Author: Marcia Zidle

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15 Job Search and Career Books You Must Read

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career and job search booksA recent post on the LinkedIn group- Career Thought Leaders Consortium – asked for the most indispensable career and job search books.

Below are must read books!

Some are for helping people in job search; others are for those that are trying to figure out what ‘s next in their career. And several are on career satisfaction and career advancement. However, all are written to shake up your thinking about job search and career management.

The Top 15:

  1. Don’t Send a Resume by Jeff Fox
  2. Job Search Magic by Susan Whitcomb
  3. The Career Activist’s Republic by Peter Weddle
  4. What Color is Your Parachute 2011 by Richard Bolles
  5. Go Out and Hire Your Next Employer by Charles Irish
  6. The New Leader’s 100 Day Action Plan by George Brant
  7. 101 Ways to Land a Job in Troubled Times by Jay Blocks
  8. Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters 3.0. by Jay Conrad Levinson
  9. Work Strong: Your Personal Career Fitness System by Peter Weddle
  10. Career Distinction: Stand Out By Building Your Personal Brand, William Arruda
  11. Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career Herminia Ibarra
  12. Knock ’em Dead, Secrets and Strategies for Success in an Uncertain World by Martin Yates
  13. Ground of Your Own Choosing: Winning Strategies for Finding & Creating Work by Beverly Ryle
  14. Work with Passion in Midlife and Beyond: Reach Your Full Potential and Make the Money You Need by Nancy Anderson
  15. Do What You Are: Discover the Perfect Career for You Through the Secrets of Personality Type by Paul and Barbara Tieger

Career Success Tip

Don’t manage your career in an information vacuum. As pace of change accelerates, everyone’s career will be profoundly affected. Whatever your career was yesterday, it’s changed today and will change tomorrow. Seek out resources – people, different points of view, the latest research – that will give you the edge in your job search and career.

Readers, what books would you recommend? What are some of the “ah-has” you discovered? What actions have you taken on these tips?

Do you want to develop Career Smarts?

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Motivate Your Best People and Not Break the Bank

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In an earlier post on employee motivation, I answered a manager’s question “How can I keep my employees motivated; I pay them decently?”

Here are additional easy, inexpensive actions that managers can take that will bring smiles, good cheer and greater employee commitment to his or her job. These will motivate your best people and not break the bank.

  1. Visit a person in his or her office just to thank them for some specific contribution or post at thank-you note on his or her office door.
  2. Send an e-mail message to everyone in the group advising of a person’s personal contribution to the team’s accomplishment.
  3. Walk around with free lunch coupons and hand them out with a simple thank you for your commitment. I appreciate it.
  4. Organize a number of your group to take a specific staff member out for lunch on their birthday or arrange to send a card home signed by everyone on the team.
  5. Present a stuffed “Energizer bunny” to that group member who keeps going and going or a stuffed roadrunner to those who manage to complete a particular rush client project in record time.
  6. Present each new person joining the group with a specially printed T-shirt displaying their name above the name of the group and the firm.
  7. Initiate your own internal one-page monthly newsletter. Arrange a “Bravo” column to salute personal and professional activities or a “Good Tries” column to recognize and offer encouragement to those whose innovations did not achieve their full potential.
  8. Allow new people and staff to rent, from the local art gallery, a work of art of their choice for their office or work area.
  9. Create a Hall Of Fame wall with photos of outstanding achievements, both professional and personal.
  10. Create an annual report, yearbook, or photo album containing memorabilia and photographs of every group member along with their best achievements of the year.
  11. Buy a local billboard to celebrate a team’s accomplishments.
  12. Make a donation to their favorite charity in their name. Suggest that the charity send them, not you, a thank you recognition.
  13. Host a surprise picnic for the entire team in the parking lot or parking garage ..of course in good weather.
  14. Send flowers and a letter of appreciation to the family of a staff person who has to be away from home for an extended period of time.
  15. Give them a surprise for their work area – a new mouse pad, a poster, a desk organizer – something that will help them do their job better as well as say “Thank You.”

Supervision Success Tip

Sometimes a jelly doughnut or a handshake is as effective as a bonus. However, remember what is one person’s carrot is someone’ yucky orange vegetable. Do you know what motivates each of your employees?

How well are you motivating your best people?

Do you want to develop your Management Smarts?

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Don’t Wait Until Job Search, Think Resume In Everything You Do

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take a hard look at your careerWhen job seekers are developing their resumes, they have to identify what they are selling.

In other words, what skills and experience do they bring to the employment table. Are their skills state-of-the-art and in great demand or are they rusty or too specialized to be sought after? How many are transferable to different positions, different industries or different professions? How competitive are they?

Think of it this way:

Someday your current job will be a line entry on your resume. Under the entry, you’ll have two or three bullets to describe your major accomplishments. “Did a good job of doing what always was done” can’t be one of them.

  • What have you done that added value to your team, department or company?
  • What customer or operations problems have you solved?
  • How and where have you shown leadership?

These are the things you need to put in the section of bulleted accomplishments for each position on your resume. They are the things that distinguish you from others and will get the hiring managers eye.

Take a hard look at your career

Therefore, at the end of each year, whether you are looking for a new job or not, take the time to write or update your resume and compare it with last year’s. See if it has gotten noticeably better. See if it shows growth in a variety of skills, or growth in satisfied customers, or completed projects. If not, what can you do to make it better in the coming year. Avoid becoming a career dinosaur. If you don’t evolve, as in nature, you will face extinction.

Career Success Tip

At the beginning of a new job decide on what you want those two or three major accomplishment bullets to be. Then deliberately set out building them over the course of your job responsibilities. Otherwise, you run the risk of having them simply be the incidental byproduct of what opportunities happened to come your way.

Do you want to develop Career Smarts?

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Employee Turnover: Why People Quit Their Jobs

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There are many reasons why good employees quit and go to another company, perhaps even your competitor.

Good people don’t leave good companies, they leave poor managers. Here are seven managerial practices that drive good people away. Are they prevalent in your organization?

  1. Managers demand that one person do the jobs of two or more people, resulting in longer days and weekend work. This turns into a morale killer not only for the person but for the team.
  2. Managers don’t allow the rank and file to make decisions about their work. Therefore employees see their job as only a job rather than developing enthusiasm and pride of ownership.
  3. Managers constantly reorganize, shuffles people around and changes direction constantly. So employees don’t know what’s going on, what the priorities are and what they should be doing.
  4. Managers don’t take the time to clarify their decisions. For example it rejects work without an explanation or yells at people without telling them what the problem is. This damages the morale and confidence of the employees.
  5. Managers alienate staff by promoting someone who lacks training and /or the necessary experience to supervise. This leads to employees to feel management shows favoritism and so why do a good job.
  6. Managers set up departments to compete against each other while at the same time preaching teamwork and cooperation. Employees become cynical and only put effort in what they see management wants not what they say.
  7. Managers throw temper tantrums, points fingers and assigns blame when things go wrong. As a result, employees do the minimum and play it safe afraid of being the target of this negativity.

Management Success Tip:

One way to stop employee turnover is to stop micromanaging. Close supervision, control and bureaucracy kills the spirit of your people – morale goes down and people start leaving. Instead focus on the big picture, delegate so that the most competent people actually do the work and give up control over the little things. In other words, managing less is managing better.

Do you want to develop your Management Smarts?

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Fear of Failure: Do You Have It?

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What do these people all have in common?

  • Babe Ruth struck out 1,330 times
  • Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team.
  • Abraham Lincoln lost six elections before being elected to office.
  • Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor because, he was told, he lacked creativity.
  • Steven Spielberg applied to USC Cinema School twice and was turned down both times.
  • When Thomas Edison was a child he was told by his teacher that was too stupid to learn anything.

It is that the all persevered until they succeeded. If they had a fear of failing again, they did not succumb but rather put any fear aside to reach their goals.

fear of failureFear of failure is the greatest single obstacle to success in life. But here’s the kicker, it’s not failure that holds us back – it’s the fear of failure -it’s the anticipation of failure. We may tell ourselves:: “If I do this and fail, I’ll look dumb; I’ll embarrass myself; I’ll disappoint; people will think I’m not competent or I’m a loser, etc.”

So how do we overcome the fear of failure?

At a recent career management workshop with a group of health care professionals, I asked them to look back over their professional and personal lives and focus on this: You failed at something and yet you got back on track and moved forward. What did you do to avoid getting stuck in the fear of future failure? Here are strategies that helped them. Perhaps they can help you as well.

  • Take small steps – experiment in situations where you will succeed.
  • Take a look at what you fear and why. Check it out – is it realistic?
  • Explore you fantasy about the possibility of failure – what the worst thing that can happen?
  • Think of time you have succeeded. How did you make that happen?
  • Do things that will make you feel good about yourself and give you confidence.
  • Build on the skills you already have and branch out into new areas.
  • Share your fears with others and discover how they handled them.
  • Imagine the worst failure and then realize all the plusses that can come out of it.
  • Ask yourself if you like failure better than success. What’s got you hooked?
  • Reward yourself when accomplish something small and then move on.

Career Success Tip:

Get back in the saddle. It’s hard to rebuild confidence after slipping up. But don’t let it stop you from ever taking risk again. We must look at failure as what it really is, a temporary setback and an opportunity to get it right the next time. Winners win more frequently than losers because they stay in the game.

Do you occasionally suffer from fear of failure? In what situations? How can you overcome it?

Do you want to develop Career Smarts?

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Employee Motivation: 7 Ways to Keep Your Staff Energized

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Managers often ask, usually with exasperation, “How can I keep my employees motivated, and why do I have to worry about it? I pay them decently.”

Offering competitive salaries is certainly important, but that’s what gets them in the door. What keeps them engaged and committed to your team or organization is more than money – it’s the day-to-day ‘stuff’ like respect, trust, fairness and good feelings about themselves and their work. Here are 7 ways to keep them motivated and energized.

1. Don’t play favorites.
People make judgments about what they see in the workplace. Are promotions fair? Is low performance dealt with quickly? Is their equal treatment for the top floor as well as the shop floor? If the answer is no in their eyes (regardless of the ‘truth’ of the matter – it’s their perspective) then this perceived unfairness will stand in the way of their giving of themselves fully to the job or project.

2. Share the limelight.
When credit and compliments come your way, spread them around to all who helped. Let Sally or Joe or the team accept the award rather than just you. And, if you think you’re solely responsible for that honored achievement, think again.

3. Meet them on their turf.
While you may be more comfortable meeting with staff in your office, it’s more valuable to meet occasionally where they are located. Leadership is not about your comfort, but that of your people. The symbolic value of seeing you mingling with the troops improves trust. General Patton used this effectively and won many a battle by the loyalty his troops had for him.

4. Break bread together.
Have an informal breakfast or lunch once a month with a group of workers to find out what’s on their mind. Or grab something at the cafeteria, plop yourself down at a table and say: “So, how’s things going in your area?” While you may hear some groaning, you will also hear about frustrations that are hindering performance. Listen, acknowledge and then do something about these glitches. Acting on problems goes a long way.

5. Follow-through. DWYSYGD
Effective managers remember the promises they make, take the appropriate course of action, and let their staff know what’s been done. If you tell Mary that you are going to check on something for her, do it. And if you don’t intend to do something, never say you will. Your credibility will go down each time people’s expectations are unmet.

6. Truly encourage and ask for their ideas.
Ask everyone to come to the next staff meeting with two questions or two improvement ideas. This opens up two-way communication real quickly. Listen intently, clarify and then follow-up each question or idea. If you maximize employee input, you will get a more productive and committed workforce.

7. Communicate the good, the bad, and even the ugly.
When you’re on an airplane and it encounters turbulence or the flight is delayed, you want to know what’s going on. Not knowing makes you nervous. Employees also want to know what’s going – what’s causing the bumpy ride. If people don’t understand, anxiety mounts, trust declines, rumors fly and motivation is shot to heck. The next thing you see is morale plummeting and work not getting done.

Management Success Tip

Catch people doing something right. Sincere appreciation is powerful stuff — it’s feedback, recognition, and respect all wrapped in one. Saying thanks has become a lost art in the frenetic world of ‘24/7.’ It’s a morale booster that costs nothing but goes a long way in helping people put forth more effort. If the little things are done right, then big results will follow.

Do YOU know how to lead right – motivate right – hire right – get the right results?

Do you want to develop your Management Smarts?

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Build Your Change Muscles! Build Your Career!

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change musclesAs the pace of change in the workplace continues to increase, managing the many disruptions in our lives is one of the most important tasks in managing our careers.

The Challenge of Change
Although we don’t always like to admit it, we seek and want control. We use our past experiences to establish expectations about how things in our life are likely to happen. These expectations provide a sense of control, comfort and confidence.

Change is challenging precisely because it disrupts our expectations – it creates a new reality that doesn’t match the expectations we have created. This causes us to feel a loss of control – a loss of comfort – and a loss of confidence. Sometimes we adapt well and sometimes we don’t!

The Solution is Personal Resilience
Of all the factors that contribute to adapting to change, the single most important factor is resilience- the capacity to absorb high levels of change and maintain high levels of performance. When resilient people face, rather than ignore, the ambiguity and the anxiety around change, they tend to grow stronger from their experiences rather than feel depleted by them. They use their “change muscles” to stay focused, flexible and proactive!

10 Tips to Build Your Change Muscles

  1. Recognize that change is here to stay.
  2. Understand that loss of control is at the heart of change.
  3. Reach out to others for resources, perspective and support.
  4. Know your orientation to change. Is it danger or opportunity?
  5. Become more conscious of your own response to change. Is it a fight or flight?
  6. Know your quota for change before it becomes overwhelming. How much and what kind?
  7. Expect the unexpected so that you are rarely surprised that you are surprised.
  8. Be ready for resistance, whether change is viewed as positive or negative.
  9. Hold your focus on long-term goals and priorities not short term hiccups.
  10. Be open to getting new things done and getting things done in new ways.

Career Success Tip:

The payoff for increased resilience is strong for both organizations and individuals. Organizations benefit from being able to implement changes more quickly and effectively, which gives them a competitive advantage. Individuals benefit from being able to achieve their own goals in the midst of uncertainty with less wasted energy, leading to greater productivity and greater satisfaction.

What can you do right now to build your change muscles? What can you do right now to build your organization’s change muscles?

Do you want to develop Career Smarts?

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How Does a Young New, Supervisor Lead?

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How do you supervise people who are more experienced than you?

Many years ago I coached Kevin, a young manager who had just taken the reins of the facilities department of a major university. At his first staff meeting, with his much senior supervisors, he said:

“As your manager, I’m here to help you be successful. You already know the goals of our department – to make sure everything works on campus – and you certainly know your jobs very well. My job is to take away any obstacles that keep you from succeeding. Then, it’s just you, your staff and the goal line.”

What sort of obstacles was Kevin referring to? Things like red tape, office politics, hierarchical nonsense, territorial disputes and so on. Kevin’s message left three critical impressions on his staff:

  • Everyone knew that the usual complaints and excuses (Mary didn’t call back or I couldn’t get the information) wouldn’t fly.
  • Everyone knew they had a powerful advocate for doing whatever it takes to make their goals and serve their customers (and on a large campus there were many customers.)
  • Everyone understood that the ‘enemy’ was their competitors – the other educational institutions in the area – not “those horrible people in accounting.” The focus was on how we can make this university a super institution.

Supervisor Success Tip.

Are you an absentee supervisor or one who is an obstacle remover? Do you stand back from the action assuming you can’t change things or do you do everything you can to help your people reach the goal line? What obstacles are getting in the way of your people do their job and what can you do to change that? How will that motivate your people?

Do you want to develop your Management Smarts?

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Connect Your Career With Your Personality

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vonnect career with personalityYou know when you are in a job you like. You also know when the tasks you’re doing just aren’t right for you.

What lies behind our feelings of job satisfaction or job dis-satisfaction are our fundamental work interests: Those are the things we enjoy doing, whatever the industry or the job title. One of the ways to find career satisfaction is to identify your core interests and match your job to them.

Finding Your Core Interests

John Holland developed a popular theory of interest development based around these six personality types.

1. Realistic (R):
These are people who like well-ordered activities, or enjoy working with objects, tools, and machines. They tend to see themselves as mechanically or athletically talented and value concrete and tangible things.
2. Investigative (I):
Investigative people like activities that involve creative investigation of the world or nature. They tend to see themselves as highly intelligent and analytical and value scientific endeavors, research and precision.
3. Artistic (A):
Artistic people like unstructured activities, enjoy using their imagination and materials to create art and They tend to avoid “conventional” occupations or situations and value creativity and aesthetics.
4. Social (S):
Social people enjoy informing, training, developing, curing and enlightening others. They tend to perceive themselves as helpful, understanding and able to teach others and value people activities.
5. Enterprising (E):
These people enjoy reaching organizational goals or achieving economic gain. they tend to see themselves as aggressive, popular, great leaders and speakers and value political and economic achievement.
6. Conventional (C):
Conventional people enjoy manipulating data, record keeping, filing, reproducing materials, and organizing written or numerical data. They tend to see themselves as having clerical and numerical ability and value efficiency and practicality.

Use This Model To Help You:

  • Shape your existing job to increase your satisfaction.
    First look at the main tasks and responsibilities of your present job. List those responsibilities that are aligned with your personality type in one column and those that are not in another. Use this to decide whether your job is a a great fit, a good fit or a poor fit for you. If it’s not a a great, or at least a good match, talk with you boss and come up with ways to make it better. Usually most jobs have flexibility.

Career Success Tip

Remember this is a model – a useful way of understanding oneself – but it can’t possibly capture all of the complexities of an individual’s personality. Make sure that you interpret any conclusions with common sense. Also, as you develop in your career, you’ll need to extend your skills into new areas. In particular, as you take responsibility for people and move upwards, you’ll need to develop the social and enterprising abilities.

Ask Marcia if you want to know more about the Holland Codes and how to connect your career and your personality.

Do you want to develop Career Smarts?

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10 Tips for Effective Delegation

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Delegation is often very difficult for new supervisors and managers.

Many managers want to remain comfortable making the same decisions they have always made. They believe they can do a better job themselves. They don’t want to risk losing control of the situation or outcome. Often, they don’t want to risk giving authority to subordinates in case of failure.

Stop Doing, Start Managing

Here are 10 tips for effective delegation and, more importantly, effective supervision:

1. Delegate early.
Make an effort to delegate the task early to avoid unnecessary pressure. This allows the person to better plan the task.

2. Select the right person.
Ensure that the person has the time to take on the responsibility. Assess the skills and capabilities of your staff and assign the task to the most appropriate person. Make sure the person has the training and resources to succeed.

3. Communicate the rationale and benefit.
Identify the reason for the task and how it will contribute to the goals of the company or department or team. Also, point out how the delegated task could benefit the person. For example, develop a specific skill. that is needed to get promoted. Remember a routine task to you may be a new challenging task to your subordinate.

4. Delegate the entire task to one person.
This gives the person the responsibility, increases their motivation and avoids ambiguity in accountability. Otherwise, different people will have different ideas about who does what when.

5. Set clear goals and expectations.
Be clear and specific on what is expected. Give information on what, why, when, who and where. You might leave the “how” to them. Be prepared to accept input from subordinates. Confirm and verify task goals and expectations.

6. Delegate responsibility and authority.
Ensure that the subordinate is given the relevant responsibility and authority to complete the task. Let the subordinate complete the task in the manner they choose, as long as the results are what you specified. Be willing to accept ideas from the subordinate on task fulfillment.

7. Provide support, guidance and instructions.
Point subordinates to the resources they may need to complete the task or project. That could be people they need to coordinate with, crucial information or Be willing to be a resource yourself.

8. Take personal interest in the progress of delegated task.
Request to be updated on the progress of the task, provide assistance when necessary. Be careful not to be intrusive; giving the perception that you do not trust the subordinate. Keep communication lines open, regular meetings on large tasks can provide this ongoing feedback.

9. If you’re not satisfied with the progress, don’t take the project back immediately.
Rather, continue to work with the employee and ensure they understand the project to be their responsibility. Give advice on ways to improve. This ensures accountability and dependability.

10. Evaluate and recognize performance.
Evaluate results more than methods. Analyze cause of insufficient performance for improvements and recognize successes as soon as possible.

Supervision Success Tip

Effective delegation allows subordinate to learn, grow and be more capable. It allows supervisors to be more productive by focusing on what they are paid to do – getting the work done through others.

Do you want to develop your Management Smarts?