Dynamic Career Solutions – Issue 6 – March 16 – March 31, 2011
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Contents Feature Article The warning signs of Career Disaster
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Many people have trouble reading the signs
Expert Career Tips and Advice Don’t quit your Job Just Yet
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Interview Confidence for Workers with Disabilities
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The mystery of the disappearing job offer
Your mindset is key to your performance
Your Facebook Status can Cost you your Job
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Need a Job? Want More Work?
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Take heed Workers of Canada Get a Blog – Now!
Just for fun Welcome to the New Reality:
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Navigating the Quagmire of Humor and Political Correctness For advertising opportunities in our magazine contact us at: Phone: 604.971.3357 Email: info@dynamicbioresumes.com To go to our website Click Here
Dynamic Career Solutions – Issue 6 – March 16 – March 31, 2011
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The Warning Signs of Career Disaster By: Deborah Walker, Certified Career Management Coach
www.AlphaAdvantage.com Many of us have recurring dreams. Mine is that I‘m driving down the freeway and can‘t read the road signs until I‘ve missed an important exit. Fortunately, it‘s just a dream. But many people have trouble reading signs—not road signs, but career warning signs. A career warning sign is any change that indicates possible career disaster. While warning signs may vary according to employment situations, there are three basic warning signs to look for. Warning Sign #1:
Sales are down in your company.
While not everyone in an organization is involved with sales, all jobs are affected by sales levels. When revenues decrease, profits are held steady by cutting costs, which often means cutting jobs. Protect yourself by paying attention to your company‘s sales. While not all employees are privy to sales numbers, there are ways of finding pertinent financial information. Public companies must publish financial statements. And employees of non-public companies can also read the signs of declining sales, like: • Work load decline • Boss suddenly concerned about small costs, like pens and copy paper • Sales manager was fired or sales department reorganized Alert employees are sensitive to such indicators. They keep their resume updated at all times and cultivate a growing professional network for potential future job leads. Warning Sign #2:
Management changes.
Any management change has the potential to damage your corporate position. watchful during:
Be
• Mergers and acquisitions • Successive short-term management (e.g., three bosses in two years) • Retirement or replacement of senior management
Dynamic Career Solutions – Issue 6 – March 16 – March 31, 2011
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Wise employees listen closely to new-management rhetoric. Is he making dramatic promises? Does he have a reputation as a job cutter? The first announcement of new management is the time to prepare your resume and cautiously explore outside options. Warning Sign #3:
You’ve lost favor with your boss.
While ―gut feelings‖ are often the first warning, some objective indicators are: • A less-than-exemplary performance review • No performance-based salary increase • Smaller than expected year-end bonus • Your input is not requested at planning meetings • Your suggestions are ignored If you sense your position on the corporate totem pole is falling, trust your gut. When jobs are at stake, yours will be one of the first sacrificed. Prepare your new career plan. These warning signs may seem obvious, but they are often ignored by those who fear change. Rather than take action, they lean on false hope that loyalty to the employer will pay off in the end. Those who practice career management never confuse company loyalty with aversion to change. When career warning signs appear on the horizon, read the signs clearly so that you‘re ready for the next exit with a strong resume, career plan, and interview skills.
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Don’t quit your job just yet: The mystery of the disappearing job offer By: Jenna Charlton Source: Workopolis
You aced the interviews and been told you have the job, but the offer never lands in your inbox. It‘s like being stood up on the third date. All your meetings went well, but suddenly the courtship ends, with little or no explanation. This scenario is not as uncommon as you might hope. In fact it seems to be a tale many can tell. Interview(s) have been completed successfully. References have been checked – the whole nine yards, only to hear… nothing. While collecting anecdotes of the ‗nearlyhad-an-offer let down‘ I heard stories from both hiring managers and candidates: Hiring managers string along a potential hire only to be told to hold off at the last minute by upper management; candidates strung along only to receive nothing. No word even to provide some closure. One anecdote was from an accidental job seeker. This person hadn‘t actually been looking for a job, but was recommended to a potential employer. The candidate and employer met. Together they decided the candidate would be an excellent fit for a current opening. The employer needed to speak further with his manager, but assured the candidate there would be an offer. The candidate followed up, and followed up, only to arrive at a dead-end. No prospect, no offer, no callback. Another situation involved a candidate who was also led to believe they had succeeded in securing an offer, so much
so that they actually quit their current job. Not necessarily a wise move, but they were so confident they‘d be moving on that they wanted to give sufficient notice. Unfortunately the offer never came through. To add insult to injury there was no reason given, no explanation offered, even after umpteen attempts to follow up. Of course these are the horror stories of the hiring world. These situations are not the norm, but they do happen. In a recent article on Forbes.com career coach Eileen Wolkstein describes one client who ―went back for 14 interviews and didn‘t get the job.‖ It happens for a variety of reasons and it can be equally frustrating for the person attempting to hire. A manager who was all set to provide an offer was told to hold off by head office for a budgetary technicality that he was assured would be cleared up in a day or so. The manager kept the candidate on the hook waiting, but the ‗budgetary technicality‘ never got cleared up. After weeks of waiting for what seemed like a sure thing, the offer was never extended. The question in all of this is: what do you do if you‘ve been led to believe you‘re getting an offer, only to never hear from the company again? According to Forbes.com, you should continue to follow up, but ―without looking desperate‖. In the same aforementioned article, career coach Anita Attridge suggests you stay in
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control of the calling. Don‘t leave a message, just keep calling ―until the hiring manager picks up.‖ By doing so you‘ll hopefully be awarded some sort of explanation. This isn‘t the only approach to take. Leaving a message can also work in your favour. A message lets the hiring manager know you‘re still interested and keen to speak with them. It‘s possible the person just became side tracked and
your message is all they need to get the ball rolling again. Regardless of how the circumstance plays out, it is important to keep in mind that these situations generally occur due to extenuating circumstances, and are not intended to offend or mislead. Always do your best to follow up. You‘ve put a great deal of effort into your search, but also remember there is no offer until there‘s an offer in writing.
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Dynamic Career Solutions – Issue 6 – March 16 – March 31, 2011
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Interview Confidence for Workers with Disabilities By: Sandy Lovejoy Source: Monster
It's happened: You've been asked to come for an interview. It's a nerve-racking situation for anyone, but when you have a disability, it's easy to feel like you're going in with two strikes against you. Your mindset is key to your performance. If you convince your potential employer that you can do the job, and do it as well or better than a ―nondisabled‖ person (although perhaps differently), then it may be to the interviewer's advantage to hire you. Here are several strategies to help you develop a winner's mindset for your interview. Before the interview: Do Your Research. Find out as much as you can about the company or agency by going online, asking people you know in the field and by seeing what you can find out about the job you are applying for. Find Out About the Interview and Interviewers. You can do this by calling ahead and asking if there is public transportation, on-site parking, if you need a visitor's pass, etc. Ask who will be conducting the interview to find out if it will be an individual or a group. If there are accessibility concerns, you will need to ask about that up front. Prepare How You Will Answer Questions About Your Disability. If you have a choice, decide whether to disclose your disability. Think about what the job entails and how you will handle it based on your situation. Consider How You Will Address Gaps in Your Work History. You'll need to address the time period, and if you have been on disability benefits, why you are returning to work now. Put Yourself in the Interviewer's Mind. Look to your own experiences to consider any concerns the interviewer may have. Write down answers to these possible questions. Find a Person You Trust to Go Over Your Responses. Use the feedback to improve and then rehearse. Imagine that this interview is a drama -- it is -- and you are the star performer. You want to achieve the same state cultivated by good actors who rehearse their lines so well that they sound absolutely natural. You need the concepts to be clear in your head.
Choose Your Wardrobe Carefully, and Heed Your Appearance. It's important to look your best for the interviewer, but it's even more important for you to feel your best. If you smoke, don't have a cigarette to calm your nerves right before the interview. Promise yourself one as a reward afterwards. At the interview: Go in with Confidence. If you don't project the belief that you can do this job, no one else will believe it. Listen Carefully. Make sure you are answering the question you're asked and not something you thought you would be asked. Also, in your listening, you may pick up cues about the kind of answer the interviewer wants. It's okay to pause before you answer. It's better to give a well-thought-out response than sound glib and off-track. Be Upbeat and Cheerful. Be humorous if appropriate. Don't Show Anger; Educate When You Hear Biased Statements. The interviewer may be ignorant about your disability. Although you may hear statements or sense attitudes that shock you, stay cool in the interview. What you hear or feel may convince you that this is not a place you want to work. But you have an opportunity to give information and change ideas about your disability. If you have examples that disprove the stated or implied concern, tell them briefly and, if possible, tie them into the job description you would have. Learn from the Experience. If you're successful, congratulations! If you're not offered this job, go talk about the process with someone whose opinion you value. See what you can learn about doing even better the next time around. For every job opening, there are many applicants and only one gets the job. It may or may not be your disability that cost you this particular position. Keep trying. Eventually, the right job will find you.
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Dynamic Career Solutions – Issue 6 – March 16 – March 31, 2011
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Your Facebook Status Can Cost You Your Job By: Amanda Frank Source: Monster
Take heed, workers of Canada. Facebook is officially not private. A recent landmark ruling has set a precedent for disgruntled employees to shut their blabbermouths on social networks like Facebook or face the consequences and get fired. Two union workers at a detailing shop in British Columbia were fired over offensive and threatening Facebook status updates aimed at their manager while publicly airing workplace grievances to a social network of 475+ friends, including the manager under attack. The comments were extreme, homophobic and talked about stabbing an unnamed person, assumed to be the manager, repeatedly in the face. The manager kept a record of the status updates from August 27, when the workers initiated the process to unionize the shop, until Oct 6, the day before the firing. The union, United Food and Commercial Workers International, argued unsuccessfully that management failed to take corrective measures and deliberately let the workers hang themselves to further its anti-union agenda. The BC Labour Relations Board ruled that West Coast Mazda had just cause for the dismissal, citing the comments led to insubordination and a hostile work environment. It looks like Facebook isn‘t going to be the picket line of our times. Legislature
has spoken. And what it said is severely crippling to the ―say what you want to say do what you want to do‖ attitude upheld as a religious right by many Facebook users. It‘s important to make yourself aware of the changing privacy laws, which are strengthening the rights of the employer to control what employees say in these forums. Otherwise it could be your head on the chopping block. Don‘t let your employer make a Martha out of you. A quick peek at Facebook statistics is all that‘s required to understand the obliterating line between public and private. The social application has morphed into a veritable collective unconscious. Defamation spreads like wildfire in an environment of instantaneous ubiquity. A few bad apples spoil the bunch. The BC workers ruined it for the rest of us, but it was bound to happen sooner or later. Remember, it doesn‘t matter when you post your comments, during work hours or on your own private time. Nor does it matter where you‘re posting from, your company laptop or your own machine. We suggest you CYA, cover your ―tush‖. Take a preemptive approach to workplace diplomacy. Activating your privacy settings isn‘t going far enough anymore. Now you‘ll need to refrain from posting negative comments that can and will be used against you. If it comes down to it, your employer will probably walk away the victor if your case winds up in court.
Dynamic Career Solutions – Issue 6 – March 16 – March 31, 2011
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Need a Job? Want More Work? Get a Blog – Now. By: Judi Knight Source: BCJobs
Seth Godin wrote a blog post this week about the fact that people hiring for jobs should realize that past performance is the best predictor of future performance and not be swayed by the way a person dresses or how they can spin a tale. As a psychologist, I know this to be the ultimate truth as much as sometimes, wish it were not, ―If only she‘d…. show up for work…not drink so much… get along with the team … complete what she starts….she‘d be great‖. How does this relate to getting a job? A lot. The most important thing in getting hired for a job or obtaining new work, is what have you actually done and how you did it. Now, we can tell people what we‘ve done. We can have ( and still need) a well-crafted resume that lists jobs held with accomplishments duly accounted for. But these days, resumes all start to all look alike. We know they are tuned and buffed and often written by someone else to fluff over that horrible experience or cover that couple of years when you were off your game. According to Seth, people who want to hire a person to get a job done, should look at the person‘s ability to get work done in the past. Seth says what you have ―shipped‖ in the past matters most. How do you show people what you have ―shipped‖? If you are serious about standing out from the crowd, a blog is essential. Blogs are the new resumes. I am talking about a website where you are writing about your ideas and experiences; where you are sharing insights gained from projects that went well or even more importantly on those that failed miserably. When I
am helping someone to create their online presence I tell them to ―show‖ their readers who they are and what they are capable of rather than just ―telling‖ them. Your blog can be more important and more inclusive than a resume. In fact, with a good website, the resume becomes almost an after thought. Chris Brogan has written a free e-book , Using the Social Web to Find Work. He says people find him to do work for them from his blog, … people can see examples, almost daily of what I think, what I know and what I have accomplished in my life and career.‖ He says, ‖ blogging like this is like writing out a resume line for line but not as boring!‖ Okay, so you have to have the resume, but once you have a blog you can link to it from the resume. There they will see you speaking, read testimonials, read about your philosophy about work, how you manage a team remotely, or even better, the problems you have dealt with managing a team remotely . This is the real deal. This is show rather than tell. This will have you stand out above the crowd. Are you game?
A couple of weeks ago, I had an LA film producer contact me about doing the website for a film he was working on. I asked how he got my name. He told me Seth Godin recommended me. I said, What!!!???!!! He said, ―Yeah, I typed into Google ‗Seth Godin, Web designers‘ and you came up.‖ I immediately went and looked and what
he actually saw in the search results was a blog post I wrote a couple of years ago about Seth Godin, he did not see Seth Godin writing about me. But hey, he found me because of a post I wrote and liked what he saw. I showed up and stood out and had a chance to impress him. He did not ask to see my resume. ?
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Welcome to the New Reality: Navigating the Quagmire of Humor and Political Correctness by David Granirer MA, North America's Psychotherapist/Stand-up Comic These days, nothing is more loaded than the issue of humor and political correctness in the workplace. This article defuses these "hot buttons" by discussing the four goals of productive workplace humor, and drawing parallels between these and the positive aspects of political correctness. Readers are also given ground rules as to what are safe areas to joke about. Confused is how many people feel when it comes to the whole idea of political correctness and workplace humor. Some resent having to watch every word that comes out of their mouth, while others now feel safer knowing their vulnerabilities won‘t be targeted for ridicule. The bottom line is that political correctness has brought a whole new perspective to what is and isn‘t acceptable humor. And that‘s not necessarily a good or bad thing, it‘s just a reality to which people have to adjust. In order to bring some clarity to this complicated and emotionally charged topic, it helps to put aside the issue of what is or isn‘t politically correct, and look at the functionality of our humor. In other words, what healthy workplace humor is supposed to accomplish, and whether or not the way we use our humor accomplishes those purposes. Healthy Workplace Humor
My definition of healthy workplace humor is "acts involving some sort of surprise and/or exaggeration that make people feel good." Certainly this can take the form of joke telling, but it can also take many others. Leaving a cookie on a coworker‘s desk, giving an unexpected compliment, and sending an encouraging e-mail are all acts that involve some form of surprise ("Hey, I wasn‘t expecting that!") and leave people feeling good. By "making people feel good," I mean that healthy workplace humor accomplishes four main goals: It releases tension, creates a sense of acceptance, conveys a sense of unity or support, and restores a healthy perspective on a given situation. So if I‘m having a bad day and someone does something humorous, chances are I‘ll feel less tense, more accepting of myself and my situation, less alone, and more able to see the whole picture, whereas before I may have been fixated on just one small part of it. These four goals of healthy humor are non-controversial - something everyone supports, regardless of their views on political correctness. We all want to work in an environment that is as tension-free as possible, where we feel accepted, supported, and able to develop a healthy perspective on the difficulties we inevitably face as working people.
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So a good criteria for the functionality of our humor is to ask ourselves if how we use it promotes or undermines these four goals. And what we find is that politically incorrect humor undermines them all. Take an actual case in point. A female employee receives a surprise gift from some male coworkers. So far so good, but unfortunately, the gift contains lingerie and sexual devices. Of course workplace tension immediately shoots up, acceptance is destroyed, office unity is shattered, and now everyone is hyperfocused on the issue of sexual
harassment, losing any sense of perspective they may have had. So this kind of humor is not only politically incorrect, it also creates a negative atmosphere, something no one wants in his or her workplace. This act, which perhaps to give the benefit of the doubt may have begun as a seemingly harmless practical joke, broke some very important rules of healthy workplace humor, resulting in a lawsuit and several people losing their jobs.
Safe Humor Rules Practicing the following four rules ensures that humor will achieve the aforementioned four goals: Rule#1: Don‘t make jokes about coworkers‘ sexuality. People are very uncomfortable with sexual innuendo in a workplace. Your friends may find it hilarious, but unless all the people you work with are close friends you‘ve known for years, leave it at home, because someone is bound to be offended. Rule #2: Don‘t make jokes about people‘s appearance. This is another emotionally charged area, and whether you agree or not, just don‘t go there. Rule#3: Avoid jokes about religion, ethnic background, nationality, sexual orientation etc. unless it‘s to joke about your own. Rule#4: Avoid jokes about bodily functions. The only exception is if you work in a healthcare or other setting where these jokes are necessary to maintain your sanity. Surprise, surprise, these rules also conform to what would be considered the guidelines for politically correct humor, which essentially are not to make jokes about people‘s sexuality, minorities, God, and, grossness. But we‘re not talking politically correct, we‘re talking about achieving the four goals of healthy humor, which everyone can support. So what‘s left to joke about? Here are three safe areas: #1: Yourself, your flaws, neuroses and inadequacies. When you make these jokes, people are brought closer to you because they can relate. And so far, no one‘s ever been sued for joking about him or herself. #2: The situation you all face, i.e., the upcoming merger, the new reorganization, the difficult customers you deal with, etc.
#3: Personal characteristics in areas of low ego-involvement. Though most people are extremely sensitive about appearance, they‘re much less invested in other aspects of themselves. For example, I don‘t mind if someone makes jokes about my bad handwriting or the fact that I look tired because I had to get up at four in the morning to change a diaper. Poking fun at Peter because he‘d rather ski than do paperwork, or Mary because she has a distinctive laugh is relatively safe to do, and communicates affection rather than disdain. No question, the reality has changed. What used to be okay in terms of humor isn‘t any more. Before it was easy to get a laugh by putting someone down. But as we‘ve seen, all this creates is negativity. However, this new reality forces us to be more clever, creative, and considerate in the way we use humor. And I think that most people would like to think of themselves as clever, creative, and considerate, regardless of their views on political correctness. David Granirer gives laughter in the workplace presentations for hundreds of organizations throughout North America. For more information call National Speakers Bureau at 1-800-661-4110 or go to http://www.psychocomic.com For information on David's products, contact him directly at: (604) 205-9242 or Email: david@psychocomic.com or www.psychocomic.com
If you are good, you will be assigned all the work. If you are really good, you will get out of it. ~~~~~ You can go anywhere you want if you look serious and carry a clipboard. ~~~~~ The phrase "working mother" is redundant. -- Jane Sellman ~~~~~ I found being an electrician interesting, but the work was shocking.
Dynamic Career Solutions – Issue 6 – March 16 – March 31, 2011
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Dynamic Career Solutions – Issue 6 – March 16 – March 31, 2011
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