Career Management Alliance Blog

No, I’m not referring to how you feel first thing Monday morning, nor to the feeling of sleepwalking through a job you’re bored with.  I’m using Marci Alboher’s term for people who work fully or partially from home and often feel overwhelmed by trying to establish a boundary between work time and personal or off-work time.

While working from home offers many conveniences and satisfactions, there are also endless temptations: to extend the work day; to interrupt personal or family time to send the forgotten email; or when fatigued to “rest” by surfing the web rather than take a real break.  Personally, I know I’m caught in the blur when I find myself eating at my desk or answering the siren call of my email inbox when I’ve signed off for the day.

One of many admonitions warning us about practices such as these comes from new brain physiology findings.  Two discoveries are particularly relevant.  1) Insights, or those creative “ah-ha’s” that can elevate our work from ordinary to extraordinary, tend to occur when the brain stops thinking, or when it’s at rest.  2) When an idea is accompanied by a sensation of pleasure it generates more “brain power” than when accompanied by a neutral or negative (e.g.fatigued or blurry) sensation.

So it behooves us to do what we can to place some markers around the time we dedicate to work. Here are a few suggestions culled from colleagues and online sources.

• Set an alarm for a 10-minute warning prior to ending a work session
• Keep to-do lists for personal and work items on separate colored paper
• Take a walk around the block at least once during your work day.  Physical activity helps clear up the blur!
• Plan your day in 30-minute segments.  Assign a time limit for each work task, and set a timer.  If you run over, at least you’ll do it consciously!
• Attach electric volts to your computer chair, set to fire at the designated end of your work day.  (Thanks to Gina Trapani, in her interview with M. Alboher)

Here’s a weekly column devoted to work life balance for people working at home.  For those of you wrestling with blurry work lives, what solutions have you found?  We’d love to hear your suggestions.

Nina Ham

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According to MSNBC, “Americans hate their jobs more than ever before in the past 20 years, with fewer than half saying they are satisfied.” Since the average American will spend, conservatively, 95,000 hours in the workplace, I want you to have some say as to whether that is a sentence or a reward.

Many people stumble into a career. Some because they followed well-intentioned advice of family members or friends. Others misinterpreted web resources like assessment instruments which purport to match you with the right field. As the numbers show, that approach fails much too often.

What can you do to improve the odds? While there’s no quick, universal fix, let me suggest a way to narrow the search. Your goal is to find the right career field for you – as you define “right.” The key is getting the right answer to this very penetrating question: What must I do in any career field to be acknowledged as the very best—by my boss, by my internal and external customers, by my peers, and by myself?

Too often, answers inadvertently miss the mark by a wide margin. Lists of traits don’t count. You are probably already a “hard working people-person with strong communication skills and a great work ethic.” Congratulations! Those are the minimum standards. Nobody would hire anybody who didn’t practice all those traits.Responsibilities don’t count either. It’s not what you are responsible for; it’s how you move your company and its customers forward.

Results get closer, but they miss the mark. I won’t hire you for things you did in the past. I will hire you if I think the way you got those results demonstrates skills I need to grow my organization. Think of the question this way: What could you see the very best in this field do that sets her apart?

Here’s a very basic example. Consider a recent college grad with a degree in criminal justice. He wants to be a cop. He dutifully checks announcements posted on metropolitan websites. They all read about the same. A cop must understand the law, know how to investigate crimes, interrogate suspects, use weapons and the like.  

Now suppose he sought out the best in law enforcement in the nation. These professionals are keynote speakers at major conferences. They write the articles and books. They are nearly revered in their industry. If our grad asked someone like that, and pushed hard, he will get the right answer.That right answer might look something like this: “If you are willing to lay down your life for your partner without hesitation, you’re a great cop! If you won’t—I will not ride with you. . .ever!”

Our grad will never see that on any announcement. He may not even hear it in an interview. But it’s critical to his career success.

Now our grad has a real sense of what’s required. He may be happy someone will do that kind of thing and it’s not him. He may think, “I guess I could do that.” That’s not the right answer because it describes coping with the work. If he thinks “That’s made for me! Turn me loose!” he’s demonstrating passion that will help him succeed in a lifetime career.

There’s obviously more to the search than this brief post described. But here’s the key point: you must ask the best in the industry and you must push beyond the initial answers you get. If you love what you must be seen doing in a given career field to be acknowledged as the best, you have a rewarding career in front of you. Anything else is decidedly second best.

Posted by Don Orlando

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It’s hard to believe, but in a few weeks, September rolls around and that means “International Update Your Resume Month.” An initiative spearheaded by Career Directors International (CDI) meant to promote awareness about the importance of having an updated resume ready.

So why this post about updating your resume in August?

For starters, it takes time to get organized. Whether you write or update your resume yourself or have it done professionally, you’d be surprised how long it could take.

If you currently don’t have a well-constructed, powerful resume and you know you should do a complete overhaul, plan ahead. I can’t tell you how long you will need to write it yourself, but I often hear clients (after they decide to outsource this task) complain that it took them forever.

If you go the professional route, keep in mind that most good resume writers don’t churn out resumes overnight. If you’re looking for a quality service and resume, count on a turnaround time of 2-4 weeks. This does not include the time you need to compile the necessary information your resume writer needs, the phone or in-person session you will have with your writer, and editing time at the end of the process.

All in all, you could be looking at 1-2 months from beginning to end.

If you do have an already strong resume on file, the update will be quicker of course, especially if you plan to stay in the same field and if you do it yourself. Resume writers may offer a faster turnaround for updates-only; this depends.

Throughout the year, I am contacted by people who need a resume created for them, well, preferably… “yesterday.” They didn’t think they’d need to have one ready because they’re in a great job right now. But low and behold, they are approached by someone with an even better offer and they need to produce a resume.

Or, they find themselves, overnight, in an industry in distress. (Who would’ve thought a year ago that Wall Street would be in trouble?) Of course, on the less-dramatic side, your company could simply be going through a time of downsizing due to an acquisition, bad financial results, etc.

Fortune favors the prepared mind (Darwin), and this is particularly true when it comes to the job market.

Here’s how to get prepared - either for your do-it-yourself resume project or for your collaboration with a professional. You may want to start a special file for this purpose

- Keep track of your accomplishments throughout the year. Did you initiate or work on a special project? Did you achieve something special? Surpass goals? Save time or money? Gain clients? Go above and beyond? Be specific and quantify your results as much as possible.

- List conference, training, and seminar attendance.

- Save thank-you notes and other testimonials you receive from internal or external clients, colleagues, supervisors, etc.

- If you finished your education or obtained a certification, make sure to add it to your file.

- Did you obtain new skills? Create a list.

- Any awards or honors you received should be mentioned as well.

Sounds like a lot of work? The good news: This information is also very handy when it comes time for your annual evaluation and salary raise negotiation, so you’re killing 2 birds with 1 stone here!

Good luck!

Posted by Ilona Vanderwoude

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In order to have career fulfillment, “Follow your passion!” is advice you’ve probably heard more than once.  But what does it mean, and how reliable is it, really?

For those of you who have been around the track a few times, you may cast a jaundiced eye on the up and down roller coaster associated with passion.  You may be wondering where the power to sustain a vital relationship comes from at this point in life, whether that relationship is with your career or a partner.

Let’s introduce the power of purpose.  Dave Corbett, author of Portfolio Life: The New Path to Work, Purpose and Passion after 50, writes about the radical shift we can make in facing the challenge of longevity: discovering the deep sources of happiness, fulfillment and sense of purpose that we want our work to serve.  As we age we tend to no longer need work to define our worth. We’re now free to turn our attention to other questions.  What gifts and interests do we want to develop?  What kind of contribution or legacy do we want to leave?  What new challenges do we want to set for ourselves?

I often recommend to my career search clients that they spend some time creating a professional mission statement, as a useful way to begin to identify their purpose.  Keeping in mind that the process can evolve, taking as long as needed and responding to changing life circumstances, here are two suggestions for getting started:

1. Dedicate a 1/2 hour 3x/week for 2 weeks to answering the question, What’s the “why” behind everything I do?  Delving as deeply as you can, and starting with specific activities, build up a list of responses, or “whys”.  Then look at that list for common threads, or underlying “whys”.

Examples might be “to solve problems”, “or “to make others happy”.  In this way you’re looking to your actions to illuminate your purpose.  You may even be led to the discovery that your actions are often far afield from what you can embrace as purpose, in which case you have some choices to make.

2.  Keep a running log of the things that give you the most joy.  It’s a simple truth that the things that bring you the most joy are probably the things that reflect your sense of purpose.

A final word.   Let the investigation of your purpose take you where it takes you, and become as large as it becomes.  In a certain sense you don’t get to choose your purpose or vote on it.  It is what it is.   You can also be confident that if it’s your true purpose, you have within you the power to live it, even if you don’t yet know how. 

Nina Ham

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I don’t know about you, but for a lot of people the notion of success, as it relates to them, remains one of those vague topics that hovers on the edge of consciousness.  In my opinion, what a pity!  A vast source of energy, focus, motivation,  and inspiration remains untapped as long as we don’t have a crystal-clear personal definition of success that illuminates what we’re striving for, what’s ultimately important to us, in our careers and beyond.

How do we arrive at that personal definition of success?  Mel Robbins, on Donny Deutsch’s The Big Idea blog, has a great suggestion for creating clarity and focus on a day-to-day basis.   She suggests approaching any task, big or small, with a question - “what would being successful at this look like or feel like?” - and then acting the part!

If being a marathon runner is part of your dream of success, don’t wait until you’re in better condition or have more time or have updated your iPod.  Think of yourself as a marathon runner today, and eat, exercise, motivate yourself accordingly.  Before long that series of little things will add up and you will be a marathon runner.  This is just logic….No miracle necessary!

After years of being perplexed by the number of people who wanted to feel successful but couldn’t create a picture of what that would look like, I created a game to help.  Players are guided to create their personal big-picture vision and formulate it in concrete terms to complete the sentence, “I know I’m successful when….”

One of the most satisfying experiences for me as Game Facilitator is the moment when someone recognizes that s/he is already living significant portions of their vision.   Chances are, they got there by creating the small building blocks Ms. Robbins describes, acting the part of “successful” on a daily basis.

So whether you come to your success vision from day-to-day experience or by devoting some time to creating a big-picture vision, please recognize the vein of gold - fuel for you endeavors, a compass for important decisions and transitions - that you tap into when you “furnish” your personal success vision with the details of your aspirations, dreams, gifts and values.

To your success!   Nina Ham

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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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The world is full of bad managers and while some are totally unredeemable, the fact is many bad mangers, sincere and decent as they may be, simply do not understand some basic principles.  As a result they often create as many or even more problems than they set out to solve, simply because they are inept at managing people.  Consequently, if you are one of those managers who do not understand why so many people hate you, this column is dedicated to you.

Probably the first and most important lesson is: do not over manage.  Sometimes referred to as micromanagement, this tendency to track assignments every step of the way can be infuriating to people who would like to exhibit some creativity and independence, knowing full well the importance of meeting the end goals of the project or program.  The downside, of course, is that it can breed distrust and resentment in the employees, who not only have to worry about getting the project done, but now wonder if every step is going to be reviewed and criticized.

Trust is a critical component in team building.  A good manager wants employees to speak up openly and honestly.  Managers cannot succeed unless employees share some common vision.  Therefore, the good manager knows when to back off and when to get involved.  Managers must be a resource to keep things moving and make sure the components of the team are integrated.  But it is essential that the team members have the freedom to perform their jobs without fear.

Many managers sometimes forget the importance of recognition and two-way communication.  I certainly do not recommend a daily awards ceremony, but employees want to know that they are doing a good job.  They also want to know if they are straying off the path.  Good employees will generally solicit feedback as a way to keep the manager up to date and to ensure they are moving forward properly.  The class of managers who believe that breeding insecurity and fear as a motivator are wrong.  They are setting themselves up for failure.  The better way is to maintain good lines of communication, provide constructive feedback when solicited or deemed essential, and provide recognition as positive reinforcement when warranted.

Do not ignore employee ideas and suggestions.  Employees who deal with the day-to-problems of meeting schedules and benchmarks generally have a good idea on how to make their jobs better.  This simple idea is the key to Toyota’s success. 

But there is another important reason to give employee suggestions a fair hearing.

Many savvy employees understand and can see when a supervisor is heading for trouble with the bosses.  Loyal employees will try to give warning.  If the manager has created an environment in which ideas and suggestions are treated with indifference, there can come a day of retribution, as employees watch bosses disintegrate before their eyes.  In this high pressure environment in the world of work, this happens all too frequently.

I also want to mention a cancer that can do serious damage to the organization.  That is the situation in which the supervisor intentionally ignores unacceptable behavior.  I call this a cancer because bad behavior that is tolerated can send a very bad message to the group.  If people believe that the perpetrator is a favorite this can poison the team.  People may think that anything goes and begin to slide in performance or personal behavior.  But most importantly, undisciplined bad behavior can ruin the pride and professionalism of the group.  Eventually, depending on the seriousness, it can reach the attention of senior management with dire consequences.

I understand the importance of feeling that you are a meaningful member of the team.  It is essential to be treated with respect and recognition that you have intelligence, talent and commitment to getting the job done.  That means a command style, the do it because I say so style of management is so counter productive.  Granted, explanation cannot go on forever, but good managers know their employees want to be given some credit for understanding why decision are being made.  Honesty and candor are essential.

  Judit Price

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