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Driving Your Own Career

Jul 11th, 2009 by Dilip Saraf

“You don’t know how far you can you until you go too far”-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Most professionals believe that their manager has the responsibility for advancing their career! In fact some are under the illusion that their managers often lie awake at night wondering about how to promote their employees’ careers and how to make worth their while!

Nothing could be further from the truth!

Most employees (about 80% of them!) let their careers “happen” to them. This attitude of surrender or resignation occurs early in life. Their parents tell them what they should pursue; their neighbors influence them to think about what they missed out on; their professors inveigle them to pursue an exciting research idea, and so on. As a result many undertake a path in their careers which might be different if they had spent some time contemplating about how to pick the right path and what really excited them.

It is often true that early in life such insight may be difficult to get. Those who are lucky enough to have such insights and have the conviction of their beliefs about what they want to do when they grow up often make their dream a reality by their perseverance and by their hard work. But, what about the remaining 80% who resign themselves to be led in their careers by their fate, their destiny, and the vagaries of those in the immediate clutch of others?

It is not as hopeless as it may sound. Why? Opportunities abound at any time and many are there just for the asking. The fact is that most do not feel compelled to see the opportunity that is not manifest, take some risk, and follow their own will to own it. In any organization there are many opportunities that lay dormant because no one either sees them or that they do not have the courage to take their ownership to lead them to fruition. Most wait for their managers to present just one such opportunity as a gift as they await its arrival! With this approach you are controlled by the politics of the place, organizational vagaries, and managing your perception at levels that matter.

Managing perception is one of most challenging factors in one’s career. This includes not just merely doing great work, which is a prerequisite to moving ahead, but also how others perceive what you have done and are doing. Most assume that if they do good, honest work, people around them will take notice and remember their contributions. Alas, it does not always work this way in organizations, where people foist their agendas and cut down others who get in their way. Managing perception entails managing upwards and downward how other perceive what you do. This takes work and diligent effort.

Much of this can be trumped if you seize a compelling opportunity, make a case for it in the right circles, and show leadership in how you can shepherd it to take the organization in a different or new direction. Such initiative, regardless of its ultimate success, can propel a career to far greater heights more quickly than the endless politicking, posturing, perception managing, and making yourself visible.

So, to summarize my mantra for career advancement, the following list may help the self-initiated put their career in high gear:

  1. Identify what your next career stop is and find out what requirements must be met to claim that position. Proactively ask for assignments that provide you the opportunity for these skills.
  2. Prepare your resume ahead of time for the promotion you are seeking and find out how you can get such assignments under your belt. Don’t wait; ask!
  3. Uncover what is not happening and what the customer is experiencing. Do not wait for marketing or for the results of the latest survey to glean this information. Go out and talk to the customers, even though you may be someone far removed from such experiences.
  4. Propose a project or an initiative that will bring about the right change and transform the customer experience. Lead the effort, and, when completed, send out an announcement stating what you have achieved.
  5. Collaborate with upper management and work with those around you to flesh out what needs to be done that will change the status quo.
  6. Team up with others and see their help in improving things and give them credit for their initiative and help.
  7. Check your own market value by updating your resume and responding to jobs that are a step up
  8. Attend shows, conferences, and trade events to make yourself visible. Promote your brand relentlessly.
  9. Work on a time table for your advancement and let your boss know what you are seeking. It is amazing that simply stating what you desire and working towards it can get you what you are after.
  10. Help those below you to advance as you want to be helped in your own advancement. The law of good karma works universally!

Career advancement is NOT a mystery. You can drive your own career to destinations that you choose!

Good luck!

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Why Just Your Raw IQ Does Not Cut It Anymore?!

Jul 10th, 2009 by Dilip Saraf

When we were growing-up your intelligence (IQ) was your main asset: Your parents touted you for how much smarter you were than your siblings, in spite of the fact that this invidious comparison rubbed your siblings the wrong way and that they resented you for it; in school you were the first to raise your hand when the teacher threw a curveball question to the kids. This sense of superiority about yourself lasts as long as the role the IQ plays in what you do counts more than anything else. School work and getting your degree with top grades directly relate to your IQ scores. In fact, the correlation between high IQ and good grades is over 95%!

But, wait! What happens to these Mensa kids after they enter their careers and start earning a living based on their natural gift? Studies have shown that despite the high correlation between IQ and grades the correlation between IQ and success or even achievement is much lower—20%!

Why is that?

As you come in contact with the realities of living, other “Intelligences” increasingly play a greater role in your success. There are five different intelligences that go in shaping a person’s ability to deal with life’s challenges:

  1. Raw Intelligence (IQ)
  2. Emotional Intelligence (EQ)
  3. Political Intelligence (PQ)
  4. Cultural Intelligence (CQ)
  5. Contextual Intelligence (XQ)

In the scheme of things each factor contributes about equally to how we successfully deal with our own challenges. Now it is easy to see why the correlation between success in life and your IQ is about 20%!

Let’s briefly discuss each one.

1. Raw Intelligence (IQ): This is our divine—natural—gift and we are born with it. No amount of efforts you expend after your birth will help you improve your IQ. This is why it is so much harder to compete with anyone in matters that require superior intellect, no matter how hard you try. Academic and analytic problems need application of raw intelligence to their resolution. This is why highly intelligent and gifted individuals migrate to academia.

2. Emotional Intelligence (EQ): This intelligence is a nurtured quality. It has to do with how you relate to other human beings, not things (as IQ does). EQ itself has five components: Awareness of self, Self control, Motivation, Empathy, and Communication. Each of these attributes can be learned in dealing with others. Since success in life depends on your ability to getting things done through others EQ become increasingly an important factor in your success as you start relaying on cooperation from others for your achievements. This is not the case in school, where you alone could do the test or your homework using your raw intelligence.

3. Political Intelligence (PQ): This element is driven by how “politic” you are in dealing with others and in protecting their agendas. Politic means shrewd; if you show shrewdness in managing, contriving, or dealing with matters on hand when teaming with others you have high PQ. In the corporate world PQ plays a major role in how you move in the right circles.

4. Cultural Intelligence (CQ): This intelligence comes from being aware of how different cultures and those who come from them deal with each other with other cultures. In the increasingly global economy high cultural intelligence has become a main requirement for business success. In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell cites stories of planes crashing because the crew did not have enough understanding of cultural differences between how the language exchange took place between the pilot and the control tower and among the crew members themselves.

5. Contextual Intelligence (XQ): Contextual Intelligence is an integrating quality that prompts you to know which intelligence is germane in what situation. XQ allows you to use the right “intelligence” in a given situation to create the desired outcome. It is often context-based and is a learned skill, as are the preceding four counterparts.

Now that you know the relative importance of IQ in dealing with your life’s challenges I hope that you ease up on yourself because of your moderate IQ and focus on working on the other four to get to where you want to go!

Good luck!

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Giving Advice; Making it Work!

Jul 10th, 2009 by Dilip Saraf

“Advice is like snow — the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind.” – Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The other day a client from Japan called for some advice: As a project manager he was responsible for delivering some products to an important customer. He had a team assigned to him on this project, but none of the members of this team reported to him; each member merely did their part (as they did for others like him) and he assembled the final output for delivery to the customer to create the right outcome (experience.)

One of his team member had been rebellious and was singing his own tune, often missing deadlines, ignoring my client’s requests to get things done, and was being disrespectful to the customer. My client was frustrated because he did not have direct authority over this rebel and he did not know what to do about his errant ways. It was affecting the overall team morale, delaying the project, and creating customer-relationship problems. The obvious response would have been to go to the rebel’s boss and complain about his disruptive habits and to bring his behavior in line. Although this approach would have been most tempting I steered him away from it!

Why?

Complaining to the errant team member’s boss to bring him in line with other team members might backfire. If the boss thought highly of this team member (he did, we found out) because of how smart he was, then the complaint may reflect poorly on my client’s inability to properly manage someone who was otherwise valuable and smart. The dire consequence of the rebel finding out that my client complained against him to his boss may cause him to lose face (in that culture, a very important aspect of their life) and may result in some negative consequences to my client (such as ratcheting up the negative behavior), exacerbating the situation.

So, I suggested to my client to have a face-to-face meeting with this team member immediately following an adverse episode. I suggested to my client that he should discuss with the errant team member that he had much to offer and that he was smart. My client further suggested to this team member that he could increase his value to the team by changing some of his behaviors. At this point I asked my client to become very specific about the behaviors that needed changing. I cautioned him to not personalize his observations (“you always come late to my meetings.”) but to present them to the team member in such a way that he himself could benefit from the changed behaviors (“If you are there when we start our meetings you’ll be able to talk to others and get the clarity when an issue is raised.”) He further plied the team member with a reward that if he saw the change, that he would personally write to the team member’s boss acknowledging his valuable role on the team!

Well, that did the trick! The team member immediately took to heart the feedback and started changing how he responded to the needs of the team and to the commitments my clients had made to his customers. If this change continues in this direction my client plans to write a memo to the team member’s boss acknowledging his outstanding contributions to the team’s project.

So, what is the lesson here? The most important one is that we often fail to look at how a person may be motivated to change their behavior if we present them with the right options. A querulous approach may give you instant gratification, but will not solve your problem, even make it worse! Most people want to be useful and to do a good job. They just need to be reminded of what is in their best interest and how that will serve YOU!

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Your Resume and the Truth

Jul 9th, 2009 by Dilip Saraf

It is better to sleep on things beforehand than to lie awake about them

afterwards. -Baltasar Gracian, philosopher and writer (1601-1658)

As a career coach I routinely work with clients to make their resumes more presentable. In the process I am often surprised by the number of clients who want to misstate facts or who want to present an outright lie.

Having worked with over 3,500 clients I can say with some experience that those who are tempted to misstate facts are tempted by their desire to match what the job descriptions asks for that they cannot provide. Most common temptations are previous job titles, accomplishments, and oh, the mother of them all, college degrees!

What most do not realize is that checking facts is easy in this Googlized world! Also, people you do not even suspect as possibly fact providers can be working at your prospect employer and they can quickly spot a phony. What most do not realize is that telling truth in ways that serves a situation is far more valuable to you than lying about it in ways that can be a gottcha later! Despite this, nearly 40% of applicants lie on their resumes. And, this goes all the way up to the CEO resumes. Who can forget how Radio Shack had to fire its CEO a few years back because he had lied on his resume. Stories of high-level cheats abound in the corporate world!

It is much easier to state the facts and get in for an interview than to spend sleepless nights wondering about when you are going to get caught in your new job for having lied on your resume, as the quote at the head of this blog admonishes.

In one case, a client of mine brought me a job opening at a major defense contractor. The job required a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering and at least 10 years’ experience. My client had a stellar record in all the areas that they had listed in the job description, except that he only had the Master’s degree (from Stanford!). So, he sheepishly told me that he was going to put that he had a Ph.D. from Stanford and send his response, despite my admonition that such things could be easily checked.

He came back the next day and agreed that it would be wrong to do this and that if he were caught (I guaranteed it!) that would be a black mark against him or worse! So, he asked how he could get through the computerized screening process without meeting the job requirements. I suggested to him that the computer was going to look for a “Ph.D. in the resume under “Education,” so why not state the degree he already had and write “no Ph.D.” He liked the idea and we submitted his response with the truthful resume and a cover letter that highlighted why he would be a great candidate!

Viola!

He got a call for a telephone interview and soon he was invited to a round of interviews. Not once was he asked about his not having a Ph.D. during the interviews. He ended up not getting the job, not because he was not qualified, but because he was not able to qualify for the rigors of the screening process for his security clearance, which this job required.

The moral of the story: Avoid any lies on your resume. It is easy to catch them. Instead, tell the truth in ways that positions you favorably and sleep well at night!

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Positioning Yourself Correctly for an Interview

Jul 8th, 2009 by Dilip Saraf

A senior software engineer, who has been a high-level architect for several years and with nearly 20 years’ experience, came to me the other day with a frustrated look and an angry tone. He was complaining about how upstart engineers at prospect employer companies put him through a demeaning mill of interviews asking questions about syntax propriety and errors in a line Java code.

Asked why he let himself be subjected to such demeaning process, where he should been asked high-level questions about how to create customer value and how to create more user-friendly architectures, by those who deal with such issues at the employer’s place, he shook his head and said he could not help it. “They just walk in and start firing questions just glancing at my resume as it lays there on the table in front of me and them. How can I steer them away from such inane questions? How can I get them to really appreciate what I can do for them and for their customers? ”

Good question!

When I looked at his resume I could immediately see why he was positioned that way and why he was letting it happen to himself, despite his best intentions. His resume started with a Career Objective that said he wanted to be a Staff Engineer responsible of platform architectures (much like creating a new-model automobile, to steal a metaphor). Immediately following that statement he wrote, in details, about his technical skills that is an alphabet soup of different software languages, operating systems, tools, and such arcana. He then followed that with his detailed task-focused chronology of assignments, as most do in their resumes. This was yet another place where you found the alphabet soup, in full sentences, this time around.

Herein lay the problem. By positioning himself as a hands-on technical front-liner he had exposed himself to be asked questions by inexperienced engineers who did not really understand what he delivered through novel architectures and new platforms that created new and unprecedented value for those who appreciated it. He was not a programmer or a coder, (someone who can tune a car, to continue the metaphor) that can quickly get to the syntax and find a better way to write a line of code.

So, what did I advise him?

I advised him to re-write his top part of the resume (above the fold, in newspaper lexicon) that presented his high level skills: customer knowledge, user interface design, understanding how to create business value through great software platforms, and so on. Then I asked him to modify his details of professional experience and convert that from task-driven assignments to simple stories of leadership that showed how he thinks and how he executes. We completely eliminated the alphabet soup in the narratives and left that to the end of the resume under the heading of Technical Skills, at the bottom of page-two.

Viola! In the new round of interviews immediately following his resume re-do, he was positioned very differently. He was seen first by the CTO or head of engineering and then parceled off to senior architects to vet his skills with very different set of questions. Within just three weeks this client had two very good offers that not only delighted him but made him feel valuable in the way he was interviewed.

See how easy it is if you know how to position yourself from the get-go?

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Conquering the Lay-off Fears

Jul 8th, 2009 by Dilip Saraf

Everyone must be prepared for a layoff at any time. Going into fear because of what might happen puts you at a disadvantage and, inevitably, because of that fear, you’ll be laid off. It is often said that you become what you fear. So, if go around your place of work wearing that fear others will sense it and you’ll sign your own layoff warrant!

But, here are some strategies that you can adopt regardless of how secure you feel at your current job:

  1. Become more visible, not less, to upper management, customers, and others whose opinion counts in how they see your creating value for the company.
  2. Find out what initiatives will alleviate the pain your company is in. Suggest some ideas after trying what works and lead the charge to make the change. During difficult times everyone hunkers down, even your managers! Change the mindset and charge ahead.
  3. Identify what bullets on your current resume will strengthen your value proposition. Seek those assignments and get those accomplishments to claim them on your résumé. Even if you do not get to finish them (you get laid-off) it shows you think differently than the rest.
  4. Burnish your LinkedIn Profile and get Recommendations from customers and others who pay the bills.
  5. Target a company (preferably your competitor) and discover what their pain is. Write a one page prospect letter to the CEO and communicate how you can help them get rid of that pain.
  6. Do not waste time looking busy, instead, invest meaningful time in getting your campaign ready with a great message, strong network, and a highly targeted company list.
  7. Don’t look glum, instead smile and look confident! A positive attitude may not get you what you want, but it will annoy enough people around you to make it worth the effort!
  8. Start a blog in your area of expertise and become visible to outsiders in your space. Sign-up to participate in your company’s marketing shows.
  9. Explore where the hiring is and transform your message to align with the opportunities using your transferable skills (your genius!)
  10. Do not wait for the layoff, exit before it happens if you do what is said above (#1-9)

Good luck!!

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Combating Your Own Martyrdom!

Jul 7th, 2009 by Dilip Saraf

Suffering is not ennobling, recovery is! —Dr. Christen Bernard

As we go through our life, we face ups and downs. In most cases we deal with them as they come and learn from the lessons, dealing with them. In the process we discover ourselves. This is what makes our life meaningful; having conquered the challenges and having overcome the obstacles, becoming a better person in the process. As is said: Life is not about getting and having, but it is about being and becoming!

It is not uncommon to have a few challenges in our lives that are so daunting that they seem insurmountable; their source implacable. Often, too, these troubles seem to come in waves, also non-stop at certain times, and we have to put our “regular” life on hold, just dealing with them as they come. When this happens we often ask ourselves, “why me?”

In my profession as a career and a life coach I routinely come across clients who have faced big challenges and are finding ways to deal with them with all their resources and the new tools that I provide them so that they come on top. They, by and large, are willing to learn from others’ lessons to make them their own to accelerate their learning and to discover something about themselves in the process. This is an effective strategy for learning and for using a professional who has “been there, done that.”

However, sometimes, these clients, having seen the success and a turnaround with sound coaching, send me a friend or someone they know is suffering through their own challenges and is getting deeper in with their difficulties: a job loss followed by long periods of unemployment, followed by an addiction, culminating in an end of their relationship with their partner or their marriage. This list is long, but the pattern of these challenges that these people face is familiar; a spiraling cycle of negative events that deplete them and cause them to lose hope and to go into despair and to eventually face a blind funk that seizes them and paralyzes them!

It is often that I find these clients slowly slipping into martyrdom and making no attempts to recover from their plight, despite a clear path out of it by making a positive change in their lives to turn things around.

Why?

When a series of negative events come by our way, each one being worse than the previous, we feel naturally victimized and singled out in our plight. During such times we often look at our friends and others around us who are ostensibly “doing well” and ask ourselves what we did to deserve this fate. Often, too, our ego gets in the way of asking for a hand from those who can help us or provide us some guidance for moving forward. Our pride prevents us from taking actions that we perceive as condescending and we personalize our plight. What is needed, instead, is taking these challenges personally and moving forward.

What is the difference?

When someone takes a defeat or setback and personalizes them it means that they are finding ways that they could have avoided their fate by previously taking a different course of action, instead of the one that they took. They also indulge in  flights of speculation about what particular event must have been the tipping point in their sorry course of action that they are now facing. These speculative flights of fancy are often meaningless and do not provide any actionable way out of your ongoing and exacerbating plight.

Taking such events personally, on the other hand, means taking control of what is happening and forming a course of action to slowly overturn the cycle of events and bringing control back in your life. Since personalizing our plight does not provide any meaningful solution to our getting out of our own troubles, those in this state often resort to becoming a full-time martyr to deal with their situation. A full-time martyr is someone who is going around mouthing their troubles and seeking others’ sympathies—not actionable guidance—for their plight. They are less interested in taking positive action and trying new things, especially when it may entail condescending to lesser employment or doing things that are not “glamorous.”

The other characteristic these martyrs exhibit is that they often go around feeling sorry for themselves and only taking in the negative in any situation that they encounter. This now creates a self-defeating cycle that has only one ( of the two) way out: changing your outlook or becoming a martyr emeritus!

The lessons to be had from our difficulties include learning things that we are not comfortable with and making a change. If the change is not made in a timely way we run the risk of becoming irrelevant. Once we become irrelevant then we run the risk of losing hope of recovering what we lost through our transition, which if handled well, should make us stronger.

So, what is a course of action that one must follow to get out of our martyrdom and our difficulties and to come out on top? Here’s a list:

  1. Vision and hope: Keeping a clear vision of the success you want to create when you come out of this transition and keeping your hope to achieve that vision are key to staying positive. Sometimes, it takes more effort than anticipated because of the deteriorating economy or other forces. So, staying energized by keeping your vision in sight is important in an uncertain transition.
  2. Structure: When outside forces such a job loss, an impending negative event such a legal trial or a bankruptcy, or a divorce disrupt your fold of regular life, the best strategy is to bring back structure to your life. For example, your job, marriage, or everyday routine when things are going well provide you a certain structure and a rhythm to your life. When a disruption occurs, the best thing to do is to create a new structure and a new rhythm that helps you keep your life more predictable and managed. This goes a long way in managing yourself in many areas such a physical fitness, weight control, and mental well-being.
  3. Discipline: When there is a major disruption in your life by external forces merely having a structure will not be enough. A disciplined approach to attending to what must be done is key to progress. There will be temptations from many fronts to avoid doing the right thing and those in martyrdom surrender to “treating themselves” to unhealthy food, bad habits that provide instant gratification, and time wasters that fritter away valuable resources. A simple error in judgment repeated multiple times is what culminates into a state of affairs, which suddenly become beyond control and spiral into a vicious cycle of behaviors. This is why self-discipline is so important when things are in the tank momentarily.
  4. Self-esteem: When things start going awry, such as a job loss or financial setback, self-esteem is one of the first things that get affected. This spiraling self-esteem now spills into your everyday energy that you carry into your campaign of recovery. Not flogging yourself with your setbacks is a good strategy. Being with positive people in this state is far more conducive than being with “support groups” in which everyone else is in the same boat as you are. There, often, the race becomes between who is facing the most woes! An occasional trip to a support group can be healthy, but watch out from yourself becoming a part of a bunch of diehard martyrs!
  5. Social events: Being alone when things look gloomy can exacerbate their affect. Getting out with positive people and not dwelling on your woes is a good move. Discussion of positive topics and intellectually stimulating conversations is the best antidote for feeling down and being in a funk. “Introverted” types (INTJs, ISTJs, etc) should make a special effort to become social in tough times.
  6. Action plan: An action plan that is milestones driven is a good tool to keep in the battlefield. As long as you are able to generate meaningful action you are able to stay positive and hopeful and only you have control over how this is done, every day that you are facing your challenges. Sharing that action plan with another person in your support group can be a healthy habit.
  7. Volunteering: Working with those less fortunate is always an empowering experience. It keeps your own woes in perspective and the fact that you can help someone even less fortunate can be energizing, just when you need it.
  8. Taking time out: When things get intense and unbearable, it is often natural for us to try harder to overcome the forces. Often, it is best to just step back and reflect on what is going on and then come back to it with a fresh perspective at another time.
  9. Celebrating wins: Even in the worst of times you succeed at some thing. Pause, reflect, and celebrate these successes. Nothing is more rewarding and energizing than reassuring yourself that you can still overcome life’s little challenges on your own.
  10. Staying positive: Positive attitude is critical to coming out a winner through a tough situation. It is difficult to stay positive when things look gloomy and are falling apart for you internally. As is said, A positive attitude may not get you what you want, but it sure will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort!

Good luck!

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Seeking Change in a Tough Economy!

Jul 6th, 2009 by Dilip Saraf

The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust, novelist (1871–1922)

As the job losses mount and as the economy gets tougher, those left with having to do multiple jobs because of the cutbacks often have to face both, the survivors’ guilt and having to do the jobs of those who no longer work there, but whose tasks devolve down to the survivors! Under these conditions it is often the survivors who seek out other opportunities to start afresh and make a break from their past where they feel stuck.

This very approach breeds a vicious cycle for those seeking change, spiraling down their career momentum, often ending up having to face a lay-off themselves.

In tough times there is an alternate way to get what you want with some planning, patience, and a different outlook!

Contrary to what is apparent, an organization in tough times faces many challenges that need addressing. Normally, these challenges will not be visible to most and will not be addressed even by aggressive managers because nothing warrants addressing them. But, in tough times they can make a difference between survival and a company’s demise! With abundance of such opportunities the right approach is to initiate a change based on where the leverage is and to propose to your manager what must be done to remedy the situation. In tough times managers are willing to take greater risks to alleviate a situation than they would otherwise.

Seeking tough assignments and executing on them provides a great “laboratory” for employees to go beyond what they are normally expected to do. In tough times it is much easier to assume a license to do what it takes to make things better, much more than when everyone is doing well and spending their time politicking. Ironically, in tough time players who rely on such tactics hunker down and even disappear!

Seeking assignments that reflect your next level of responsibilities will automatically allow you to bolster your resume and, as a side benefit, protect your job because of the additional value you are creating and delivering in your otherwise routine—even mundane—job! Just two or three bullets on your current resume with such initiatives can greatly increase your prospects for a promotion outside (even inside) the company as the economy improves and as the hiring begins to ease. Most underestimate the power of this strategy because they are too busy surviving and staying under the “radar” to protect their jobs. I suggest the exact opposite, not only to protect your job but to come out ahead when you are seeking a change on your terms, moving out!

So, what are the steps to changing your perspective and to getting yourself ready even before the good times roll? Well, here is a summary:

  1. Identify the pain points for the company, not just in your own department, but anywhere there is an opportunity. Collaborate cross-functionally if you must and propose a solution to your manager or someone higher up.
  2. Clearly identify for yourself how this change will help you capture the experience needed to show your qualifications for a job at a higher level of responsibility.
  3. Show leadership in how you go about solving the problem and showing how you alleviate the company’s pain. Make sure that there are clear measurements “before” and “after,” so that you can put these on your resume without any reservations.
  4. Update your profile to reflect your new responsibilities and if you use LinkedIn (you must) get Recommendations from those who matter. A sudden surge of Recommendations in your LinkedIn Profile can raise some flags, but if you do this as a matter of practice it is less likely to raise suspicion.
  5. Remember, that even in tough times companies hire; it is just that they hire only those who create substantial value for them. So, do not be shy about approaching companies that you wish to pursue even prospectively by highlighting what you have done at your own company and what you can do for them. Generally, if you are courting a competitor this makes it even easier to make your case.
  6. Review job descriptions for position that you wish to seek and make sure that you have enough ammunition in your message (resume) to overcome possible objections for a higher-level job even without the experience of that job. Often, qualifications carry more weight that experience.
  7. Actively network and seek help from outside to meet your objectives. Develop contacts in competitor companies.
  8. Do not be shy to trumpet your success, not just your new assignments. Send success emails with copies to your chain of command to increase your visibility.
  9. Send emails thanking all those who cooperated with you on your initiatives to acknowledge their help. In so doing, you become visible yourself!
  10. Be confident, smile a lot, and do not let anyone stop you. It is amazing how well this works, especially when everyone else is worried and is wondering about if their name on the next lay-off list

Good luck!

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Cover Letter: Your Closing Argument

Jul 6th, 2009 by Dilip Saraf

Whenever I mention to my clients, who are going after open jobs, to write cover letters in their response I get incredulous looks and an insinuation that I am hopelessly out of date and impractical. Why? They have heard from many recruiters that cover letters are a waste of time because no one reads them!

Wrong!

Yes, recruiters see thousands of resumes and their job is to winnow the stack to a few and present them to the hiring manager for further action. Typically, recruiters spend from three to 20 seconds scanning a resume and then making a decision about the resume. A cover letter takes time away from this. Beside, most (90% of the applicants) do not know the real function of a cover letter and how much impact it can make in the hiring manager’s mind about your candidacy.

In all my writings about resume design I categorically state that a resume is not about you, rather, it is about how what you have to offer aligns with the job that you are pursuing. If the resume is about the job, then the cover letter must be about the company and the hiring manager’s pain!

Right on!

Most applicants, typically, summarize their credentials in the top part of the cover letter and in the bottom, they copy and paste the key attributes from the job description. The final line in the letter is typically a claim of how well-matched the two narratives are and hence their qualifications for the job!

Only a fool would fall for this trick. To make a cover letter mean anything to the reader (the hiring manager) it must have the following elements:

  1. A clear statement of what you bring to the job and why that is going to be important to the hiring manager
  2. A clear understanding of the state of the industry, the company, and the specific pain points of the department where you would be hired. How can one get all this information? If you are on top of what is going on in your own area of expertise the first two items are not that difficult to glean from the research that you can do. Now, for the specific hiring manager’s pain you must make some inferences from the available information and by talking to your network embedded in the company. All you need to make is a plausibility argument, not a forensic one!
  3. In your letter you must clearly show that you understand these three vital elements and that you will deliver on your promise to eliminate the hiring manager’s pain if they hired you. It is that simple.
  4. The entire package must be delivered to the hiring manager by some unusual means, in addition to the regular channels (responding on the company’s Website). Sending a package by US Mail or by overnight courier usually does the trick.
  5. You MUST follow-up in a week by calling the hiring manager!

A Cover letter is much like a closing argument a lawyer makes to the court before his case goes to the jury. It is the message that goes with each juror into the jury room and the one that carries most impact because of its freshness and the conviction it presents about your take on the case. Without that passion and conviction any closing argument will ring hollow!

If you are serious about a job opportunity you must send a great resume with an equally worthy cover letter and rest your case!

Good luck!

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God Makes for a Lousy Bellhop!

Jul 5th, 2009 by Dilip Saraf

The doctrine of the material efficacy of prayer reduces the Creator to a cosmic bellhop of a not very bright or reliable kind. -Herbert J. Muller, educator, historian, and author (1905–1980)

In tough economic times, as many of us are facing these days, we often pray; more than we do when things are going well for us. When times are tough for us financially, we visit our place of worship more diligently and scrounge what we can for the collection plate. We pray harder and more often for our immediate economic salvation and for rescue from our troubles. In tough times we often surrender our good sense of devising clever ways to get ourselves out of our troubles; we put our faith in getting our prayers answered, instead, while continuing ourselves on the same beaten path as we did when times were good!

Our belief that God helps us by listening to our prayers and by showing us the way in troubled times in general, not just financial, is our primordial belief! Most believe in a supreme being that has power over us all. If this is a commonly held belief for so long then why not invoke, we reason, that power to help us through our troubles?

Well, the real power to extricate ourselves in financially troubled times comes not from divine intervention that we so desperately seek, but it does from looking inwardly within our own powers! Most are not even aware that in our everyday pursuits we barely use about the tenth of our true capacity or potential. We do not, as a consequence, realize that the lion’s share of our true capability does not get utilized unless we challenge ourselves to mobilize it. Tapping into this vast reservoir of our own power takes courage, will, and determination. Instead, we resort to prayers and seek divine intervention for salvation from our mundane challenges! Then we wait patiently hoping for a miracle!

Well, this notion is misguided, if not wrong!

The reality that each one of us has far more powers and potential than we ourselves realize is captured by a famous quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s writing, which reminds us that what lies behind and ahead of us are tiny compared to what lies within us. Yet most people, when financial trouble strikes them, such as a job loss or lost fortunes dues to financial downturns, immediately put out their hand for help, or close both in prayers to seek their own salvation. In so doing they diminish themselves, not because they prayed, but because they surrendered their own unknown powers to a possibility that may never materialize, as the quote at the top of this article suggests. This is not to say that prayers are a waste; rather, praying for our own selfish reasons diminishes us all!

So what is one to do in troubled times? Well, here are a few suggestions:

  1. Reflect on what the troubles are and find the root cause of the trouble. Often we confuse our symptoms with the troubles themselves and are endlessly trying to create a symptomatic cure. In so doing, we dig ourselves deeper. Finding a root cause of your troubles takes reflective thinking, introspection, and open mind, without finding someone to blame externally.
  2. Ask yourself: What would I do differently if someone guaranteed that I would not fail. Then ask yourself why do you think that if you pursue that challenge that you would fail. By carefully analyzing each cause of potential failure you are mentally dealing with how to not make it fail. Pretty soon the undertaking may not look so daunting.
  3. If you follow any venture with true passion, not worrying about how much (or how) you are going to make money on it, you’d be surprised to discover that if you do something with your soul behind it that money will just come!
  4. When you are on your Path, the entire power of the universe will be behind you in ways that will surprise you. If you did not believe in synchronicity, this experience alone will make you a believer! Put your faith in the universe to help you, but you do the heavy lifting!
  5. Seek help from those who can guide you through your planning. People are much more ready to help when they know that you are hurting, are not asking for a handout, but are asking for a hand. Generous people derive vicarious pleasure helping someone in trouble, without having to give a handout.
  6. If you have your loved ones around you, share your adventure and plan and ask for what part they can play to make the plan successful. You’d be surprised by the sacrifices your loved one will be willing to make if you go forward with your idea with conviction and share it with them.
  7. When you embark on your new path, give all your focus and energy to make your idea work. Do not hesitate for a minute if you believe in its merit.
  8. Celebrate small successes and share them with those around you. Give them credit for their support and efforts. Read inspirational stories of others who have endured tremendous odds and have succeeded in their ventures.
  9. Ask someone to be your sounding board to get ideas and to do course correction. Often, when you pursue your agenda it is easy to lose sight of common sense and get into trouble. If you realize that you have taken a path that will not take you where you wanted, regroup and make adjustments to your plan.
  10. And, finally, pray for success!

Tough times can be used as a test of our capabilities and as an opportunity for our personal growth. Merely praying without a solid action plan can often lead to questioning your faith and disappointments.

Good luck!

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