The Need to Identify High Potential Employees

Imagine a company that focuses intensely on the present business climate and tries to not repeat its own past mistakes or the failings of its competition. Management retains talent by placing a lot of resource into an employee appraisal system, so that it can reward high performers generously. This system is kept largely confidential, between manager and employee only, so that morale won’t suffer. It also believes in recruiting externally only, because that’s the only place to find new talent.

Sound like a company prepared to succeed in the future to you? Not to me. Their attitude and policies are not progressive and do not take into account the career development needs of high-potential talent. Companies must continually be looking to the future. Competitiveness will only grow and using past performance as the benchmark for meeting subsequent challenges is not enough. And among the most important conditions to be constantly anticipating is the need to attract and retain talent. Without high-level operatives meeting the demands of the marketplace all other business efforts may prove to be inadequate.

Of course, all companies are different. But in sharing the need to obtain the best workers possible from both within and externally there are similar talent management practices, which should be evident in any forward leaning organization. These include:

• Having in place a talent assessment system that determines key players, high potential employees, and successors for critical positions.
• High-quality training of managers enabling them to understand the career development aspirations of their direct reports.
• Executive commitment to holding frequent talent review meetings designed to reinforce and improve the company’s talent management capability to locate and procure the best strength possible.
• Acting on developing high potential workers for succession planning, cross-functional capability, and in-depth expertise building purposes.

Constructing a talent management process that is transparent has a greater likelihood of improving morale, rather than depressing it. A culture that cuts one-off deals with its employees creates suspicion and claims of favoritism, whereas an open mechanism that shows consistent application of best practice principles to all generates feelings of fairness. Giving the corporate message that individual career advancement is considered valuable augments the initiative to attract and hold a sharp workforce.

Another useful piece to a talent management system is to separate distinguishing high performers from high potential. They are not always the same. Task analyzing critical operational functions and aligning them with specific worker traits can aid in selecting the right people for the right job. How many times have we heard stories of high functioning line workers being elevated to management positions for which they are not well suited? As counterintuitive as it may seem, there is not always a positive correlation between high achievement and high potential. Teasing out and choreographing a connection can be made, but only as a result of sophisticated inquiry.

A big fear among company policy makers is that devoting resources to developing employees may be seen as a waste if the talent leaves the company. In fact the feeling goes, too much fostering of workers’ skill and knowledge may actually make them more attractive to competitors. One thing that is becoming clear in today’s business climate is that if a company does not commit to developing their talent the champions will likely leave sooner for a company that does. Constructing and reviewing often comprehensive employee retention plans in addition to implementing individual career development plans will increase the chances that a company’s pasture will be seen as greener.

Advanced enterprise-wide talent management is much more involved than the brief description presented here. But the need for companies big and small to structure a system that is consistent with their organizational culture and the best practices of talent engineering is necessary for them to prosper in the marketplace of the future with the greatest people possible.

Recognizing Your Career Successes

We are largely driven to enhance our careers by the need to feel successful. The urge to link our efforts with purposeful outcomes is a primal motivator for the professional person. The desire to make a difference for others and ourselves gets us up in the morning. Capturing success may be frequently elusive, but
it’s a goal most of think is worth pursuing.

In today’s world, being successful implies there is continual growth and improvement. Some professionals are fortunate to find they have chosen a job
that allows for and even rewards career evolution. New, novel, and stimulating challenges are always being presented, which provide opportunities for repeat
successes. These people are happy with their jobs. They don’t want or need to enter a job search. They feel successful where they are.

But for many others, the ring of achievement is not sounding at their jobs, or at least not enough. This group feels stuck. For them, work isn’t offering enough
pay-off. Boredom and too much routine have set in. And these people are just as professional and talented as the above group. So what’s going on? It’s called
reaching a plateau.

Here is a very typical scenario. We finish our formal education and get a job, or series of jobs, which may or may not be related to what we studied in school.
Eventually we settle into a “decent enough” job. The salary is okay, co-workers become friends, and we start experiencing our first professional successes. We
feel grown-up—we’ve arrived. But give it five or ten years and the dull weight of a been-there-done-that attitude takes hold. Work weeks start to feel too
long and weekends too short. Frequent funks and a sense of stagnation start to become the norm. Inertia now seems to guide us more than the exciting quest for work gain.

This becomes the time to strongly consider a career defibrillator. You need to get back to feeling worthy. Now you could look for a job change, or redefine your
role with your current employer, or you could go entrepreneurial. Whichever route you take to rekindle career happiness will involve enlisting one
fundamental practice to place you in the most advantageous position to reach this goal. That is, to determine clearly and be able to communicate effectively
what success means to you and how in the past you have gone about attaining it.

When you’re able to identify your unique success metrics, you are then able to make claim to your professional value. You can cite contributions that have
benefited others. With this self-realization you know what ball to keep your eye on. It becomes easier to envision yourself in situations, in which you can
practice your craft and again be successful.

So how do you measure success for yourself? Here is an exercise for distilling career success and happiness into practical and powerful statements, which can be used as guides for future work. This is a way to promote yourself to those who may be able to provide opportunities for future successes. Begin compiling a record of your greatest hits. List the achievements of which you are most proud. Have these statements contain actual, and if possible, quantifiable results. Look for the ways you found remedies to problems, resolved issues, mediated
conflicts, assisted in growth, created novel solutions, improved efficiencies, and so on. For example,

• “Created systematic proces for client interactions, deal flow, and follow-up.”
• “Grew occupancy from 67% to 88%. Steadily increased average guest satisfaction to 99%.”
• “10+ years of administrative, volunteer, and team experience in the coordination and implementation of
  educational, nonprofit, and community service projects.”

With this valuable insight organized in your mind and on paper you are then prepared to chart a course for continuing career fulfillment. And when your work is successful, your life is greatly enhanced.

10 Things to Have for Your Interview

Despite the bleak employment news from May many more New Englanders are getting job interviews than a year ago. Preparing for one is daunting to say the least. And there is no shortage of articles, blogs, and how-to tips that can be found on the Web to help you make sure you are ready for the type of questions you’ll be asked. I’ve even contributed to the pool.

But for a change, let’s look at the real basics of interview prep, the most concrete of things that you need to help increase your chances of this all important conversation going well. Smart people, whether pilots before a flight or doctors before an operation, get ready for any complicated procedure by having a checklist of steps that experience shows needs to be addressed for optimal performance. So here is my pre-interview checklist of simple things to have ready:

1. 10 copies of your resume: Don’t assume that all the interviewers are ready by having had your resume provided to them prior to the interview. Not all employers run like clockwork. Think how prepared you will look if you can instantly hand out resumes to interviewers who don’t have one.

2. Bottle of water: 30 minutes or more of high pressured answering of questions can make anyone’s throat dry. Coughing, throat clearing, and deep swallowing to keep lubricated doesn’t make you appear at your best. Have that water ready to keep the talker oiled. One caution, don’t keep reaching for it nervously like a beer during a first date. 

3. Breath mints: While on the topic of your mouth, having sweet minty breath leaves you feeling more confident to speak directly to someone at a relatively short distance, say when shaking hands, and it leaves the listener with the impression that you’re clean and presentable.  Although I love Altoids, for many they are too powerful, so choose one more subtle, but effective.

4. References: Having copies of two to three references, which are ready to pass out can add to the message that you are prepared and are at this interview to do work. Distributing them without being asked shows that you are taking a level of ownership of the meeting.

5. Pad of paper and two working pens: From jotting reminders of points you wish to make to getting names and titles of interviewers down it’s okay to take a few notes during the interview. Remember, though, that writing too much is not good and that lots of eye contact is good. And for goodness sakes don’t doodle!

6. Power bar: I don’t know about you, but I never like eating before a big meeting, especially one in which I’m the center of attention. Now what if the interview turns into a second one for later in the morning or the whole process is delayed for some reason. You don’t want you stomach grumbling at an inopportune time, so have one of those power bars to eat in-between sessions.

7. Tissues: Sneezes, running nose, watery eyes, the list goes on for reasons why you might want or need to wipe your face. Have one of those handy little tissue packages tucked in a discreet pocket for just those occasions.

8. Cash: Imagine that you are asked by an interviewer to continue the conversation at the cafeteria over coffee or lunch. Wouldn’t you want to be able to pay for not only yourself, but for the interviewer? Sure a debit card might work, but what if it didn’t? Be prepared.

9. Photo ID: You probably carry one around with all of the time anyway, but be sure to when going to an interview, especially on that might be held in a setting in which you have to pass through security. Being able to prove who you are could be useful.

10. Written information about interviewer and department: You are probably going to be nervous showing up for the interview, so have the necessary appointment data written down for reference. Your memory may not be as sharp if you are freezing up at a reception desk, so have the name of the interview contact person and any relevant contact info ready to read from or to show. 

Check, check, check, ready! Go get ’em!

Looking At Work Experience Gaps on Your Resume

Among the abundance of things worrying the job seeker today is the work history gap on your resume that occurs when there is as break in the employment chronology brought on by any number of reasons— most often by having been laid off. Conventional wisdom has been and continues to be that having a period of time during which you were not employed is a detriment to finding future employment. The well-founded fear is that a hiring manager will check to see if there exists an employment gap when reading your resume, and if finding one, will instantly draw the conclusion that this indicates you are a flawed candidate. Being seen as out of work is still very much considered a stigma, which is unfortunate given how much unemployment was foisted upon so many. But this is the reality facing job searchers. Gaps in your resume’s employment experience section make finding a new job even more difficult.

Obviously avoiding gaps is recommended when rewriting or updating your resume. However, lying on your resume by stating false employment that did not really exist in order to fill in time is not recommended. So what can be done? Job and career counselors typically advise that employment down times be accounted for with some type of professionally meaningful pursuits, such as schooling/training or interning/volunteering. Furthering your education can be advantageous, but has that annoying consequence of costing money at a time when it’s in short supply. On the other hand, offering an organization or company free work in exchange for useful experience is cheaper and potentially a powerful way to approach
explaining in the future how you spent your time between jobs. Let’s examine the options of interning and volunteering more carefully.

First, to clear up some semantics: By interning I mean engaging in a non-monetary exchange, whereby the intern provides a novice-level professional service and in turn receives a documented benefit from the organization, such as professional oversight or instruction. I see volunteers as providing a service which is either an organizational need or enhancement, while expecting little to nothing in return except for an emotionally satisfying feeling and/or for the opportunity to list the experience on one’s resume.

If considering interning, check to see that the organization has an established policy, and if so that you agree with its terms and conditions. If it doesn’t, either look elsewhere or get involved with the development of a new intern policy, thereby giving you a say in the arrangement. Volunteering however, can raise complications for both the volunteers and the enterprises taking them on.

In general, the considerations from both parties should be focused on whether the tasks being performed by the volunteer are compensatory or not. The rules are defined by state labor law and employment discrimination legislation and by the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The latter essentially puts the kabash on volunteering with for-profit private sector companies along with federal, state, and local governments. It’s just not allowed. And with most people’s professions linked to the private sector or government it would appear to present a challenge to the volunteer looking for a place to offer services. Fortunately the FLSA does not deter you from volunteering in public, charitable, or religious facilities, so perform whatever service feels right in those cases.

When approaching any kind of organization about interning or volunteering, especially one that also hires employees ask the following questions:

• Would your service in any way violate the FLSA or state labor laws?
• Would you be displacing or replacing an existing paid employee?
• Would you be performing work that is normally paid employment?
• Will the intern or volunteer duties require a contract or be documented in some way?
• Do you have control of your hours and level of work intensity free of coercion?
• To yourself ask, “Is this worth it to me?”

Filling in that troublesome work history time gap on your resume is worth some effort. If the reason for the absence is elder, child, or personal care, or possibly
even berevement, then insert it in the professional experience section as a “job”. But if the gap occurs because you were let go from your previous job and it’s taking you six months or more to find another, then consider interning or volunteering. Just go into it with your eyes wide open.

The Job Interview

Job interviews are about as eagerly anticipated as root canals for many people. Even if you have been out of work for a long time and are desperately wanting to reenter the workplace, the necessary step of performing well during a job interview can be daunting. Interviewees tend to think the practice is akin to an interrogation or grilling, the result of which can be a harsh judgement, like getting voted off the island. They can be stressful enough to make even the most seasoned professional anxious. 

The job interview can actually be a faulty procedure and not always reliable. We’ve all heard of how someone can shine during the interview only to lead the employer to feel buyer’s remorse once the candidate is on the job. And notice how subjective they are. Can’t there be a way of more objectively identifying talent before the job offer is made?

For most hiring situations, however, there needs to be a subjective screening component. The interview provides just that and is not going away anytime soon. Think of it this way. The interview provides a much-needed opportunity for dialogue, in other words a two-way conversation. Here is a chance for each of you to check each other out. It’ll help the pre-interview jitters if you can go into it feeling that you have some control over the situation. Even if they offer you the spot you don’t have to accept it unless the potential employer passes muster with you. Definitely go with some questions prepared that show you are inquiring about them.  

But, of course, the harsh truth is that you have to convince a hiring manager or team of interviewers that you are a fit for the position and the organization. If you haven’t had an interview in a while and am wondering what to expect from an upcoming one, you might be helped by considering some likely scenarios. I’ve had many clients brief me on how their interview experiences have gone and here is what I can confidently generalize about them:

• Go into one prepared. To think you can wing it, no matter how professional and experienced you are, is taking an uncecessary risk.
• Be ready to tell about yourself as a relatively short introduction. Here is where you present your value proposition. This intro should also describe how your skills and qualifications are a fit for the position.
• Know and be prepared to describe how much onboarding and induction training you’ll need. You are a cost to the employer. They may want to know how much that will be at the start of employment.
• Have a response to the dreaded, ‘What are your weaknesses?” question. I recommend having two weaknesses to which you are ready to admit. But frame them as challenges you are actively managing. Have at least one example for each describing how you have recently and positively addressed the challenges, resulting in good outcomes.
• Show that you are developing your career by having specific short and long-term goals to share.
• Get ready to talk about how well you work both independently and as part of a team.
• Be able to furnish information about the employer. Let them know that you have researched them and have a couple of questions designed to learn more about them.
• A large and likely category of interview questioning is known as behavioral questioning. This is where you talk about how you handled or would handle realistic situations and challenges on the job, whether fabricated or actual from your past. Always think of presenting your answers such that it is clear how you added value to the circumstances.

There will likely be more questions than these, but by preparing and having responses ready for typical questions you are fortified for what may come.

Cover Letters Examined

Since we are moving toward becoming a paperless society the question often comes up in the context of job searching, whether or not cover letters are still necessary. The short answer is yes. Typically, when attempting to get the nod by an employer that you are to be hired there are three initial doors through which you must sequentially pass—cover letter, resume, and interview. In each case you have an opportunity to make an impression. And in each case you have a chance to progressively present yourself in greater depth. The starting point is with the cover letter. So, let’s examine this tool more in more detail.

The cover letter is your self-introduction. Its purpose is to get the hiring manager interested enough in you so that they will want to review your resume, which in turn will hopefully prompt an interview. There are some useful assumptions to make about such an introduction. One, is that the hiring manager has a lot more work to do than time in which to do it. They are pressured and probably stressed. Also, they have a staggering amount of applicants for very few jobs. This encourages the hiring manager to find reasons for eliminating applicants, since they have to reduce a huge number to a very small one for eventual interviews. Finally, they have seen boring and generic cover letters time and time again. One that has just enough distinction and relevance to catch their eye is what they are hoping to find.

With these assumptions in mind, be prepared to write your cover letter in as targeted, economic, and powerful way as possible. Pack as much punch into the fewest number of words as you can.

There are three basic parts to a cover letter—the introduction, the body, and the closing. Here are things to keep in mind when writing each of the three parts:

There are four ways to go about writing the introduction or opening:

• Traditional, in which you simply give your reason for writing, as in, “I am writing to express my interest in…”
• Creating curiosity, in which you begin with a stunning achievement, such as, “After a five-year commitment dedicated to the welfare of Somali refugees, I am now ready to add value to your…”
• Leveraging referrals, in which you mention the name of a trusted resource, as in, “Following the recommendation of your colleague Jim Hudson, I am eager to speak with you about…”
• Emphasize your headline, in which you point out your value proposition, as in, “ As a Network Systems Analyst with extensive business development experience I…” 

The body is the most important part of the cover letter. It is here where you make the sale. Whether you do so in brief paragraphs, bullets, or some combination of the two describe pointedly why are you are qualified for the specific position to which you are applying. Nothing speaks to qualifications better than actual accomplishments and results you have realized from your career thus far. Just like we’re more inclined to purchase a mutual fund with an impressive performance history, the same goes for a job candidate who can claim rich achievements. Since your resume should have a store of these attainments, harvest it for summary items to put into the cover letter body. Just be sure to paraphrase and rewrite so that your cover letter doesn’t look like a copy and paste job from your resume. Also, the more you understand the employer and their needs the more direct can be your selection of relevant accomplishments.

The closing should be, you guessed it, brief and should execute two things. One, confidently express why you deserve a closer look by the hiring manager and two, indicate your expectation for a follow-up with the company. For example, “Acme’s services, market prominence, and expansion potential are very appealing, and I am convinced my skills will advance me as a key player within your company. I will contact your office in one week to inquire about when it might be convenient to meet. Thank you for your consideration.”

As the saying goes, you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression. So make your cover letters count.

Four Strategies to Keep Your Career Relevant

Traditionally, we have thought of a professional as someone who is very dedicated and practiced within a relatively narrow, yet focused type of work. They choose to not be distracted with trying to be too many things to too many people. Instead they get really good at delivering a limited category of service or product. Specializing has served the workplace well since Mesopotamia, and for the most part it still does. But there is growing evidence that changes in the 21st century work model are ushering in a new definition of what it means to be a professional.

The talent and skills required by a global marketplace characterized by intense competitiveness and rapidly evolving commoditization are in an increasing state of flux. For a professional going forward, expecting that only one skill will keep them marketable and employed for the long-term is becoming unrealistic. The workplace of the future will be demanding talent that is continuously involved in learning and development, such that it is nimble enough to transfer aptitudes to alternative and hybrid jobs. Allowing yourself to be too limited in scope, or worse yet, to give into complacency and inertia are the career killers of the hereafter. 

What every pro wants to do is to be as prepared as possible for an uncertain and unpredictable workplace in coming years. But since no one can be expected to be knowledgeable and skilled in everything, it becomes necessary to have a preparedness plan that builds from your current skill base. To help, I suggest four strategies to keep your career development options open moving forward:

1. Showcase in a compelling format the breadth and depth of your skills and accomplishments. To do so, begin with a basic assumption, which is that every employer will have really only one thing on their minds when considering you for employment, “What can you do for me?” The wider your range of capability, the greater your chances of being able to answer their question. By being equipped with a portfolio and resume that highlights your adaptive talent, you are ready for the changeable needs of employers. Show that you are as dynamic as the businesses you hope to work for.

2. Learn and practice skills that are transferable to multiple situations. Being skilled at something is, of course, good. Having skills that are transferable and can be applied in a variety of circumstances is even better. So what are these skills? Remember, that as a professional you never give up keeping up with your field of expertise. By staying current, you can be on top of the turns and twists your profession is undergoing. This heads-up knowledge allows you to adjust and reapply your competence as necessary. Be ready to not only say, “I can do this,” but “I can do this and that and if needed blend the two with…”.

3. Accept being a lifelong learner. No news here, learning doesn’t stop with graduation. Growth is constant. Embrace it. Catch and enjoy the excitement of learning more and studying things that are new. Move out of your comfort zone sometimes, as well. The more secure your attitude of continuous improvement, the better you can leverage your expanding capabilities towards career enhancing opportunities. Again, your never-ending research and networking will inform you about what content to master. 

4. Seek out employers who care about your career along with you. Smart employers know about the correlation between engaged employees and productivity. And one of the best ways to keep your talent engaged is to let them know they’re valued and show it by offering job descriptions that encourage growth and development. Choosing places to work, in which management actively seeks to make arrangements with workers that result in productivity for both parties is the goal for progressive professionals.

With an uncertain work future, producing jobs that didn’t even exist a few short years ago, it’s best to be proactive rather than reactive. The early bird still gets that worm. But today, that bird is multi-talented and searching for new ways to meet new challenges. She keeps an eye both to the ground and on the horizon.

Finding and Keeping Needed Talent

One of the greatest challenges for employers the world over is locating, hiring, and retaining employees who bring highly productive value to their companies, and organizations. Such employees are, of course, the lifeblood of any successful workforce. The employer who establishes the means of recruiting and properly managing the right talent represents quality leadership within a winning enterprise.

For the most part, there is a broad and deep talent pool to fill most job positions. If anything, the Recession has added to available capacity eager to be found and employed. As an aside, the industry areas that seem most deficient in expertise are engineering and intermediate to advanced levels of IT. Even in recent years, these have been underresourced areas. This lack of strength probably won’t improve until we do a better job of attracting and educating more young people to the STEM careers or Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. However, outside of STEM careers vast talent shortages do not appear to be the case. Nevertheless, matching skills with where they are needed continues to be a perennial and daunting challenge.

The best recruiters know where to go to find the most competent. They are well-connected, expertly networked,  and a constant presence at tried and true feeder sources, such as schools and certain businesses. Getting and paying for high-caliber recruiting and staffing services is certainly an option for companies seeking candidates for open positions. But the questions emerges, can employers do more for themselves internally and procedurally to keep the flow of talent inbound and the loss of talent arrested?

Yes, employers can do more. Now, rather than present the readers with a bulleted list of techniques, I’d like to focus an answer to the above question onto a more fundamental management and human virtue, kindness. Anecdotally, I hear it all the time from smart, experienced, hard-working, people—the single biggest reason why people don’t like their jobs is because of poor management. I’m not talking about managerial weaknesses that can be simply remedied with some training. This issue is much larger. It involves management’s use of intimidation, fear, inflexibility, weak ability to communication, and overall poor people skills. Nothing will drive talent away more effectively than by having in place leadership that either practices, encourages, or allows for an abusive work environment. In fact, there is a Healthy Workplace Bill, which has been introduced into twenty state legislatures since 2003. In New Hampshire, this bill known  as HB 1403, was introduced and let die in committee in 2010.

In this day of interactive social media does anyone really think that word isn’t getting out loud and clear about where employees should not work if they want respect from their boss? Talent will be drawn to companies and organizations where smart and self-motivated employees can develop as professionals. Places with vision that encourage exploration and innovation, where decision-making results from a collaborative process. But at their core, those companies that establish as a cultural foundation respect and kindness will find talent wanting and staying in. As a consequence, noticing the strengths and benefits each person can bring to the job and actively cultivating them yields positive results for any business. 

Effective leadership can bring about the kind of work climate, which attracts and retains talent. Unfortunately, talented leaders are hard to find. Peter Drucker, the godfather of modern management theory, said that the two most important attributes of leadership are self-awareness and honesty. Practicing those virtues in combination with a basic decency for fellow colleagues would seem to be a good place to start. 

The best and brightest employees aren’t interested in heavy-handed rules, imposed methodologies, and stay-in-line-or-else tactics. Developing a talented workforce begins with collegial trust and a humane attitude.

Four Ways To Help Make Your Resume Successful

So, let’s assume that you haven’t yet started on that New Year’s resolution of rewriting your resume, which of course assumes that you made a New Year’s resolution to rewrite your resume (You did, didn’t you?). Having a current and well written resume is the single best thing you can do for yourself, if you’re thinking about transitioning to another job or career, or if you’re trying to get back into the workforce after a too-long layoff.

As is the case with many such tasks that can be easily dropped down one’s priority list, the hardest part is simply getting started. Once you do pull out that old resume you may find that the rewrite job looks to be about as much fun as doing taxes. And for many, it is. Then there is the question of what actually needs to be done to make your resume a winning one. Is it just updating the contact information and work history, or is there more to it than that? This is a writing exercise can be daunting and frustrating. You may find yourself thinking of postponing this resolution until next year.

To help make your resume rewrite a little easier I’m going to focus on what needs to be done to make it very readable to hiring managers and recruiters, who are the types of people most likely to look your resume over someday. Think of them as your audience. Know their world. It consists of lots of scheduling, running reference and background checks, conducting interviews, debriefing clients or managers, communicating with their network, and all under constant time-pressure. They don’t have the time or interest to read your autobiography, nor will they be attracted to a boring chronology of your past jobs with nothing substantial to set you apart from the vast crowd. You’ve got about fifteen seconds to make a good first impression. Consider the following questions when rewriting your resume:

• What is your functional and industry expertise? Don’t make the reader have to infer your skills by looking at work history. Have a lead section or summary that quickly informs and emphasizes what value and talent you would bring to the employer. Categorizing core competencies and special technical skills prior to any list of previous jobs will allow you to be in or out of the hiring ballpark in a hurry.

 

• Where are you on the work-level hierarchy? It should be established very quickly if you are a laborer, assistant, manager, executive, or contracting consultant. This can be highlighted in the lead summary and by bolding or capitalizing current and previous job titles. You need to make it easy for the reader to position you where you want to be positioned.

 

• What have you been up to for the past ten or twelve years? A clearly written chronology of your most recent and relevant past employment should be displayed. And yes, gaps in your work history are a problem. Not what laid-off workers want to hear, I know. So, what can be done about employment gaps? Hopefully, you will be able to show that you tried to remain current and viable with your profession while you were out of work or caring for an ill or elderly family member. Perhaps you received further education and training, or volunteered, perhaps interned, in order to continue maintaining and developing expertise. Also, in most cases, what you did before, say 1998, isn’t going to be that important to someone hiring in 2011.

 

• What have been your significant accomplishments? In this chronicle of your employment there should stand out what you’ve done that has made a real contribution. Refer to tangible measures like revenue and profit increases, lead generations and conversions, savings in costs or resources, or anything else that shows you have improved processes. Think of it as compiling your greatest hits.

 

You may not be successful with all of your New Year’s resolutions, but if you can get this one right, it just may be enough to make 2011 the year of positive change you hoped it would be.

Challenges Facing the Mature Worker

Most of us didn’t see it coming. And now that it is here, many are struggling with how to cope. I’m not talking about The Great Recession as a whole, but about one egregious consequence of it—the dislocation of the 50+ worker.

Anecdotal reports started accumulating during the Recession’s early days and have yet to abate. Baby Boomer employees in large numbers have been facing layoffs, many for the first time in their lives. However, in trying to get hired elsewhere these experienced workers have been finding that a new cruel reality has set in. Their skills, history, long-term perspective, and deep knowledge are no longer wanted. They are being prematurely put out to pasture.

To me, an admitted Boomer, this phenomenon at first seemed counter-intuitive. Extensive practice at one’s craft should be seen as desirable. The mistakes of the past won’t be repeated if you have employees who know and have lived history, I naively thought. But contemporary hiring managers, who naturally are becoming younger all the time, apparently don’t see it that way. They see, or think they see, liabilities among this older cohort. Among the accepted downsides:

• Inflexible thinking
• Lack of tolerance for the values of younger workers
• Legacy practices that are counter-innovative
• Higher costs associated with salary expectations and health care benefits

The resulting generational mismatch has led to age bias and defacto discrimination, which makes it very hard for Boomers to land new jobs.

In working as a career counselor with many 50+ workers I’ve noticed another conclusion of this age group. Of those fortunate enough to have remained employed in recent years there are many who are now sick of their jobs, but not tired of working. And why have they grown so dissatisfied with their jobs? In almost every case it comes down to two words—poor management. When someone has been working thirty or more years there can be plenty of been-there-done-that moments and among the worst of them is putting up yet again with sub-standard or even dysfunctional leadership. All together, there is a lot of anxiety about remaining productively employed during the final years of many careers.

Unfortunately, switching jobs for the currently employed 50+ worker isn’t much easier than for their unemployed brethren. The same discriminatory hiring practices can likely face anyone born before 1960. I wish I had easy answers for remedying the employment problems of mature employees, but I don’t. I do, however, have a few mitigating suggestions for those wondering what to do next:

• Consult with a financial advisor. Have a clear picture of how solvent you are going forward. The chances of pulling down high salaries for the foreseeable future are greatly diminished.
• Consider an entrepreneurial venture. Although far from a quick fix, now may be the time to leverage your skills and knowledge into a micro or small business that can positively engage your energies and eventually lead to some income.
• Craft a marketable value proposition. Contrary to popular belief, the mature worker does have some assets. If your qualities can be powerfully presented as a direct match for the needs of an employer, than you just might be able to minimize or overcome the alleged weaknesses your age suggests.  
• Embrace the small-is-beautiful ethic. Pulling back on expenses and fifty-hour work weeks does have some advantages. Maintaining high-consumption lifestyles can be like feeding a beast. Rediscovering simple and less demanding living may actually benefit your spirit in addition to your monetary situation.

The biggest challenge of all for the older worker who feels diminished and devalued may be in reframing their predicament into something opportunistic. Although you didn’t intend or predict that the ground beneath your feet would shift so dramatically, nevertheless look hard for the silver lining. As Raum Emanuel says, never let a crisis go to waste.