Career Management Alliance Blog

In the course of writing our books and columns, we have interviewed multicultural professionals from all walks of life and asked for opinions on a variety of topics, including the characteristics needed for success. We compiled their answers, added our own experiences, and identified twelve factors for a successful career — a career that positively coexists with a fulfilled life, uses your talents and skills to their full potential, and maximizes your opportunities and growth.

You are the Architect of Your Own Destiny

• Life and career success can only be defined by you for you.
• Taking the time to develop your definition of success is essential to achieving career satisfaction.

The following are twelve characteristics you should master to achieve career success:

Know Yourself

• Evaluate your interests, values, knowledge, skills, abilities, contributions, accomplishments, uniqueness and worthiness.
• Understand your cultural programming, if any, and how to transform those gifts into career assets.
• Embrace your attributes, family history and culture.
• Craft your combined attributes into a foundation to launch or grow your career.

Develop a Goal that Inspires You

• Develop a vision of what you want to accomplish in life and your career.
• Arouse your passion and desire to be successful at whatever you do.
• Allow your goals to be courageous to drive your career forward. Your objectives should not be self-limiting.
• Make sure your goals, no matter how large or small, contribute value to others.

Believe in Your Personal Power

• Trust that you are the most important person in your career.
• Embrace your personal power to fuel your career power.
• Activate your career power so you can be proactive in your job search, manage the process and to respond well, rather than react, to the events you cannot control.
• Learn to adapt and transform any self-limiting cultural programming into power centers.

Learn to Dance in Both Worlds

• Recognize that adapting to an employer’s workplace culture is neither selling out nor changing your cultural identity.
• Build a cultural bridge that crosses from one environment to the other that we can walk on and help others to cross.
• Know your culture and share it gently.

Create Opportunities and be Prepared to Take Advantage of Them

• Initiative and networking create opportunities.
• Preparation and practice are often the difference to career success.
• Keep your attitude positive and picture yourself as lucky.
• Use tested strategies to overcome any job search FEARs (False Expectations Appear Real) you may have.

Persistence and Success Go Together

• Remember that it is not the fastest or brightest job seeker but the prepared and judiciously persistent candidate who generates an interview and secures employment.
• Recognize that job search roadblocks are only minor detours that you can find an alternative route, outwit, or avoid altogether.
• Work smarter and use the increasing number of Latino specific, diversity friendly, networking generated and skills focused access doors at employers.

Build Your Personal Career Brand

• If you do not develop a Personal Career Brand, others will label you.
• Paint a compelling picture of who you truly are and the unique promise of value you offer to an employer.
• Building your reputation or Personal Career Brand increases your confidence and job search power.

Make Learning a Life Long Process

• Life-long learning maintains and enhances your employability and upward mobility.
• Continuous professional and personal development improves your career staying power, agility and marketability.
• Your commitment to self-improvement validates an employer’s Return on Investment (ROI) in you.

Be Flexible

• Keep your job search and career options open.
• Be open, adaptable and accommodating to different approaches and opportunities
• Be willing to weigh job offers and career opportunities on how they fit into your career goals and plan. Don’t just look at the money.

Create a Strong Support System

• Grow your Career Board of Directors, a network of a people who will be there for you in the various capacities that aid your job search and career management.
• Nurture your network through maintaining contact, being thankful and giving back where you can.

Know When to Let Go

• Being willing to let go should not be seen as a negative. It is often liberating, empowering, and leads to career success.
• You may have accepted a job that turned out to be the wrong fit or your work situation may sour to the breaking point. Choose to move on.
• Your duties may have changed or you have or a team approach may be more productive requiring that you give up some control. Recognize that it is time to let go.
• Learn to accept your mistakes and use them as learning experiences. Leave them behind.

Remember to Give Back to Your Community

• Appreciate the multicultural professionals who were among the first in their career fields who blazed a trail for you to follow.
• Helping  your colleagues or those coming up behind you opens up even more opportunities for other multicultural professionals.
• Giving back adds to your own value and helps build your Personal Career Brand.
• Leadership and volunteer positions offer professional development opportunities that may not be available in the workplace.

Posted by Murray A. Mann and Rose Mary Bombela-Tobias 

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As an executive resume writer, I have the opportunity to see a lot of resumes that are in circulation, but failing miserably at their job.

They’re not capturing the attention of hiring decision makers reviewing them among possibly hundreds of others. And, if they do manage to get some attention, they’re not differentiating the job seeker and positioning them above the pack.

This is by no means a comprehensive list, but these are what I consider the top 10 worst offenders.

Four things that too many executive resumes lack:

1. A clear job target. Without a specific focus, decision makers reading your resume won’t make a connection between you and the job they’re trying to fill. They don’t have the time or inclination to sift through irrelevant information to see if you’ll be a good fit. Everything in your resume has to point to the requirements for that specific kind of job.

2. Personal branding. Especially in an economic downturn, personal branding makes more sense than ever. Companies are looking for good fit and personal chemistry. Branding generates chemistry and makes the candidate come alive on the page.

3. Value proposition. The value you bring your next employer needs to be abundantly evident, monetized, and linked to your brand.

4. Career success stories. When you show the reader exactly how you’ve accomplished all the great benefits you’ve brought to past companies, they can zero in on what you will do for their company. Follow a “Challenge – Actions – Impact” kind of framework to illuminate your successes.

Six things that too many executive resume have, but shouldn’t:

5. A designated “objective” statement. No one cares what you want. Instead of leading your resume with a statement saying what you want from the job, tell them, in a powerful brand statement, just what you will do for them.

6. Densely packed, hard-to-read information. With more and more hiring decision makers reviewing resumes on BlackBerries, the need for concise on-brand, value-driven statements surrounded by plenty of white space is obvious. Make it easy for them to read and quickly get to what they need to know about you.

7. Too many pages. Keep it to 2 pages. Remember that today’s resume is not meant to be a comprehensive career biography. As a marketing document, it needs to incorporate just enough compelling information to generate interviews.

8. Typos, grammatical errors, and/or poor formatting. This probably goes without saying. Errors are the kiss of death. Keep the formatting attractive, consistent, and easy to read. And make sure your contact information is correct.

9. Overused resume-speak. You’re not like everyone else. Your resume should reflect and embrace what makes you unique. Keep the content interesting and don’t fall back on cliches like “results-oriented”.

10. Passive verbs and repetitive, boring job descriptions. Draw in readers and hold their attention with robust action verbs that indicate your vitality and relevant key words that highlight your niche expertise. Don’t waste precious space reiterating obvious responsibilities. Avoid the tired, boring phrase “responsible for”.

Posted by Meg Guiseppi

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A recent article by Lisa Belkin in the New York Times highlighted the stories of a few job seekers who went to unusual lengths to stand out above the competition. These risk-takers may not have been aware that they were branding themselves, but the hiring-decision makers considering them certainly were. Having the courage to be different really paid off for them.

As you read the following scenario of one of the job seekers profiled in the article, you get an idea of the powerful brand attributes he tapped into.

After being laid off, George was getting nowhere with the personnel office of the company he wanted to work for next. His ingenious method to make headway was to print up business cards that were rounder and larger than usual. On the front was the photo of a pizza and on the back, along with his contact information, was the promise of a pizza for the first person to get him an interview.

Wearing a suit and tie, George positioned himself outside the company headquarters and handed out his cards to any takers. After a few days, he hit the mark with one manager who decided that anyone who made such an effort deserved to at least be heard.

His innovative campaign worked and branded him as innovative, bold, and a problem-solver, among other things. He got the job, probably because his stunt proved him to be a good fit for that company. One can only assume he was the kind of person they were looking for all along, but before he tried a gutsy approach, he was lost in the sea of other candidates.

Posted by Meg Guiseppi

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You have a “brand” new resume that targets the job you want next, illuminates your brand and pivotal strengths, and clearly defines your value proposition. You’re ready to use it for the jobs that interest you. Why stop there? Put it to work in other ways, like powering your LinkedIn profile (or other online social/professional networking profiles).

Along with colleagues and friends searching LinkedIn to make connections, recruiters and hiring managers are scouring profiles for talent. Lots of people are checking out LinkedIn profiles for various purposes. Build a branded, value-driven profile that will instantly attract attention.

If you’re already Linked In, your existing profile may need re-tooling to align with your current job search and incorporate your personal brand and all the other great things in your new resume. Following the suggestions of Jason Alba in his book “I’m On LinkedIn, Now What???”, here are some ideas to boost your profile for greater impact.

Starting at the very top, pump up the contact section:

~ Brand Your Professional Headline (directly below your name)
This is probably the very first thing people will read about you. There are many ways to approach this, but be sure it’s eye-catching and powerful. Although you’re only allowed something like 120 characters, you can say a lot in that amount of space. Here’s an example of one I wrote for a C-level client:

Senior Global Operations Leader – Entrepreneurial Startups, Corporate Turnaround, and Change Management
 
~ Personalize your public profile URL (immediately above the “Summary” section). The default URL ends in an indistinct jumble of letters and numbers. Change that to your name. Revising it’s a cinch:

1. On the “Edit My Profile” page, next to your existing “Public Profile” URL, hit “edit”.
2. At the top of the page you’ll see “Your Public Profile URL”. Click the edit button next to it.
3. In the box, type in “yourname” and hit “set address”.

Your link will look like this: “http://www.linkedin.com/in/yourname”

Now you have a personalized link to pop into your job search communications. People will know just where the link leads them and can access compelling information about you with one click and without having to open attachments.

~ Down to the “Summary” section, working from a text version of your resume, you can copy and paste chunks of information into this and following appropriate sections of your LinkedIn profile. It’s really as simple as that.

Your resume starts with a hard-hitting profile section which hopefully includes a personal or leadership brand statement. This is how to lead the “Summary” section. Keep in mind that, like your resume, you want to immediately capture the attention of readers in this first section containing major content. There aren’t many options to enhance the formatting, but you can break up the chunks into shorter, brand-focused statements of value so that they clearly stand out. You can also use various characters right on your keyboard for bullet points, such as: *  ~  >  =  -  <>

If your resume profile has sub-headings (like “Key Areas of Expertise” or “Critical Contributions”), set them up similarly in the summary section of your LinkedIn profile.

~ Under the “Additional Information” section, highlight your commitment to community and interesting hobbies or past times. The companies you’re targeting are interested in your passions and want to see the whole picture. Chemistry and good fit are very important to companies these days. Slices of your personal pursuits can help reinforce whether you’ll fit their corporate culture.

~ Plug in appropriate information from your resume for the “Experience” and “Education” sections. Keep building on recommendations within each job you’ve held. Nothing supports your brand and value better than what others have to say about you.

Posted by Meg Guiseppi

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I’ve just returned from the Career Management Alliance annual convention where I had the opportunity to learn from and hobnob with renowned resume writers and other thought leaders in the careers industry.

A fellow resume writer, I always like to see what John Suarez, founder of Success Stories Ink, has to say. Once again he gave a presentation that delighted everyone and deeply hit home. Aside from offering monumental “little” formatting tips we all should master and insightful advice on content, he shared his joy for the actual writing process. As he put it, so many of us are “verb-aholics” who derive great pleasure from crafting a clever turn of phrase to nail a client’s value proposition or specific contribution. Although we love hearing our clients gush over the final product, impressing them is not our mission. John noted that we are not in the “word” business. We are in the business of using words to sell our clients.

We’re constantly balancing our creative bent and desire to please our clients with the imperative to focus on what hiring decision makers who will be reading their resumes are looking for. A beautifully written and presented document will not open doors for the client if it doesn’t deliver the goods – that candidate’s potential value to their next employer.

What marks us as experts and brings true value to our clients is our talent for mining critical information, knowing what to put in the resume and what to leave out, and packaging it all in a brand-focused, value-driven document that attracts attention and brings them to life on the page.

I was tickled by another interesting point John made. We know that branding is an essential component in today’s career marketing documents, and most top resume writers have jumped on the “brand” wagon. But we’ve been branding our clients all along – by finding the best ways to differentiate them from competing job seekers. We just didn’t have a name for it until recently.

Meg Guiseppi

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Thanks to Louise Fletcher for her recent blog echoing a frustration I sometimes have with clients editing resumes I’ve written for them. She calls it “worditis” when job seekers insist on including every defining moment in their careers, from the time they entered the workforce.

Some executives come to me believing their resumes need to be complete career bios, especially if they haven’t been in the job market for several years and/or haven’t been in on reviewing resumes for new talent recruitment. I educate my clients in the early stages of our partnership about branding and differentiating them in their resumes, and have them view samples of my work to gain an understanding of what top interview-generating resumes look like today and what they can expect in their resumes.

Even so, when presented with the final product, some find it hard to let go of all the details encompassing their career history and concentrate on only the most salient points that will drive home their value. It can be painful for them to choose some contributions to set aside, although I reassure them their career story can be supplemented through supporting documents and in interviewing.

This dilemma presents itself only occasionally, but when it does, it can be a challenge to convince some job seekers that less really is more. Along with determining what information is the most important and compelling to include, part of my job as a resume writer is to package it all in a document that will actually be read. A resume needs to provide just enough information to capture and hold the reader’s attention. That can be accomplished in 2 pages. Too much information can turn the reader off and land their resume in the “maybe later” pile.

It makes sense that, with so many hiring decision-makers reviewing career marketing documents on Blackberries, possibly while they’re on the go, resumes offering concise, hard-hitting bites that are easy to get to will be better received than those packed tight with dense paragraphs. These “new” resumes make their jobs easier and can truly help the job seeker hit the mark and land faster.

Meg Guiseppi

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On his Personal Branding Blog, Dan Schwabel lists a series of insightful quotes he’s come up with over the years. He encourages anyone to use these gems, as long as he’s given credited.

I was particularly drawn to this one, which I think is dead-on advice for defining and crafting one’s authentic brand:

“You are the chief marketing officer for the brand called you, but what others say about your brand is more impactful than what you say about yourself.”

After all, your own evaluation of yourself is just one person’s opinion. Seeking the opinions of those who know your work and style well validates your own assessment and opens you to a deeper appreciation of your value, as well as what differentiates you from others doing the same work.

In my executive resume writing practice, I follow this direction when developing branding for my clients’ career marketing documents – especially for stand-alone brand statements. I have them ask several people who work closely with them about their performance and leadership talent. What these co-workers say may be the best indicator of my clients’ true value to their next employer.

Often the feedback is consistent and certain qualities and strengths shine through with each person’s input. Using this consensus, my job – differentiating my clients and reinforcing their brands throughout any documents I create – becomes much easier.

Posted by Meg Guiseppi

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You have all the information you need, you’ve identified your differentiating personal/leadership brand attributes, and you know what skills, qualifications, and personal qualities are required for the position you’re seeking. You’re ready to put it all together.

Pay close attention to the most important section of your resume.

The make-or-break area of your resume is the top of the first page, since it will be read first. Use it to your best advantage. This lead-in bite should introduce and encapsulate your personal brand and value proposition. It should be able to stand on its own to pre-qualify you for the position. Pack in as much critical information here as possible to draw in readers and compel them to consider you. It’s okay to bring forward select contributions that would chronologically land on the second page and place them in this eye-catching location.

Include a personal brand statement.

A stand-alone brand statement is still fairly cutting-edge so, in itself, will differentiate you. Of course, the unique and compelling content you deliver here will turn heads too. You may feel this isn’t right for your particular field or circumstances, or you may not be comfortable with such a bold statement. Your resume will still have great differentiating impact if you weave your unique combination of personal brand attributes throughout your resume and other career marketing documents.

Write from your own voice.

Cut the resume-speak. You’ve probably reviewed many resumes when recruiting new talent. You know how boring and lifeless they can be when riddled with trite catch phrases that don’t give any indication of who that person really is and what value they will bring to your company. Complement rich key word phrases with strategically placed colloquial phrases that echo your speaking voice and evidence your brand.

Limit your resume to 2 pages.

Pare down to the essentials. You need to include just enough to capture and hold the readers’ attention – you can do this in 2 pages. To provide deeper slices of standout contributions and further support your brand, supplement your resume with a suite of 1 to 2 page brand-focused, value-driven collateral documents – achievement or leadership initiatives summary, career biography, reference dossier, etc.

For the sake of brevity, in the “Professional Experience” section, there is no need to include repetitive lists of obvious responsibilities for each position you’ve held. And replace the overused phrase “responsible for” with robust action verbs – launched, pioneered, spearheaded, capitalized on, maximized, etc.

Always keep in mind that the purpose of your resume is to differentiate you from everyone else competing for the same jobs and to best generate interest in you as a candidate. Branding your resume and loading it with concise, vibrant content will help you make this happen.

Meg Guiseppi

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When you differentiate your value over and above other candidates competing for the same jobs, you greatly increase your chances to attract the attention you deserve. Along with precise, tight writing and formatting, develop and incorporate your leadership brand and value proposition in your executive resume.

Begin building your executive career brand and value proposition.

Answer the following questions to evaluate your unique market value and begin pinpointing your brand attributes:

Personal/Career Branding

~ Where do your greatest talents lie and how have you used them in your role as a visionary leader?
~ What are the attributes and characteristics of the best in your field? Do you possess all of them?

~ What do you most want prospective employers to know about you?
~ What makes you better than anyone else doing the same work?
~ What jazzes you the most about your work? What things would you relish doing, even if you weren’t paid for them?

ROI & Value Proposition

~ In what critical areas did you add value? What actions did you take to accomplish this? How did the company benefit?
~ What are the top things you did for past companies that wouldn’t have happened if you weren’t there?
~ For what information and expertise did the people you work with consistently rely on you?
~ How well did you embrace the company’s brand and vision?

Use these questions as a starting point, then dig deeper and come up with a full, vivid profile of the best you have to offer your next employer. This kind of information in your executive resume provides evidence of your value, positions you above others vying for the same job, and compels the reader to feel she already knows you. Supply hiring decision makers with the critical information they are looking for and improve your shot at landing the job you deserve.

Next time: Part 3 – Anatomy of a Branded Executive Resume

Meg Guiseppi

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All things Considered, NPR’s afternoon news show, featured this story today, April 7, 2008:

“Police in East Lansing, Mich., used tear gas to disperse thousands of out-of-hand partygoers near the Michigan State University campus at an event promoted as Cedar Fest on Facebook. Police are trying to determine whether the Facebook party organizers can be held accountable.”

How does this news jive with the advice of business bloggers like Bob Gourley, who recently suggested that Executives should use LinkedIn and Facebook?

What will this mean for the cohort of professionals who are streaming over to the interactive Facebook from more static networking forums, like LinkedIn.com?

Are the Facebook “natives” happy about the migration of more professional “immigrants” to the site that has been a place to plan parties, “poke” friends, and check-out fun connections?

Should Facebook friends feel compelled to clean-up their profiles so recruiters and other professionals can use this tool as yet another way to vet candidates? Should professionals be like rain, and go away….?

Will law enforcement authorities be able to hold Facebook members liable for the collateral damage and consequences of postings initiated through the social networking site? Will Facebook’s digital fingerprint and YouTube’s video record of the event put the kibosh on the partying? Will Facebook be able to “grow-up” without going to jail?

Posted by Karen P. Katz; cross-posted on Career Acceleration Notes 

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