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Advice to New Graduates in Their Job Search: ‘Put Your Baseball Cap to the Side’

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If you are a recent college graduate entering the job market after spending the summer backpacking through Europe or taking some downtime, you are facing a tight labor market.

Now is the time to put your baseball cap to the side and look long and hard at how you can present yourself to an employer in the best possible light.

Here are some basic, yet all-important, steps you can take to stand apart from the crowd as you embark on your job search in this highly competitive environment:

Have a great resume – The newly minted grad should have a resume that looks grounded and substantial. It should be free from typos, organized and feature a classic font. Don’t get artsy unless you are looking for a job in a creative field. It should be one-page long and leverage every marquis interaction you have had. Cite every internship and recognized brand company name.

Get great references – Call your professional references, network with them, and ask them if you can count on them for a glowing reference. Solicit their advice on your job search and ask for their feedback on your resume. This is the time to start thinking about who could be your mentor when you need to make career decisions.

Practice interviewing – Before you meet anyone, practice conducting an interview. You can find sample interview questions suited to your industry online. It’s important to be able to field tough interview questions that come your way, so rehearse interviews with a trusted advisor. Candidates who are unprepared for interviews are a constant source of irritation to hiring managers.

Interview for information – Ask and arrange for informational interviews. Not only are they an opportunity to practice your interviewing style, but they also may provide you with an opportunity to get your foot in the door. Go dressed like you are ready for a real interview; make eye contact; be aware of your body language and be prepared with questions. It’s important to demonstrate that you are serious even though the interview is informational. Ask about their hiring plans for the year. Ask them for advice. Take notes and pay attention. Follow up with an emailed or written thank-you note and connect on LinkedIn.

Know what you want and be specific – Be prepared to tell a prospective employer exactly what you want. Refer to your skills, education and contacts that are applicable. You should be able to clearly articulate your goals and vision. This can leave a far better impression than trying to be flexible, open to anything and non-committal.

Be prepared to discuss the highlights of your academic career – Your GPA and even your SAT scores matter. Prospective employers, especially for highly quantitative roles, look at these scores to benchmark candidates competing for entry-level positions.

Perhaps the best thing you can do is get an advisor or mentor. Ask them for advice and candid feedback. Have them role-play interviews with you, review your resume with fresh eyes, and ask if they’d be willing to give you a reference if needed. Having someone in your corner during the job search process can make all the difference.

About the Author

Kathy HarrisKathy Harris is Managing Partner of New York City-based Harris Allied, an executive search firm specializing in Technology, UX/UI Design and Quant Analyst placement services in the Financial Services, Professional Services, Consumer Products, Digital Media and Tech Industries For more information, visit www.harrisallied.com. Contact Kathy Harris at [email protected].

The Big Picture of Business – The Fine Art of Failure: Benefiting from Mistakes to Assure Success

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Success and failure… it’s a matter of perspectives. Out of every 10 transactions in our lives, five will be unqualified successes. One will be a failure. Two will depend upon the circumstances. If approached responsibly, they will become successful. If approached irresponsibly, they will turn into failures. Two will either be successful or will fail, based strictly upon the person’s attitude.

A 90 percent success rate for a person with a good attitude and responsible behavior is unbeatable. There is no such thing as perfection. Continuous quality improvement means that we benchmark accomplishments and set the next reach a little further.

Throughout our lives, we search for activities, people and meaning. We venture down roads where we find success. Other activities bring us failure… from which we learn even more what to do to achieve success the next time. We learn three times more from failure than from success. The longer that success takes to attain has a direct relationship to how long we will hold onto it.

7 Degrees of Failure… Plateaus in the Learning Curve

  1. Education-Growth – Didn’t know any better. Made some dumb mistakes, based upon incorrect assumptions, insufficient information or lack of sophistication to “see beyond the obvious.” Beginning to learn better approaches by analyzing the wrong ways of doing things.
  2. Evolution – Tried some things that worked and some that didn’t work. Beginning to understand that things do not fail without a reason or cause. Learns constructively from trial and error. Visualizing patterns of failure… as barriers to success.
  3. Experience Gathering – Circumstances within and outside your control caused the projects to fail. Learns which external factors to trust and which cannot be controlled. The importance of research, due-diligence and marketplace understanding surface.
  4. Grooming – The team let you down. Learns what you are capable of doing. Learns who to work with and in which capacities. Success-failure is a function of seizing-creating your own opportunities. No individual or organization can have success without experiencing and learning from failures.
  5. Seasoning – Understand outcomes before they transpire… and the myriad of failure-producing factors. Most people and organizations fail due to never having control over certain ingredients, improper planning and the inability to change.
  6. Meaningful Contributions – Attitude is everything, affecting the approach to problems. Develop attitudes, behaviors and skills as the motivator to create bigger successes.
  7. Body of Knowledge – Develop profound insights and life-long perspectives into the teachings of success and failure (learning three times more from failures than success).

7 Benefits of Success, Stemming from Failure

  1. Immediate Feedback – It is far better to succeed or fail. Not knowing where you’re going or how we’re doing causes us to make many more mistakes.
  2. Starting Over – Without being hampered by systems/processes that haven’t worked, you can create as you go. After you’ve done it, you feel richer for the experience.
  3. Learn What Not to Do Next Time – Gives you a clear frame of reference, assuming that you understand factors behind the failure, rather than blaming someone else.
  4. How the Pendulum Swings – One succeeds much more than one fails. By studying swings of the pendulum (likelihoods of failures), one better understands their progress.
  5. Failures Make the Best Case Studies – Case studies of success and failure form the basis for planning, improvement, training and other business practices.
  6. Lessons Learned But Not Soon Forgotten – One succeeds 5-9 times more often than one fails (depending upon the individual’s attitude, resources and insights).
  7. Qualities of Achievements – The more sophisticated the understanding of failures and their factors, the more successful in business and life one will be.

About the Author

Hank MoorePower Stars to Light the Business Flame, by Hank Moore, encompasses a full-scope business perspective, invaluable for the corporate and small business markets. It is a compendium book, containing quotes and extrapolations into business culture, arranged in 76 business categories.

Hank’s latest book functions as a ‘PDR of business,’ a view of Big Picture strategies, methodologies and recommendations. This is a creative way of re-treading old knowledge to enable executives to master change rather than feel as they’re victims of it.

Power Stars to Light the Business Flame is now out in all three e-book formats: iTunes, Kindle, and Nook.

The Advisor’s Corner – Are People Listening to Me?

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Are People Listening to Me?Question:

Is it me, or are people listening less and less at work and at home?

StrategyDriven Response: (by Roxi Hewertson, StrategyDriven Principal Contributor)

I have observed a continuous degradation in communication skills among leaders for over two decades, and yes it IS getting worse. This may not surprise you, but it should get your attention. Poor communications skills are rampant in the workplace. We wag our fingers at politicians who are not listening to each other and yet, we are doing the same things in our own workplaces all around the country. The results may be less catastrophic (or not); never-the-less, the impact on our people, businesses and society is huge! While technology gets a lot of blame, I suggest that, like any tool, technology can be used in positive or negative ways. What really matters is HOW we CHOOSE to communicate, and use our tools.

Tools work well for:

  • sharing information
  • setting up meetings
  • keeping a record

They do not work well:

  • when we need to build a relationship, have a dialogue, or make a decision
  • when we copy the world to cover our bases or boost our egos
  • when there is emotion involved

A recent Development Dimensions International (DDI) study, Driving Workplace Performance through High-Quality Conversations: What leaders must do every day to be effective, accurately reflects my work with clients, and reminds us that leaders, peers and direct reports, need to hold more effective conversations to get more effective business performance. Since communication norms are deeply woven into the tapestry of every organization’s culture, this challenge starts with the CEO and involves all her/his leaders. The DDI study validates how important emotional intelligence competencies, particularly self-awareness and social skills are in human interactions.

Everything we do happens through our relationships – at work and in life. When communication is poor or stops, the relationship is poor or stops and vice versa. In the DDI study they point out that senior leaders have not mastered these (communication) skills any better than other less senior leaders, even though they have been at it longer. What happens instead? Take a few moments over the next several days to see if you notice any of these poor interaction habits in leaders you know, including yourself:

1. Jumping to task before understanding the full picture.
One Solution: Take time to gather information and listen carefully.

2. Unskilled at or choosing not to have, effective conversations.
One Solution: Learn this skill or get out of leadership.

3. Failing to engage others in decisions that impact them.
One Solution: Ask yourself, “Who is impacted by this decision?” and
engage them early on.

4. Failing to demonstrate authentic empathy.
One Solution: Slow down and truly put yourself in another person’s shoes. What might it be like to be them right now? Don’t know? Ask them.

5. Ego and personal agenda driven.
One Solution: Ask yourself, “Do I really need to be or prove I am right? Or do I want my team to succeed no matter whose idea it is?”

6. Unable to facilitate a productive meeting/discussion.
One Solution: Learn these skills and/or engage skilled facilitators to help you.

The systemic solution to improving interaction and communication skills in your organization, is to make it matter. It’s quite simple to do. What you reward, is what you will get. What you don’t reward, you will get much less often. Leaders generally know what a good conversation looks like.

Knowing is the easy part. Doing is the hard part. Since the leaders’ number one responsibility is to create and nurture the desired culture to get the desired results, every leader’s choices and priorities will roll downhill. This is particularly true for the behaviors we model to our direct reports – all the way from the C-Suite to the front line. At the end of the day, when we are not truly listening… we are not leading. Period.

Access the full report here, Driving Workplace Performance Through High-Quality Conversations: What leaders must do every day to be effective

About the Author

Roxi HewertsonLeadership authority Roxana (Roxi) Hewertson is a no-nonsense business veteran revered for her nuts-and-bolts, tell-it-like-it-is approach and practical, out-of-the-box insights that help both emerging and expert managers, executives and owners boost quantifiable job performance in various mission critical facets of business. Through AskRoxi.com, Roxi — “the Dear Abby of Leadership” — imparts invaluable free advice to managers and leaders at all levels, from the bullpen to the boardroom, to help them solve problems, become more effective and realize a higher measure of business and career success.

The StrategyDriven website was created to provide members of our community with insights to the actions that help create the shared vision, focus, and commitment needed to improve organizational alignment and accountability for the achievement of superior results. We look forward to answering your strategic planning and tactical business execution questions. Please email your questions to [email protected].

The slight difference in thinking is money.

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Have you ever thought about the way you think? How do thoughts just pop into your head? How do you create an idea?

Most people take thinking for granted, or at least never look beyond the surface of what makes it happen. What are the triggers for your thoughts? Are you a reactive thinker or an original thinker? That’s an interesting thought all by itself.

You watch the news, and you have thoughts about it – that’s reactive. When an idea about something you’ve been working on enters your mind – that’s proactive.

All of a sudden, proactive thinking seems better. But reactive thinking is the norm. The great thinkers of the world are all proactive. That should be your first clue.

My personal development, and real creative thinking, began when I read Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill, in 1971. Actually I did more than read it; I devoured it, reread it several times, studied it, and then applied it to my life.

Think and Grow Rich impacted me and led me to all the other works of Napoleon Hill. Most notable to me are How to Sell Your Way Through Life (the best sales book of all time), and The Master Key to Riches (the follow-on elaboration of Think and Grow Rich). Hill filmed The Master Key to Riches and as I was watching it again last week, I thought this below piece was worthy enough to share with you. It’s about thinking, or should I say accurate thinking, or should I say YOUR accurate thinking.

Here are Hill’s exact words (keep in mind this was written 60 years ago)…

Rules for Accurate Thinking by Napoleon Hill

Now I will give you seven rules to follow which, if you memorize them and follow them as a daily habit, may bring you top-rating as an ACCURATE THINKER.

1. Never accept the opinions of other people as being facts until you have learned the source of those opinions and satisfied yourself of their accuracy.

2. Remember that FREE ADVICE, no matter from whom it is received, will bear the closest of examination before it is acted upon as safe, and generally speaking this sort of advice is worth exactly what it costs.

3. Alert yourself immediately when you hear anyone speaking of others in a discourteous or slanderous spirit because this very fact should put you on notice that what you are hearing is BIASED to say the least about it, and it may be out and out misstatements.

4. In asking others for information DO NOT DISCLOSE TO THEM WHAT YOU WISH THE INFORMATION TO BE, because most people have the bad habit of trying to please under such circumstances. Well measured, tactful questions can be of great benefit to you in THINKING ACCURATELY.

5. Remember that ANYTHING WHICH EXISTS ANYWHERE THROUGHOUT THE UNIVERSE IS CAPABLE OF PROOF, and where no such proof is available it is safer to assume that NOTHING EXISTS!

6. One of the great inexplicable miracles consists in the fact that both truth and false-hood, no matter by what means they may be expressed, carry with them silent, invisible means of identifying themselves as such. Therefore, remember this truth and begin developing the necessary intuitive faculty to enable you to “sense” what is false and what is true.

7. Follow the habit of asking “HOW DO YOU KNOW?” when anyone makes a statement you cannot identify as true. Follow this habit faithfully and you will see many persons squirm and turn red in the face when you insist upon a direct reply.

The most ACCURATE THINKERS are the scientists. They investigate with open minds and never allow their WISHES TO BECOME THE FATHERS OF FACTS, but deal with each fact as it is – not as they would like it to be.

Now, one final word of warning I feel I should leave with you: STUDY YOURSELF CAREFULLY AND YOU MAY DISCOVER THAT YOUR OWN EMOTIONS ARE YOUR GREATEST HANDICAP IN THE BUSINESS OF ACCURATE THINKING. It is easy to believe that which you wish to believe, and unfortunately that is precisely what most people do!

It’s interesting the way that Hill distinguishes between fact and fantasy, true and false, logic and emotion, and accurate and inaccurate.

It’s about challenging your own thinking, and having the courage to challenge others about their thinking. It’s about doing so in a positive way, and challenging yourself to rely on your senses, not just your beliefs.

‘Think’ is a very powerful word in our language, and it’s an even more powerful action. I recommend that you set aside at least 10 minutes a day to think. Put it on your calendar. Daily. Document your thoughts, and then put them into action.

When you dedicate time to yourself, and have a relaxing, creative atmosphere that allows you to dig deep into your own thoughts, and you have some recording device or keyboarding device to document your thinking and your thoughts, after a few months you will begin to blossom as both a thinker and a person of action.

You will begin to feel your genuine power. Thought power. And that power will manifest itself into stronger relationships, stronger sales, and a stronger bank account.

Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.

About the Author

Jeffrey GitomerJeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].

The Big Picture of Business – Biggest Excuses They Use… and You Should Avoid: Rationales and Reasons Why Businesses Fail

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Some people and organizations go to great extremes to place spins, rationalize or save face. Often, sweeping generalizations involve making far-fetched excuses or scapegoating someone else.

Criticizing others may be cloaked as a subtle or even polite dialog. Yet, behind these often-voiced expressions lie fallacies in reasoning, the wrong facts, jealousy, animosity, personal self-defeat or cluelessness of the speaker.

When people pose the following questions or statements, there often lurk sarcasm or hidden agendas behind the ‘seemingly innocent’ comments.

Failing to make investments in future company success:

  • I’m building a new house right now. Just took a vacation. Got to send the kid to college (or some other personal reason).
  • We just bought a piece of computer software.
  • Have to make cuts everywhere else to pay for rising production costs.
  • We make a good product… that should be enough.
  • Why must we spend time on things other than our core business?
  • We can dispense with all that employee training and professional development.
  • We just cannot afford to make the investments.

Rationalizing organizational setbacks:

  • We were growing too fast anyway.
  • It was time to pull in our reins and get back to basics.
  • We took a risk once, and it didn’t work out.
  • This hasn’t been our lucky year.
  • If we didn’t have so much (any) competition, then we would be on Easy Street.
  • That was caused by previous management. We blame it on them.
  • We’re lean and mean now… cut out all the fat.
  • Our people just need to work a little harder.
  • Economic forces beyond our control are at work. But, we’re still making money.
  • If our people would think more about what they’re doing, then we would be successful.
  • That’s our problem… people thinking but not doing… people doing but not thinking.

Rationalizing poor service or quality:

  • You won’t get it any better elsewhere. If you don’t believe it, go try to find out.
  • We’re number one in sales.
  • Our people were hired to do their jobs. They know what they’re doing.
  • Nobody has complained about this issue before. The problem must be with you.
  • Quality is our middle name.
  • We’ve got the latest technology.
  • If you can do so much better, why don’t you go try.
  • Profitability is all that matters.
  • Customers are a dime a dozen. They can be easily replaced.
  • We’re running this business for us, not for them.
  • We got an automated phone system to take care of all that.
  • Customer service is as good as it always was. Quality is as good as it ever will be.

Blaming problems upon others:

  • Our consultant told us to do it.
  • We’re waiting to see what (governmental entity) will do.
  • We’re good at what we do. No need to change.
  • People are expendable. If they don’t like it, they can leave. Workers are easily replaced.
  • Our accountant says we cannot afford that right now.
  • Our ad campaign backfired.
  • We’re too worried about _____ (some item in the news… the latest source of gossip).
  • Interest rates are too high.
  • Our lawyer can take care of any problems that arise. Until then, it’s business as usual.
  • Ethics and standards… those are for chumps. Making the big bucks is all that matters.

Avoiding change, denying the need for change:

  • What worked before works now… always will.
  • Things will always stay the same here.
  • Once the PR crisis passes, things will get back to normal.
  • Can’t change the weather or the world. So, why bother trying to change anything else.
  • That’s just the way he-she is. Learn to live with it.
  • Our human resources department takes care of that.
  • We’re afraid of litigation.
  • There’s not a thing that we can do to change things. The status quo is perfectly acceptable.
  • That’s the way the cookie crumbles. That’s life. What are you gonna do about it?

Not engaging in planning for future operations:

  • So what are you gonna do about it?
  • There’s too much talk about planning. We’re just busy doing things.
  • We have a Mission Statement.
  • Money covers up a lot of ills.
  • We have annual sales projections.
  • Good things happen to good people. It will be our turn soon.
  • Surely, things will work themselves out.

Common Sense Retorts to Sweeping Generalizations

Here are some of the common mis-statements that people make. Some do so to avoid addressing the real business issues head-on. Others never had the rationales and their implications explained to them properly.

The savvy business executive or advisor will offer pro-active follow-ups. Trite statements should not just sit as they are made. By responding realistically and with an eye toward company improvement, you’ll be doing colleagues a service. Examples:

This company reflects the character of its CEO. Sadly, that’s true… to extremes. Many companies are ego-driven. The wise CEO is one who listens to others, surrounds himself-herself with smart people and fosters a spirit of teamwork. A good company is not predicated upon one personality but, instead, has adopted a corporate culture that thinks and feels.

Our company has got the most up to date technology. Companies spend disproportionate amounts of money on technology and neglect their people, processes and policies. Technology represents less than 1% of an organization’s pie chart. Technology should be addressed as a tool of the trade… the bigger issues being a cohesive plan of action and organizational vision.

We must be doing something right. Some companies succeed in their early stages because of raw energy. Conditions change…as should the companies. We must encourage colleagues to honestly examine reasons for their initial success and caution them that Continuous Quality Improvement is necessary. Companies must always grow to “the next tier” and not rest upon laurels.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. This is probably the worst cop-out. There is no organization that is totally perfect and cannot stand some fine-tuning.

We are a very quality-oriented company. Quality is as quality does. Some organizations pay considerable lip service to quality but are clueless as to what it really is, what it means or how it can be sustained. Quality is a conscious, continuous effort to plan, think, act and measure. Quality is neither a quick fix for problems nor a shortcut to success and riches.

We know what our customers want. This is usually said to challenge suggestions that better customer service might be necessary. Sadly, companies pay mostly lip service toward customer service. They don’t stimulate enough dialog. When you suggest that a more targeted customer focus would benefit all, including their bottom line, management often gets pious, argumentative and confrontational. Or, they just look the other way, while the customers go elsewhere.

Success speaks for itself. People who enjoy temporarily high sales love to crow. To them, monetary volume is the ‘definition’ of success. You should do with business with them because they are a “winner,” so they claim. In reality, no single market shift speaks completely for itself. Sales rankings vary, with various influencers. Many factors contribute toward long-term success, which is a road filled with ups and downs. Everything is subject to interpretation. Organizations must educate consumers, in a pro-active way, on how to best utilize their products-services.

Ways to Avoid Negative Euphemisms:

  • Put more emphasis upon substance, rather than flash and sizzle.
  • Look outside the organization, instead of keeping your total focus internal.
  • Challenge negative comments and make accusers accountable for false claims.
  • Keep communications open and continual.
  • Refrain from making false representations.
  • Abilities to think, reason, take risks and feel gut human instincts must all be nurtured.
  • Take advice from all sources. Do research. Get informed counsel from seasoned advisers.
  • Document and comprehend the reasons for successes.
  • Empower the organization to embrace/embody the corporate culture.
  • Learn to manage change, rather than become a victim of it.

About the Author

Hank MoorePower Stars to Light the Business Flame, by Hank Moore, encompasses a full-scope business perspective, invaluable for the corporate and small business markets. It is a compendium book, containing quotes and extrapolations into business culture, arranged in 76 business categories.

Hank’s latest book functions as a ‘PDR of business,’ a view of Big Picture strategies, methodologies and recommendations. This is a creative way of re-treading old knowledge to enable executives to master change rather than feel as they’re victims of it.

Power Stars to Light the Business Flame is now out in all three e-book formats: iTunes, Kindle, and Nook.