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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Is using a social networking site during your job search really networking?

Not according to this post from The Pongo Blog.

Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and others are great tools to help you keep in touch with your friends and get introduced to new contacts, but they don’t substitute for face-to-face and over-the-phone networking.

Sorry, introverts!

I agree with the post that it’s easy to believe that we as job seekers are networking when we are merely engaging in brief interactions with strangers. It may be fun, it may be amusing, and we may be meeting all kinds of interesting people, but these people are not the ones who are going to think of us and contact us when they hear about a job.

Cultivating and maintaining a network of people who are going to rely on one another for important things, like referring job leads, still requires personal contact. We build trust with people after we’ve seen their faces and/or heard their voices.

If you found out about a great job opening in a different field from yours, wouldn’t you think of the people you know personally before moving on to the people you’ve met online?

Social networking sites are great places to find out about restaurants, what your friends are up to, what’s happening at a certain company, and who might be hiring. They can be excellent tools to help you secure an introduction to someone you’d like to meet.

But the way to effectively work your network as a job seeker remains decidedly low-tech.

Am I just a GenX fuddy-duddy on this issue, or what? Please let me know your thoughts.

Posted by Heather Mundell

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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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I review websites of staffing companies daily.  I also talk to executives about incorporating targeted networking strategies in their job search.  During those conversations, I find that career seekers draw different conclusions about executive search firms that sometimes are not accurate.

I ran across an article that accurately explained why the search profession has grown so much and the benefit to people looking for new work.

Why Has The Executive Search Profession Grown So Extensively? 

The predominant reason is today’s maturing of management as a professional function. This development brought about a realization that the success of an organization depends largely on the quality and performance of its people.

The organization with the best executives is most likely to move ahead of its competitors. Therefore, ways had to be found to develop the best from within and recruit the best from outside.

The gradual understanding that executive search firms are the main means of bringing about better utilization of scarce executive talent has been seen and endorsed by many successful businesses.

There is no way that a frustrated executive can advertise his desire for a bigger job that does not exist for him in his present organization. Nor can companies and other organizations usually broadcast their confidential executive requirements. Search firms become the much needed instrument for bringing under-utilized executives into organizations in which their talents could be more effectively applied.

Confidentiality; the organization may not want a decision or strategy to be known either internally or within the business community. Under those circumstances a third party must do the searching, protecting the identity of the organization.

The cost of errors in executive selection has become increasingly evident. The impact of a wrong match will effect an organization in many ways. These events lead to the importance of professional assistance in finding The Right Match ® for the organization.

The ability to thoroughly search out the very best candidates regardless of where they may be or how invisible they are. The infrastructure and experience required to evaluate more than a hundred prospective candidates and select the two or three who would be the best performers. Counseling the organization on handling candidates from the first telephone contact through the interviews and continuing until the executive is in place. The especially useful role of a professional third party in negotiations between organization and candidate that are often difficult and complex. The special abilities needed to conduct confidential and delicate inquires into the candidate’s qualifications and reputation in a way that will not create embarrassment for anyone yet leave no stone unturned. The ability to counsel the selected candidate in extricating himself smoothly from his present organization and community and in establishing himself in his new position. The ability to smooth out any problems for either the organization or the new executive during the beginning phase of their new relationship. By maintaining a constant vigil for the best talent and clients, and to bring that creative power to all. Truly successful search firms specialize in an industry function or market niche. Generalists do not succeed as well because of the continued time expense of relearning each company or technology, etc.

posted by Jim McFarland

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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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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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CareerXRoads recently released their 7th annual Source of Hire whitepaper. The whitepaper examines how 300,000 new employees were sourced in 2007. Close to 30% of all new hires were sourced through referrals from existing employees, vendors, and alumni. According to the results of the survey, referrals are the #1 method for finding external hires and every third referral turned into a hire. This is just more proof of the importance of building a robust network as part of your career management strategy. Read more about the survey here.

Posted by Barbara Safani 

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I just returned from a professional organization lunch and was struck with a title for a sure-fire best-seller: How to get as little as possible from you professional organization memberships!

1. Arrive just in time to eat and rush off before the speaker even finishes. This lets everyone realize how busy you are and that the idea of speaking with you is just not feasible.

2. Only sit with members of your own company - even if this means saving seats for people that never show. The last thing you want to do is give the impression that you are open to new ideas and viewpoints.

3. Never have business cards with you since that might give the impression you welcome the chance to enlarge your network. As if you don’t have enough needy people in your rolodex….

4. Take calls during lunch and step out to make a call when the speaker starts. Why make people think you are so un-important you can actually sit for an hour?

5. Never get to know the officers - this might give the impression you want to be involved.

Follow these rules precisely and you, too, can complain how unbeneficial your membership dues are.

Faith Sheaffer-Thornberry

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Every 25 days or so, I get an email from a professional contact I have never met and with whom I had only a brief professional relationship in 2006. His emails often start out with “Hi Jean, how the hell are you?” and he follows up with a one- or two-sentence update that is either professional or personal or both. I can usually count on a crack about his mother-in-law.

It turns out I love these emails! They aren’t looking to sell me anything, ask me anything serious, or do anything in particular at all. They make me happy. They make me laugh. They make me feel connected. And if I were looking for a job, he’d be one of the first people I’d call!

So this guy is part of my network. I’ll bet he nurtures a network comprised of a great many people. I’ll also bet that he sets up his Outlook to alert him every few weeks that it is time to dash off a quick email to Jean. This is an old-fashioned (but still great) way to network.

How about using one of the newer networking tools defining people’s interactions? According to Fortune Magazine’s Josh Quittner: “Facebook’s got Google running scared.” Why? Facebook is turning the World Wide Web open-to-everything model on its head. He dubs this new direction the Innernet.

Quittner says that Facebook enables you to put boundaries around your own personal network (and thus control who sees what about your online identity). It give you a place “…where you exercise almost absolute control, showing the world only as much of your true self as you care to while protecting you and yours from the evil that lurks on the wider web, from spam artists to identity thieves. Whoever builds that walled garden stands to make the next great Internet fortune.”

The upshot? Whether you use one of the social or professional networking sites or use a simple mail or phone call approach, if you have a job now or ever want to have one, feed and care for your network(s)! With networking accounting for ~80% of new hires, jump on the Innernet bandwagon now - and keep on networking!

Posted by Jean Cummings

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Carmine Gallo, contributor to BusinessWeek and a communications coach and author, recently reiterated his compelling suggestion that “the most exciting business ideas fit on the back of an airplane napkin.” How does this relate to career changers, job seekers, and career professionals? Let’s compare the vision to the brand…

The vision can be compared to a clearly articulated branding statement that appears at the top of your resume and on the tip of your tongue. Gallo makes the point that a vision is not a mission statement. The mission statement resembles a narrative profile; both may use too many words and can be lost on the “About” page of a a web site. Yet the vision statement is economical: it is “simple, memorable, and concise.”Some examples of “concise, profound visions:”

1. Larry Page & Segey Brin’s vision: “Google provides access to the world’s information in one click.”
2. John Chambers: “Cisco changes the way we live, work, play and learn.”
3. Bill Gates & his father to Steve Ballmer: “MS is going to put a computer on every desk in every home”
4. Doug Ducey, projected that: “Cold Stone Creamery would become the ultimate ice cream experience”

Articulate your brand with similar verbal enthusiasm; try to create a kinetic or visual image; make it clear that your brand delivers ROI. Be sure that your statement is the “hook” that enables you to tell the rest of your story in a way that encourages others to join the brand-wagon. If you tell it, they will embrace it.

Posted by Karen P. Katz 

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