So you’re feeling stuck in your job or career; you’re unhappy and unsure what to do about it. To get unstuck, take the first crucial step and conduct a thoughtful self-assessment. Accurately diagnose the cause and identify the cure by reflecting on three areas: your life experiences, your current situation and your vision for the future. Answering the following 10 questions can help you to gain this insight.
You can improve your odds of getting a raise, promotion or job security by creating a plan to achieve success in your current role. Like any effective strategic plan, your plan needs to answer these questions: 1) What’s my current situation? 2) Where am I going? and 3) How will I get there? Address these questions by incorporating the following five elements into your “Strategic Success Plan” (SSP):
If you’ve been out of work for a while, you may face a well-documented bias against the unemployed in your job search. But fear not; there are ways to easily fill the gap, preempting any potential uneasiness about your unemployment while reassuring employers that you’re current in your field. Here are three of those ways, followed by what to say when asked about an employment gap in an interview.
When you’re in an interview with a bad or inexperienced interviewer, they’re not giving you the opportunity to truly make the case for your candidacy. They’re not asking you the right (or any) questions, and in fact they may be turning you off by their behavior.
Very often, however, you can find a way to change the subject back to their number one question, “How can you help me?” and thus do both of you favor; they will get their answer and you’ll stand out from the competition as the candidate who answered this key question. Let’s look at how to improve your outcome in four of the most common bad-interviewer scenarios.
You can improve your odds of getting promoted by first setting the stage: show that you’re ready for the role, differentiate yourself by demonstrating leadership and build supportive stakeholder relationships. In addition, ensure that they’re thinking about you as promotion material by having “the promotion conversation” with your boss. Let’s dive into each of these four areas.
The single most effective thing you can do in an interview is to make your experience come alive through stories or examples. Yes, you need to get other things right in an interview as well: ask the right questions, prep for handling issues with your candidacy, follow-up effectively and so forth. But telling a good story is the most powerful way to stand out from the competition, since our brains are wired to remember the imagery, the drama, and the emotion that’s conveyed in a good story.
Building and leveraging a network of mutually beneficial career relationships is easier than you may think. And having this network of relationships is crucial in today’s environment, where being good at your job is simply not good enough, or where applying to lots of jobs is an inefficient way to search. Whether you’re eyeing a promotion or seeing layoffs on the horizon, your network will help you. In a job search, your network will enable you to shortcut the application process and tap into the hidden job market where you’ll find the best opportunities.
Here are some ideas to help you to quickly build and optimize your network of career-advancing relationships.
Even if your resume, pitch and communications skills are stellar and your background is in demand, you may still be in for a long job search. Many opportunities simply won’t pan out through no fault of your own; budgets, priorities and hiring managers can change unexpectedly. To ensure that you’ll have a quick job search, play the numbers game to win; have many things
Business prospects or employers are probably searching on LinkedIn for someone like you. The single best way to ensure you’ll show up in their searches, and stand out from competitors, is to have the right profile “keywords.” These are the words or phrases that resonate. They’re used in search queries, and answer your target audience’s main question: “How can you help me?”
Profile keywords have benefits beyond boosting your LinkedIn search ranking. Since search engines like Google and
The Top 4 Resume Myths – Busted
by Robert Hellmann • Resume, LinkedIn, self-promo
When clients first contact me for résumé help, they often say things like “I heard that you should never…” or “I was told to always…” Most of these rules are just plain wrong, because they contradict the one Golden Rule of Résumé Writing: your “why you should hire me” message needs to jump off the page in the 15 seconds or less that your résumé is being reviewed (one study says your résumé is looked at for only 7.4 seconds).
Keeping the Golden Rule in mind, let’s look at the top four résumé myths that I’ve come across in my work with clients.