Career Management Alliance Blog

Yasmin Davidds-Garrido, international best-selling author and empowerment specialist, often expresses the following quotation in her presentations:

“Personal power comes from within and when you embrace it, you feel as though there is nothing in the world that you cannot handle. It helps you recognize that everything in your life is a choice, and it reinforces the truth that you have complete control over each and every one of those choices. While we may not have control over the events that occur in our lives, we have control over how we react to these events. You, alone, are in control of your destiny.”

How does this apply to your career? As we stated in our post Twelve Characteristics of Multicultural Career Success:

• 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.

Declare your independence today, July 4, 2008!

Posted by Murray A. Mann

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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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When President Clinton signed the executive order designating June as Gay and Lesbian Pride Month he wrote “I hope that in this new millennium will continue to break down the walls of fear and prejudice and work to build a bridge to understanding and tolerance, until gays and lesbians are afforded the same rights and responsibilities as all Americans.” 

Much has happened since June 2000. According the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) more than half of states and thousands of corporations have expanded protections and benefits for their GLBT employees including 433 of Fortune 500 companies.

Below are a sampling of web resources including advocacy groups, professional associations, job portals and books dedicated to helping gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered individuals advance their careers and contributions in the workplace, as well as, educating employers and coworkers to create more inclusive workplaces.

Advocacy Groups  

glbtworkplace.com‘s goal is to provide the knowledge, support and tools to enable a world where gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people can work openly and safely in a workplace that is welcoming and free of harassment and discrimination, regardless of occupation. The web site features articles, editorial comentary, discussion topics and opinion / data gathering polls. The Frequently Asked Questions by Managers Regarding GLBT Workplace Issues section is also a valuable guide for everyone.  

Human Right Campaign Workplace Project delivers information on workplace policies and laws surrounding sexual orientation and gender identity, and is a great resource for “how-to” information.  HRC publishes the annual Corporate Equality Index which rates companies on their GLBT inclusiveness. 

Out & Equal Workplace Advocates hosts a natioanally recognized annual conference, offers training programs and has regional affiliates for local networking. 

OUT For Work is a national nonprofit organization educating, preparing, and empowering LGBT students and their allies for the workplace.  

The vast majority of companies listed in the DiversityInc’s 2008 Top 50 Companies for Diversity have active programs to recruit GLBT employees, nondiscrimination policies that include gender identity, Employee Resource Groups for GLBT employees, gay/lesbian businesses in supplier-diversity tracking and corporate web sites addressing the GLBT community.

Professional Associations 

National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce 

National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA) National Lesbian and Gay Law Association (NLGLA) 

National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Science and Technical Professionals (NOGLSTP) 

Regional LGBT Professional Organizations 

Job Portals 

There are niche GLBT career sites that provide job postings, career management tools and resources needed to successfully navigate in U.S. workplace.

gayjob.biz

progayjobs.com

www.simplyhired.com/a/special-searches/glbt-friendly

Books

Straight Talk About Gays in the Workplace (Haworth Gay & Lesbian Studies)

Lavender Road To Success: The Career Guide by Kirk Snyder 

The resources listed above are but few. If you have additional sources to recommend to our readers, please post them in the comments section. 

Posted Murray A. Mann

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In our turbulent economy, U.S. companies are aggressively seeking competitive advantages in the increasingly diverse local and global marketplaces. It is a matter of not only growth, but for many, survival. These companies are not likely to be successful unless they understand the cultures and languages of their customers and employees. Multicultural experiences and / or language skills are very critical business assets employers are seeking in order to thrive in this new business landscape.

How can you communicate your multicultural experiences and / or language skills as an asset? First, you must convince yourself these attributes are advantageous and worthy of consideration.

Therese Droste, a Washington D.C. based career columnist, suggests writing a list of benefits you bring to the workplace. Below are few examples that have appeared on lists developed by clients and our readers:

• My language skills will be used to resolve cultural or language conflicts or problems between customers and colleagues.
• Being multicultural or multilingual demonstrates I can adjust my style to different people and situations. 
• Being multicultural or multilingual indicates I have experienced looking at problems and opportunities from different perspectives.
• Being multicultural or multilingual indicates I think before I act.
• Being multicultural or multilingual means I know how it feels to be misunderstood, and I also know what it takes to reverse misunderstandings.
• My accent will be seen as an additional competence that helps me communicate better with colleagues and customers from diverse backgrounds.
• I understand leadership and creative solutions within the context of my diversity.

The next step is to take that list you made and match them with positive experiences in your life in which your multicultural background or multilingual abilities helped you resolve a problem or communicate better with another person. It’s similar to creating a life resume. Yet because so many of our life experiences become distant memories, you have to ponder the past, target such situations and write them down. Your multicultural assets must be presented in a manner that proves that you can help drive a company’s business goals.

Let’s say you’re asked in an interview how you would deal with a problem situation with a colleague or customer. You could preface your answer with: “Partly because I know how it feels to have the shoe on the other foot…” and then fill in the rest with a specific example of how your background helped you solve a similar problem. Simply put, you provide the employer with an example of how you used your experiences as a multicultural and / or multilingual person to solve a past business problem or show how your skills helped you in a previous job. We suggest you read Be the S.T.A.R. of Your Next Job Interview and use the article’s worksheet to prepare your answers.

Once you’ve convinced yourself of how valuable your skills are, you will articulate them better and gain an employer’s confidence.

Posted by Murray A. Mann

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Yesterday I attended an Asian Pacific American Heritage Month (APAHM) celebration to commemorate the contributions of people of Asian and Pacific Islander descent in the United States. Below are several professional associations, web resources and books dedicated to helping Asian Americans advance their careers and contributions in the workplace. 

Professional Associations 

The largest organization, National Association of Asian American Professionals (NAAAP), provides its members with the tools and resources to further career advancement and to empower Asian Americans to become great leaders, as well as, reliable employees. To find more about the NAAAP and other organizations, read Dan Woog’s article Top 16 Asian American Professional Groups.

Job Portals 

There are niche career sites for Asian American that provide job postings, career management tools and resources needed to successfully navigate in U.S. workplace. A few of the more comprehensive portals are the Asian American Success Center, Asian American Village of IMDiversity.com, AsianLife.com  and the NAAAP Career Center. 

Books

Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling: Career Strategies for Asians by Jane Hyun

Invitation to Lead: Guidance for Emerging Asian American Leaders by Paul Tokunaga

Posted by Murray A. Mann

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On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court overwhelmingly ruled that two federal civil rights laws authorize workers to sue when they are subjected to retaliation after complaining about race or age discrimination.

In, CBOCS West, Inc. v. Humphries, the justices, voting 7-2, said a Reconstruction-era law known as Section 1981 bars retaliation against workers who complain of racial bias. The ruling means Cracker Barrel Old Country Store restaurants must defend against a suit by a former associate manager at one of the company’s. 

The justices separately voted 6-3, in Gomez-Perez v. Potter, to allow retaliation claims by federal employees who complain of age discrimination. That decision lets a suit by a postal worker go forward.  

We strongly recommend that employers revisit their commitment to building fully inclusive workplace cultures. Companies should evaluate and enhance their anti-discrimination policies, management and employee training programs and monitoring procedures. 

We encourage all employees to speak out when they observe discrimination and harassment in the workplace. You should be proactive in learning your rights and responsibilities under company policies, as well as, local, state and federal enforcement laws. If you are a victim of discrimination or retaliation, exercise your rights with the knowledge that Supreme Court has affirmed two more protections available to you.

Posted by Murray A. Mann

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This weekend we commemorate the U.S. men and women who have died in military service to our country. We also honor all current service members and veterans. According to government statistics, more than 30,000 military personnel serving in Iraq, Afghanistan and surrounding duty station have been wounded in action. Despite their injuries, most disabled veterans leave active duty eager and able to return to the civilian workforce.  

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) recently issued two question-and-answer (Q&A) guides for veterans with service-connected disabilities and companies on employment and workplace issues.  

EEOC chair Naomi C. Earp said “Injured veterans, like everyone else, deserve the freedom to compete in the workplace on a fair and level playing field. Members of the military have bravely sacrificed for America should never have to come home and  face unlawful employment obstacles because of service-related disability.”  

The first guide answers questions that veterans with service-connected disabilities may have about the protections they are entitled to when they seek to return to their former jobs or look to find their first, or new, civilian jobs. The document also explains changes or adjustments that veterans may need, because of their injuries, to apply for, or perform, a job, or to enjoy equal access to the workplace. 

The publication for employers explains how protections for veterans with service-connected disabilities differ under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Right Act (USERRA). the guide further describes how the ADA in particular applies to recruiting, hiring and accommodating veterans with service-connected disabilities. The EEOC enforces Title 1 of the ADA, which prohibits employments discrimination against people with disabilities in the private sector and state and local governments. The U.S. Department of Labor enforces USERRA, which applies to the reemployment of veterans with and without service-connected disabilities.

EEOC Legal Counsel Reed L. Russell said, “The EEOC wants to help our nations wounded warriors and employers alike understand their respective workplace rights and responsibilities under federal laws. The new guides will provide valuable assistance in this effort.”

Russell noted that each guide includes a list of resources where to find more information on USERRA and the ADA; public and private organizations who can assist employers who want to recruit and hire veterans or can helps who are seeking employment; and organizations and agencies that can identify reasonable accommodations for veterans with service-related disabilities.

Posted by Murray A. Mann

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It’s awards season. Diversity Inc., Fortune, Black Enterprise, disABLED, Hispanic Business, Human Rights Campaign, Working Mother, G.I. Jobs, AARP and other publications are releasing their annual lists of the best companies to work for. The directories are another valuable tool for use in your job search.  

To effectively make use of these lists we recommend that you take the following steps: 

• Determine that the organization uses legitimate selection criteria* and making decisions on the amount advertising dollars spent by a company
• Read the website’s rationale for choosing each employer by clicking on the links above
• Review the publication’s lists from the previous years to determine a company’s history as an employer of choice
• Research the employer – learn how at Quintessential Careers and job-hunt.org.
• Check out the company’s to website assess its commitment to diversity and inclusion
• Connect with the company’s diversity offices, recruitment programs and employee resource groups
• Network with industry-related professional associations that represent people of diverse backgrounds

Using these strategies can help you identify employment opportunities, determine your fit with the corporate culture, secure interviews, and increase your chances of getting hired.  

* How do credible publications chose which companies are the best employers?  Robert Bard, publisher of LATINA Style Magazine says that, “to select the annual list of 50 Top Companies for Latinas, we use  an extensive and transparent process listed on our website including a 140 question comprehensive survey (developed with the assistance of Catalyst, Working Mother Magazine, U.S. Census, Department of Labor and EEOC), conduct confidential interviews with Latina employees, verify applicant submissions through additional research and an outside review committee. It is a combination of many factors, not just a human resources issue; diversity must translate into all areas of a corporation.” 

Bard adds that, “We go to extreme lengths to insure that the Latina Style 50 is unimpeachable.  A company cannot buy its way onto the list. The majority of companies that are selected have never advertised with LATINA Style Magazine.” 

Posted by Murray A. Mann; cross-posted on Diversity Intelligence

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Your job interview is going just as you envisioned and prepared for. You think you’ve nailed it. Then you’re blindsided with an illegal, inappropriate, or offensive question.  Minorities, women, people with disabilities, and immigrants are more likely to encounter this dilemma.  

So what do you do if it happens to you? 

We recommend reading Emily Sanderson’s detailed post How to Answer Questionable Questions in a Job Interview. “Whether the question is legal or not, you still might have an incentive to answer it,” says Bill Coleman, senior vice president and chief compensation officer at Salary.com. . .”  

What if you believe that this is not a totally insensitive, discriminatory interviewer, but that the person slipped up in the phrasing of the question? Perhaps you are truly interested in this company, and feel that the interviewer’s insensitivity or inappropriateness may not be representative of the employer as a whole. On the other hand, you may believe that the interview does reflect the company’s treatment of people of different backgrounds.

This delicate situation becomes a real balancing act. We recommend that you choose to address these questions in a manner that supports your best interest in securing a job that fits your values and goals.  

While you can’t control the questions that are asked, you do control how you respond. Think about how you might TRIUMPH™ over illegal, inappropriate, or offensive questions by using the simple options below.

Take a step back; evaluate the question and the situation.

Respond to the question directly.

Identify the intent behind the question and respond indirectly with an answer that relates to the requirements of the position.

Upstage and ignore the question by redirecting the conversation.

Mention the error diplomatically.

Politely refuse to answer the question.

Hit the road. Gracefully and professionally excuse yourself.

To see examples for implementing the TRIUMPH™ strategy go to Diversity Intelligence . Posted by Murray A. Mann

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During Women’s Histrory Month, Single Ma, author of Fabulous Financials “the journey of a fabulous single mom pursuing financial independence,” wrote a wonderful series on career management and about what it means to be a professional woman.

The full series includes:

Part I: The Professional Woman

Part II: The Myth of Having it All and Being Assertive

Part III: Leadership Styles (participative vs. command & control)

Part IV: Developing Relationships (networking and mentoring)

Part V: Summary and Recommended Reading

We contributed to the discussion with some suggestions we included in the Career Management Alliance article, A Mentorship Roadmap For Your Clients. While mentoring is beneficial for everyone at all levels of the career continuum, research confirms that a strong core of advisors and mentors is more crucial for youth, women, people with disabilities and multicultural careerists. Mentors in your career board of directors can include:

• Formal and informal mentors
• Males and females
• From your ethnic group and other ethnic backgrounds
• Leaders in your company and industry
• Experts from cross-functional segments in your organization
• Peers or others with specialized skills and experiences that will be helpful to you
• Individuals, company based employee resource/affinity groups and external professional associations
• Formal company mentorship programs.
• Industry peers from outside your company.
• Knowledge experts.
• Academics
• Career, workplace, and life coaches. 

Remember to give back to your mentors and pay it forward by helping others achieve their career goals.

Posted by Murray A. Mann

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