Career Coach eNewsletter
Issue No. 3 June 2002
Brought to you by the Careers International: "Helping you take your career to the next level internationally."
Web site: http://www.careersnet.com
Editor: Margaret Stead, margaret@careersnet.com
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Welcome to this issue of Career Coach a free newsletter for those interested in using coaching to improve their career performance. Please share this newsletter with colleagues and contacts who will benefit from reading it.
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CONTENTS
- Editorial: Safety Net?
- Job Hunting notes: It's Magic
- Hot News: Corporate Social Responsibility
- Book review: Corporate Voodoo Principles for Business Mavericks and Magicians by Rene Carayol and David Firth
- Tips: Free Micro-eMBA/Write your CV the Creative Way
Safety Net?
Now may seem like the worst possible time to leave a secure job. As it turns out, staying in a safe position may be the riskiest move of all.
The "help wanted" section in the newspaper may look skimpy, and headhunters may no longer bombard your voice mail with lucrative offers, but that's no reason to stay in a dead-end job. Regardless of the economy, people still retire, quit, go back to school, or change careers, leaving real positions open for the right candidates.
Outplacement firm Penna Sanders found that during the first quarter of 2002, only 18% of managers and executives said they would relocate for a new job. That's the lowest rate recorded since the company started keeping track 15 years ago and a sign that indicates "people seem less inclined to leave their personal and professional safety nets,"
Despite imminent downsizing, bankruptcy, and court orders, employees today are slow to leave even the worst jobs. Paralysed by fear or suffering denial, many professionals are instead hunkering down in their existing positions, opting for job security over satisfaction and hoping the unemployment rate stops growing.
But safety nets provide comfort for only so long; sooner or later, they wear thin.
Can You Afford Not To?
Job security that regular salary and pension contribution -- is perhaps the biggest mental roadblock for an unsatisfied employee wrestling with the urge to resign. Your position -- just because it hasn't yet been cut -- can feel secure even when it's in jeopardy.
Many people rationalize to themselves that, because the economy is uncertain, they may not find anything else, so they stay in a job where they're unhappy. But in the end, they may become so unhappy that they sabotage themselves by not doing a good job, or even by assuming their job is safe when it really isn't. The question becomes, "Can you afford not to take a risk?"
That doesn't mean the work world should rise up in revolt tomorrow. Before delivering their letters of resignation or complaining to superiors, unhappy employees should update and circulate their CVs to new companies.
Revising your CV and looking for a new job might help you highlight what's bothering you about the position you're in. Until you expose the problem with your current role, you can't begin to apply solutions.
For example, if you're tired of doing the same old thing, look for ways to reshape your job and learn new skills -- whatever will help make your job stimulating again.
After assessing your current position, stop and ask whether your employer is healthy enough to help you achieve your career goals, Is this company just going through a rough patch, or will it continue to shrink, like telecom? Can you find a solution internally, or must you leave in order to move ahead?
Don't Let a Recruitment Freeze Deter You
The trickiest thing about finding a new job during periods of uncertainty. Is knowing where to look.
Only 10% of jobs are found through advertisements and another 10% are found through search firms. The best bet is to contact a company directly or through networking.
More often than not, so-called recruitment freezes exist to please the City investors. If a company finds the right person, it will recruit.
New work, of course, doesn't always mean a full salary and benefits from day one. An open position may come in the form of a temporary consulting assignment, something we encourage our job-seeking clients to snatch up if they can.
Temporary consulting contracts offer professionals a chance to network, learn new skills, and earn an income while they continue to search for something permanent. Consulting can also help freelancers get their foot in the door of an attractive company. A contract job can act like an audition of sorts -- for an employer as well as for an employee.
Volunteer work also helps job seekers acquire new skills and gain experience that can be parlayed into more financially rewarding work.
One client-customer left her job at a national retailer and began volunteering three or four days a week as chief financial officer of a non-profit organization. Before long, she had the requisite experience and title on her CV to land a terrific CFO position.
It's Magic
Yesterday I had a visit from a client-customer looking for another role in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)/PR/Communications. Upon reflection I realised that over the last eighteen months, I have looked after six similar individuals, three wanting to get into corporate life and three wishing to get out! (into private practice!) All have been successful because it has been an area that they can be passionate about (or even more passionate).
During a Career Development Programme, once we have identified what the client would really like to achieve and clearly described what they can do it is a short step (for them and us) to marketing their services to target companies. We take a current hot issue shared by the target companies and identify possible solutions. Match the skills, experience and achievements of the individual to solving the problem and market the individual accordingly using our powerful networking techniques. You can also use this technique very effectively as a self-marketing tool.
For instance my client-customer has identified that there is currently little professional coordination amongst individuals working in CSR. No central body, no professional Institute. So we have resolved to jointly research the CSR market-place, identify ‘who is who’ and, as a first step to invite the senior players to a networking event to be held in the autumn. Not only will this allow my client to network with existing companies with strong CSR involvement, but also talk to those without. It will position my client as a ‘facilitator’ and grow their expertise and credibility with others in the trade. As we talk to companies about their particular needs we will, no doubt, find that unadvertised job and project opportunities appear, as if by magic.
Try Free Management Library's Free, On-Line Business and Management Development Program (the Free Micro-eMBA(SM)), Free Management Library at : http://www.managementhelp.org/
Corporate Social Responsibility
Wot? Wot? I hear you say. Not another difficult to ‘get into’ concept to join the die-hards: ‘empowerment’ or ‘diversity.’ NB. Must read carefully.
What does it mean?
It generally refers to: "Business decision-making linked to ethical values, compliance with legal requirements and respect for people, communities and the environment."
(Business for Social Responsibility www.bsr.org)
More and more investors and consumers are demanding that businesses be held accountable for the environmental and social impact of their operations and those of their partners. Businesses are under a great deal of scrutiny from community groups, media, civil activist’s etc.
Why is it important?
The Commission of the European Community met in Brussels in July 2003 and created the Green Paper that ‘promoted a European framework for Corporate Social Responsibility.’
"Corporate Social Responsibility is where companies decide, voluntarily, to contribute to a better society and a cleaner environment." (Green Paper, July 2003) The main purpose of the Green Paper is to "encourage a wide range of ideas in order to promote further initiatives in this area." The Green paper’s approach will be to add value to existing activities by supporting ‘best practice approaches,’ and providing an overall framework that promotes coherence of CSR practices across Europe.
Why should we?
According to the Green paper, it is difficult to precisely assess what determines financial return for a socially responsible company however there are a number of companies with good social and environmental records indicating that these activities can result in better performance and generate more profit and growth." (i.e. better working conditions leads to a more productive workforce.)
Internal factors
Social Responsibility within the company often involves issues directly relating to the employee and their needs:
- Recruiting and retaining skilled workers has become much more difficult therefore the Green Paper suggests life-long learning, empowerment of employees, better information throughout the company, better balance between work, family and leisure & equal opportunities.
- Companies must engage in non-discriminatory hiring practices. They should fight social exclusion by facilitating recruitment of ethnic minorities, women, older workers, long-term unemployed and people at a disadvantage.
External factors - going beyond the doors of the company
Companies must reach into the local community as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility:
- Especially important because jobs provide wages, benefits to the local labour force, raising skill levels.
- Building better relationships with other organisations and their shareholders.
- Green Paper suggests that there is need for a more formalised and standardised method for recording CSR practices in business for accountability and audit reasons.
- MORI research shows that 1 in 5 shareholders believe that social reports demonstrate a real commitment to improving the company’s behaviour in these areas.
- The ISEA is set to launch an accountability scheme, which will be the first social reporting standard.
- 70 of FTSE Top 200 Companies produce a social report (MORI)
A Model of Corporate Reputation
Source: Changes in Attitude towards Corporate Social Responsibility by Professor Robert M Worcester Chairman MORI Seminar Oxford Brookes 23 November 2003 |
What can I do?
Well you can get involved in all of the above and you can express interest in various EU initiatives designed to research and implement best practice. Our EQUAL project i-work (detailed in the first issue of our newsletter (see archive) is designed to assist companies in recruiting disadvantaged people with basic skills, thus allowing other people in the organisation to move up, get more training, reduce workloads and so on. If you’d like to learn more about how you and your company can get involved contact: Robert Morrall at robert@careersnet.com
Our thanks go to Jennifer Elkayam for all her excellent groundwork on this subject. Jennifer is leaving Reading County Council shortly, where she works with Anne Pearce European Officer, on our EQUAL, i-work project. She is going back to California to complete her training as a lawyer (gasp!) for the public sector. We’ll miss you.
Write Your CV the Creative Way (tongue-in-cheek)
Below are the typical areas of a CV and priceless secrets for dealing with them. These tips will help crush the competition, get you in the door and put you behind a desk making big bucks, plus bonus.
THE NAME: Use the name line to your advantage. Spice it up a little bit. Steve Smith goes nowhere fast. But Sir Stephen Smith now that might turn a few heads! Nicknames also help. Mick "Keyboards" O'Malley is good. Mick "BoozeBucket" O'Malley is bad.
THE ADDRESS: Forget your real address. Make a statement instead! Anyplace in Japan implies you believe in an 18-hour-a-day work ethic.
THE PHONE NUMBER: Skip it. What are the odds they'll call 1,000 to 1? If they do, they'll probably just catch your flatmate somewhere in the middle of his/her second six-pack. My advice is never put your phone number on a CV unless you want to try some interesting 0800 number, which might wake up a recruiter or two.
THE AMBITION STATEMENT: Forget the ambition statement. You know what I mean: "Seeking a challenging IT position using state-of-the-art technology in a high-growth, future-oriented corporation that is doing neat things for the environment."
A better idea is to tell them what you're NOT seeking. "Not seeking a job where I'm paying my dues for eight years, maintaining ancient Cobol code that crashes every other night, slaving for some horrible boss and grovelling in the smallest cubicle in the world until I finally claw my way into a lower management position, only to have the company lay off 40% of it’s workforce so that I wind up in some non-critical, low-paying, dead-end, back-office position."
EDUCATION: Don't be afraid of Oxbridge and Ph.D.s. Be proud of where you went to school and play it straight. But just to be on the safe side, send an application to some prestigious programme at a prestigious school.
Until they respond, you're not lying if you list under your education credits: "BA in Water Sports Administration, Grimsby, 1993 ... and current doctoral candidate, Nuclear Computer Simulation Modelling Fellowship Programme, LBS"
EXPERIENCE: Even fresh out of college, you've got to have experience. But don't mention that you've invested in your own relational database or coded an object-oriented commodity trading system ... everybody's done that stuff. I'm talking about hands-on experience: high-level management, microchip design, hostile takeovers and so on.
So if you're a little light in the experience area, don't tell lies. Instead, simply try a bit-more-concise explanation of the experience you do have. For example, if you worked as a cashier at Asda, make it, "Monitored and troubleshot retail point-of-sale bar-code inventory scanning system." "Conducted usability testing for graphical user interface" sounds a lot better than "Played too much Nintendo."
But don't try "Evaluated remote-accessed continuous-availability multimedia environment." Most employers can pick that one off as watching too much MTV.
THE CLOSE: "References furnished upon request"? What kind of power-close is that?
Let me leave you instead with this recommendation: Close with impact. Close with passion. Close with a line they'll remember, like "Please, please give me a job. And by the way, I know where you live."
Book review: Corporate Voodoo - Principles for Business Mavericks and Magicians by Rene Carayol and David Firth
" .. corporate voodoo connects people, releases people from the slavery of old ways of being, thinking about and leading organisations .."
Rene Carayol is one of the world’s leading authorities on business transformation. He has twenty years experience at the top of major corporations including Pepsi, IPC Magazines and Marks & Spencer.
David Firth is an international consultant, writer and conference speaker who works with individuals and companies intent on ‘embracing the future.’ He is the author of ‘The Corporate Fool, Smart Things to Know about Change and Smart Things to Know about People.’
I bought this book last year at Birmingham International Airport and it has been sitting on my office sideboard impressing everybody ever since. I was concerned that it might just be the usual load of designer-twaddle, dressed up in mystical management-speak and marketed to unwary business travellers. Unfortunately, I cannot find anything in this book to correct my original impression. For instance in ‘The Liturgy’ we find:
"Voodoo loves new age financial engineering
"Voodoo is risk-embracing
"Voodoo loves virtual
"Voodoo accepts uncertainty. Whatever .."
"Voodoo knows a bit of Latin - (radix {radical } = root})" 10 pages of this.
The only decent bits are some of the emails that they have picked up from others. Here is an extract:
"If you woke up in the morning with more health than illness ... you are more blessed than the million who will not survive this week.
"If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, the pangs of starvation you are ahead of 500 million people in the world.
"If you can attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death ... you are more blessed than 3 billion people in the world
"If you have food in the fridge, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep ... you are richer than 75% of this world.
"If you have money in your bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace ... you are among the top 8% of the world’s wealthy ...
.. Work like you don’t need the money ... Love like you’ve never been hurt.
"Dance like nobody’s watching ... Sing like nobody’s listening.
"Live like it’s Heaven on Earth."
Recommendation: Don’t buy it. You can have my copy.
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We hope you enjoyed this issue of Career Coach. If you would like to learn more about how we can work together, then please contact me, Margaret Stead:
Telephone: +44 (0) 845 130 4344
E-mail: margaret@careersnet.com
