated because he has been praised for many years for his high caliber writing, and is looking for a next, awesome assignment.

Howard needs to give himself permission to create the platform that showcases his skills enough to claim one of those rarified assignments. Since he wants to move to a new corporation where he is unknown and there is high degree of scrutiny due to the visibility and sensitivity of the executive communications role, it is particularly important for him to match the sophistication of the assignment with a sophistication of pitch.

Most of you hope using the same kind of pitch everyone else uses will somehow get you an assignment that sets you apart from mere mortals.

To move through the wormhole and leave everyone else behind, you need a vehicle and an attitude that will get you there.

Perhaps you will also need a presentation that teaches your customers that a higher level of performance by their organization is possible and that you can show them how to get there.

If you are not quite ready to find yourself on another planet or in another dimension of time, you need to start exercising the muscles that will get you there when you are ready for change, fame, and fortune.

I believe all of us need to get better at these skills to survive and thrive in the future Workforce 2020 marketplace.

Topics: branding + positioning, business skills, getting ahead, ideation, selling skills, technical skills, visibility | No Comments »

One of the ways to prove your readiness for a promotion or why you should be hired before a sea of other candidates is to create hypothetical case histories of different business problems and discuss the problems, business ramifications, and proposed solutions in great detail. We are talking pages, not two lines on your resume. Put your remedies on the table with a deep, strategic discussion of why they offer the best ROI (return on investment) for the business situation and be willing to be graded/critiqued for your proposed fixes before or early in the interview process. It will help you get into higher level interviews sooner and more often.

It is giving away free consulting, perhaps, but in a risk-adverse job market, it may move you past other contestants. It is actually safer in this instance not to offer remedies to the potential employer’s current problems, because it is likely you will not know some choice business tidbit that suddenly makes your proposed remedy look foolish. If you write about enough different business situations credibly, you will suggest that you could make future headway on the problems of the employer you are hoping to impress even if you don’t currently have all the information to score an A+ today for the target project. It is an effective way to show you are viable for a new industry.

If you were thinking of whining about all the work I am suggesting, one of my coaching clients, who had been at $150K before being laid off, moved to a $235K salary in his next move by creating a “portfolio” showcasing his business insights. He intends to repeat the strategy in the near future to accelerate his next promotion. (He also pointed out the exercise cost less than his MBA and accomplished more.)

Another approach is to write an erudite white paper or two on bleeding edge industry issues. Write an article that gets into the WSJ or Financial Times or the leading trade magazine in your industry. You can’t plagiarize or try to “snow” anyone with these. You need to be ready to discuss any of the topics for 2-3 hours convincingly in an interview.

This process is a good exercise to test how credible you are as a candidate for a more senior role than you have had previously without long term risk to any party. Both you and the hiring manager may need to see the concrete proof of how you rank versus other candidates.

It is also good way to remove the personal stigma of having been at a failing company in a senior title. I just recommended the process to someone who has been at several small start-ups that did not make it long term.

The flip side of this strategy is that, for something like 10 years now, companies have been pulling in 10-15 candidates and giving them 40-70 hour assignments of what would they do in X situation without paying consulting fees. Then the company takes the consensus of all the hopeful applicants and doesn’t hire any of them. I first saw this phenomenon amongst high level IT Project Managers with PMPs. I happen to think this is unethical and would never work for a company that asked it. One way to defend yourself against it is to offer solutions to problems at other companies as suggested in the second paragraph, before or regardless if the company asks for “free advice” with bad intentions.

It is all about demonstrating your thought leadership in a way that allows you to hop, skip, and jump past other potential candidates.  It also allows you to grow as fast as you can rather than waiting for company projects that allow you to flex your muscles.

Topics: branding + positioning, communications, getting ahead, innovation, interviews, leadership, management skills, salary, selling skills, solving problems, technical skills, visibility | 1 Comment »

At a recent breakfast with other career professionals, we got into a discussion of the characteristics of who is likely to be out the longest when unemployed.

The most common trait: Too little awareness of his/her value to the businesses he/she has come from versus other available resources.

In my practice, these folks fall into two sub-segments:

The Traditionalist:
• Someone who has worked for a single company for 10-20 years and after being laid off, has had no luck getting back in. Doesn’t know why.
• Doesn’t really know to what degree or when he exceeded expectations at the last employer. Not sure how he was ranked versus other employees, except that he was kept on many years and made quotas most of the time. “My boss/company took care of me.” To be fair to this person, education (and religion) in this country breeds workers to let their companies manage their fate.
• Is pretty sure he is out of work because of big business, the Democrats, Republicans, or “poor management.”

The Arrogant:
• This person has progressed through the ranks and has successfully held a number of (3-6) of senior titles such as Director or VP. But now has been out over a year and gets interviews but no offers.
• Since he achieved Director+ level, is pretty sure it can’t be his fault. On the other hand, seems to have forgotten that, at the top of the pyramid, there aren’t enough chairs for everyone to be assured a chair when the music stops. The music has stopped a lot in the last 5 years.
• Talked to one of these the other day. Has achieved CEO and President of several medical device start-ups and companies under $30 million. But in his resume all he says is “I was CEO.” Describes the mergers and acquisitions that occurred while he was at the helm but doesn’t show what mission critical strategies he owns versus other senior staff involved in the same M&A. Makes no effort to show for which future companies and problems he is the best ROI (return on investment.) Doesn’t think he should have to.

By the way, the folks with these problems are more likely to be male (women are usually more self-aware and/or paranoid,) and very likely to be over the age of 50.

So if you suspect you have a bit of these traits, what do you do? Go back to former co-workers and bosses and identify what you did better/differently than other people they have interacted with at the same title and experience level. This is not the time to ask people who will say nice things to you because they don’t want to hurt your feelings. Learn to craft the arguments that will set you above all other pitches for whatever segments you can be the best ROI for. I know how to do that if you don’t.

Be willing to admit that in today’s market we all need to sell ourselves to our workplace, industry, family, and community 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Topics: branding + positioning, communications, getting ahead, leadership, selling skills | 3 Comments »

Most folks only think about their brand when they are updating their resume or marketing plan. Consider this. You are reinforcing your brand positively or negatively, consciously or unconsciously, 24 hours/day, 365 days/year.

If you want to be more memorable and influential in a sea of other executives, separate yourself from the pack at every opportunity:

1. Elevate the thoughtfulness, strategic depth, and currency of all your conversations. Talk more about the latest trends in your industry, and cutting edge technology. Show thought leadership.
2. Demonstrate your ability to sell ideas, build consensus, and grow business. This goes beyond showing you are a good networker and relationship builder. Your community needs to know how well you can influence key decision makers, facilitate across departments, get results, and create revenue.
3. Create opportunities to network with business peers on a deeper-level than possible in a typical monthly networking event or occasional networking lunch. Increase the percentage of people in your network with heavy business influence.
4. Upgrade the quality of your interpersonal interactions. A salesperson I know never ends a conversation without asking “what can I do for you today?” He stands out amongst the thousands of sales people I know because of the way he communicates it. He really does mean it. His customers and network know it.
5. Improve your LinkedIn profile and activities. It says volumes about you. Whether or not you have self-awareness about your value to employers, and can communicate and sell your ideas. Whether you are interested in helping others in the industry, or just want their contacts. Whether you are willing to read and comment on someone’s blog or discussion in a LI group in exchange for reading your sales pitch. I believe most LI profiles are doing more damage than good to their owners.
6. Update your clothing and hairstyle, look less generic. Be more hip. Have a professional quality picture in LinkedIn.  Free, generic business cards are out. Even your email signature matters.
7. Lastly, once you have turbo-charged your brand, create “buzz” and sustain it.

The key is to establish and maintain your brand in terms that are as relevant as possible to current business needs. Your brand needs be memorable and easily repeated by your fans. (Most elevator speeches are not.) Your pitch needs to have focus and a theme offering synergy amongst skills. Emphasize how you are different, not how you are similar. Highlight what is most in demand in the marketplace.

If you don’t groom and maintain your brand image, you may have no recognizable value to the community or a very muddled image that makes people avoid you for fear of a poor return on investment. Establishing a positive brand in the industry for future contingencies takes time and is crucial to long term stability and growth. It takes little time to damage a brand and forever to repair negatives.

Topics: branding + positioning, communications, getting ahead, leadership, networking, selling skills, technical skills, visibility | No Comments »

I had a client who was a Customer Service Manager in a hospital. His job was to call patients after they had just had some test and tell them that, yup, a problem had been found and a visit with a doctor for follow-up needed to be scheduled ASAP. Since he was frequently calling people with very bad news, he was not sleeping well and asked me how he could find a job in a new industry given that he had been in the hospital role for the last 20 years.

I helped him see that his gifts included not only his knowledge of medical conditions, but his ability to “deliver bad news gracefully” and help people make thoughtful, well informed decisions when under a huge amount of stress. Read the rest of this entry »

Topics: branding + positioning, career strategy, solving problems | 1 Comment »