The Asia Pacific Headhunter

Two Things to Start Doing in 2012

I just read an interesting article on the Harvard Business Review Blog Network from Dorie Clark. She's decided on a list of things to give up in 2012. It's hard to disagree with anything on the list, but for many people it's not enough. It's like telling you to stop eating donuts and pies when you're entire diet consists of donuts, pies, candy, soda and alcohol.

Instead of just giving up things and continung bad habits what are the things you should add to your list in 2012?

1. Develop your concentration. Are you jumping from activity to activity. Start stopping and really concentrating on what you are doing. It builds up your mental strength and helps you deal with difficult problems with less stress.

2. Investigate deeply. Why are you doing something? Do you really know the reason? Do you need to ask yourself why you came up with the first reason? One piece of advice I was once given was to ask myself "Why?" seven times. The discipline of asking "Why?" gets you to the bottom of all the excuses we give ourselves for acting in ways that don't produce the results we want.

Building these two things into habits will make a big difference for you. It takes a lot of discipline at first but like bad habits they get easier over time, and they produce big results.

 

 

You're No Longer An Employee - Can You Be A Business?

Seriously, you're a business like every other business now. The world of work has changed to the point where if you just judge yourself as just an employee at some point you'll be disappointed that people treat you like a business. 

So what does this mean to you? It really empowers you. It means you can decide the training and development you need. It means you can decide where you invest in your business, and it means you can decide your target market.

At the same time it opens you up to the same kind of treatment you currently give other businesses. You vote with your feet and money; your own customers can do the same. You need to hustle to keep them and to provide them with reasons to stay with you, in the same way the businesses that sell to you do.

So as an employee try asking the following, if you can answer them then you're thinking like a business:

1. How much money has the company made this month and was my role important in delivering that?
2. How much profit did we make and what was my role in delivering that?
3. What am I uncertain about at work that makes me worse at my job?
4. What can I influence to make myself a key part of the business?
5. What do the customers think of our business and of the part I play in delivering it?

And one little extra to think about:

1. If my company went bust tomorrow would my personal brand currently be good enough to convince a current customer to work with me personally?

 

How to Build a Better Boss and Why It's the best recruiting tool

Link: New York Time's: Google's Quest to Build a Better Boss

What's the new next thing in leadership? Nothing quite so new, but definitely some reaffirming qualities that should be focused on (but usually aren't focused on enough). Leave it to Google to mine through tens of thousands of their own HR data - employee feedback, surveys, performance reviews, promotion nominations, etc. to come up with a succinct 8-Point Plan. Their findings in a nutshell: deeper technical expertise is not as important as it was thought. Being a good coach, empowering and stretching your employees and showing genuine interest in them as people makes a team that is happier and performs consistently better. 

Why is a headhunter writing about this? Because when I work with clients, I need to be confident that they are, indeed, a good company people like working for: a company with happy employees that perform well. That's my leverage in getting the best people for that company. It's known that hard-to-find/highly-sought-after people (like at Google) leave their jobs for three most common reasons: 1) they don't feel a connection to their company or their own purpose 2) they don't get along with colleagues, and 3) they have a bad manager.  What's interesting with Google's Project Oxygen, is that they found the the last reason - how employees viewed their manager, had the most impact on employee happiness and performance. Happy employees are the biggest recruiting tool a company could ever use. If you want to hire the best, make sure your current employees have a great manager or team leader. 

 

Using Alternative Resumes to Develop a Competitive Edge in the Job Search (Guest Post)

Remember when there were only three kinds of resumes? There was the historical, the functional and, for professionals, the CV. Even then, everyone was encouraged to customize their type for the job they were after. However, these days the landscape has changed.

Alternative resumes accomplish the same goal - to stand out, get attention and hopefully get your foot in the door. Not surprisingly, these are just the sorts of things any marketer seeks to do; only you are the product for sale. And this has led to more techniques moving from the marketing and sales side over to the seeking-employment side.

Alternative Resume Basics

• Visual - Remember the pretty colored paper and scrollwork on the side of a paper resume? No more! The problem with that was it looked (and was) an unnecessary add-on to what should have been a clean and clear business document. It's still a bad idea.

  But what about a brochure or PowerPoint? The difference between these and the tacky pink- paper resume is that business people are used to the formats. Taken directly from the sales environment a brochure that looks like a professional tri-fold is a known quantity. It can highlight your strengths and lay out your selling points.

  Idealy, you want to create something that catches the eye and engages much more than text alone. Copy's of your past work or a powerpoint diagram, all capture attention. The downside? Because businesspeople are familiar with either format, they will be turned off by a poor presentation. You are judged by the quality of the presentation as much as by the content.

• Video - I would highly reccomend gettin professional help, unless you are a professional videographer yourself. The danger here is inadvertently exposing something you don't want - poor image quality, inattention to background scenes, music, a solid script - any and all of these can effect your potential employers view of you.

  The best use of video comes when you have a natural charisma and energy that won't come across any other way. But be mindful that some corporate HR departments are sensitive about images of prospective employees. They don't want to get accused of racial or gender preference and may reject any and all submissions that show a candidate's appearance.

• Website - A great choice for anyone who intends to market themselves on the Internet. A website can use visual and written text in combination to show you as a full person - a great advantage when the stats alone on your resume don't show off all of your talents.

  The problems come in when you want to customize a fixed site for a specific employer. Perhaps you need to appear like a hard-driving manager type to one and a soft-spoken, friendly advisor type to another. Along with this comes the problem of keeping it fresh. A blog helps present your "inner self", but it needs constant attention.

  Finally, a decent website should be more than a throw away template. Design and functionality might mean spending time learning the ins and outs of html and flash. Because Internet savvy employers are familiar with web pages, they will spot an amateur effort and that may not reflect kindly on you.

• Professional networks - Sites like LinkedIn or professional groups offer a middle ground for online applications. You can establish a good profile and resume at different sites and link to them. They work best when you are involved in a community in your industry and can actually participate in said community by way of a blog or other material.

  Be wary about what personal information you put up. The general rule is to have an offsite contact email that prospective employers can use to initiate contact.

• Gimmick - What's a gimmick? Anything and everything that straddles the line between acceptable and over the top. The 30-foot, arm waving inflatable man outside the car dealership is a gimmick. A gimmick gets attention. This can work for or against you, depending on what happens after you get attention.

  You can bet that a gimmick will either work wonderfully or fall flat. There doesn't seem to be a middle ground. If there is a lot of competition that is on par with you and the gimmick is well thought out, it can mean the difference between you and your competition. An exmaple of a resume gimmick may mean portraying yourself in a humorous way, and not in the standard "Education/Experience/References" format.

• Combination - There is no rule that says you can only use one technique. Sending a memory stick with a short video that has a link to your website - with the gimmick of a huge flash screen welcoming the person you contacted - can communicate your willingness to spend the time and energy to make your best effort.

Alternative Formats

Don't make the mistake of sending a CD to someone who doesn't have the time or interest in watching a half hour movie about how great you are. Keep it as simple as possible. There is one advantage paper has over electronic media - everyone knows how to use it.

That said, don't be afraid to push the envelope if you know you are dealing with a technologically savvy person or company. Showing you already know how to use the medium tells employers much more than a line on your resume that says computer literate.

Memory sticks are a better choice than CDs as they can be reused. They have a value all their own and people are less likely to just throw out a thumb drive.

Check your website and profile in different browsers. Pay attention to font and layout. An online resume is not the same as a paper resume. Bullet points and links give you the chance to shape the experience for readers.

Conclusion

The best case for alternative resumes is when you can demonstrate something the employer is seeking right in the resume itself. While you can rely on your alternative resume getting more eyeballs, you still have to deliver on your promises. Remember, the idea is to sell yourself to prospective employers/customers. Keep an eye out for anything new that might fit you. All the rules of marketing apply.

Brendan Cruickshank (Vice President of Client Services) - Brendan is a veteran of the online job search and recruiting industry, having spent the past 8 years in senior client services roles with major sites like Juju.com and JobsInTheMoney.com. He is quoted regularly as an expert in employment and jobs trends in major media outlets like the Washington Post, US News & World Report, and Forbes and has spoken at recruiting industry events such as Onrec and Kennedy Information’s Corporate Recruiting Conference.

How to Overcome Your Biggest Career Fears

Fear. We all have it. Even the toughest of the tough have had something they've been afraid of at some point in life. When it comes to your career, fear is the thing you need to be most scared of. Why? Because it paralyzes you, stops you from acting, stops you from believing in yourself. Stops you from focusing on a solution. 

Thankfully the solution to fear is pretty easy. Mark Twain or Ralph Waldo Emerson may have said, "do the thing you fear, and the death of fear is certain". And it still applies now. (Those two seem to get credit for every quote. Who was their PR Agent?). 

Still before you get to that point you need to admit you fear something. Admitting and isolating your fears is the real first step. If you can't be aware enough to admit those fears then you'll probably never try to overcome them. You'll end up blaming things that are outside of your control. You also have to be careful of that inner bully. The one that instead of admitting your fears, judges and then beats you into submission for not facing them. The bully is not a solution provider, I personally think they're a mental remnant from your time as a baby when you liked destroying things.

So when it comes to your job or career next time you find yourself beating yourself up, ask yourself a different question. What am I afraid of here? And instead of beating myself up, what can I do to face that fear?

 

Why It's Tough to Manage Your Career By Yourself

I think this is a point we all understand instinctively, but can be easy to lose sight of in our every day life. When we analyze how our career is going we are always looking back on the past. This creates a real problem in the now, in that opportunities in the present don't always look like opportunities from our past. So our analysis of the past really doesn't help us that much in reacting to what's happening now, or worse it actually hurts us.

This isn't true of just your career, you can see this EVERYWHERE in life. There are entire industries built around analyzing what's happened in the past. But we all know that all that analysis doesn't necessarily help people react or act in the optimum way in the present. Professional sports and the finance industry are two areas where this seems to be particularly easy to see.

For yourself though just keeping this point in mind can be a quick solution. Be ready to look at things that initially fail based on your experiences in the past. It doesn't mean disregard that previous analysis, but try to look at it with both a new view and with the benefit of the old. This is particularly true if you're stressed, overworked and tired. At those times many things that happen in the present that will set off alarms from the past. But the fact is those things might be opportunities for you.

Another quick solution is to get an outside view. You'll be surprised how much an outsiders view of your career can help you see things that you've missed. It won't make their view perfect but they'll almost always come up with something different for you to consider.

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An online college degree can help headhunters find you.

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Making Shift Happen

I find most people characterize events in their life in basically two ways, things that happen to them, and things they make happen.

 Normally you'll find the bad things are the ones that happen, while the good are the ones they made happen.

 A major illness happens to them, being made redundant, that happened to them, the recession happened to them. 

On the other hand they got the raise, they got their MBA, or they made a million dollars. 

The language is subtle, but specific. 

One points to themselves and the other points away from them towards somewhere else, although where exactly we usually can't tell.

When it comes to being happy at work I'm going to suggest you stop using any term that describes things happening to you. 

Even up to the point of ridiculous. 

Why? Because I think that sometimes when we describe things happening to us, we forget about our ability to react to what happened.

That's where I see a problem. Your reaction is your chance to make things happen. 

Don't throw that chance away, open your mind to the fact that there is a real opportunity there for you. 

When you tell yourself you want to be great at something what does life give you? Does it make you great, or does it give you chances to practice being great? 

When you tell yourself you want to be someone people respect, does life give you that respect, or chances to do things people will respect you for doing?

When you tell yourself you want to be rich, does life give you money, or chances to work hard and earn it?

Are you starting to get the picture?

Some time soon at work life is going to give you a chance to be the person you want to be, wise, wealthy, intelligent and successful. 

At the time you're almost guaranteed to NOT think that life is giving you a chance to be those things, you're more likely to think it's kicking you in the ass.

But when you have that moment try open your mind, relax, be with it. And then react, right at that point it's going to be what you make happen that makes the difference.  

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Are you a software developer in Auckland, want to be happier at work? Click here!

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Shift Happens

It seems 2010 is going to be a massive year of career shift for many people. Surveys in most developed markets point to massive numbers of skilled candidates intending to change jobs this year. Some of the results include:

• 60% of US Workers intend to leave their jobs in 2010 (link).
• 25% of employees believe organization morale is low (link).
• 20% of workers plan to switch careers and/or industries within two years (link).
• Only 45% of US employers are satisfied with their jobs in 2009 down from 61% in 1987 (link).
• Only 53% of Singapore financial workers are satisfied with their jobs (link).

It makes you wonder what really happened with all these people, what is it that causes them to have so much suffering at work? I talk with a lot of people in regards to their situation at work, most will admit to wanting more of something. Sometimes when we flesh it out their needs are quite realistic. Other times they are looking for an easier path to a better reward, which unfortunately, rarely exists. Meshing reality with what the person wants is often the biggest part of understanding whether someone really needs to make a job change in order to improve their satisfaction.

This can be really difficult to do alone, even for the most experienced candidates. After all, if you're good at your job you are busy doing that, not analyzing the marketplace and/or your skills and abilities to see whether you are ready for a big move. In order to make the decision on whether the time is right I recommend answering a few of the following questions. Be honest with yourself, anything else is pointless.

• What are my biggest achievements in my current position?
• How have I grown in the last 2 years?
• Am I giving 100% of my effort to the work I'm doing?
• If not, why am I holding back?
• If yes, then is the work satisfying me?
• If it's not satisfying me despite my effort, what are the areas that are holding me back?
• Can I improve on those areas in my current position?
• If I made a job change what are all the areas I need fulfilled to make me happy in a new position. 
• Being that nowhere is perfect. What would I be willing to give up/take on to make that move anyway?

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Are you a software developer in Auckland, want to be happier at work? Click here!

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Working While In Pain

Being in constant pain is something a LOT of people deal with everyday. And dealing with it successfully is something I'm personally interested in learning more about. To make a long story short I have an injury that has kept me in almost constant pain for 6 months now. I won't go into what exactly right now but while researching and trying to learn more about my problem and dealing with it I found myself looking into how pro athletes deal with the pain they have.

It seems there is a tonne of different things they do. Many take the painkiller route, and others don't take any painkillers at all. In some cases it's extreme. I've posted below a video of a hit Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Anquan Boldin took in a game last year. Quite frankly it's sickening, as it was described after the game many players had never heard a hit so loud on the playing field. Boldin was left unconscious with blood pouring out of his mouth and nose. He had a fractured face that required 8 plates be inserted and his jaw wired. The amazing thing is he returned to the playing field 2 weeks later and during his time off he refused to take painkillers!

Now obviously this is a tough guy to say the very least! And I really wonder how on earth he did it? Athletes push themselves though pain all the time but scientists know there is a big difference between what is known as exertional pain vs. acute pain (there is an interesting article in the NY Times about that if you follow the link). So what is Anquan Boldin's secret? Who knows, of course maybe there isn't a secret at all, he just has a really high threshold for pain.

Either way I don't mind admitting I've found it tough myself. I've tried hard to eliminate painkillers and I've had some good success. But I've also used them to help get over nasty humps. I've also tried to take a break from activities that exacerbate the problem. But the reality I've discovered is that constant pain means dealing with it while continuing to get on with life, not just taking time off when it's there.

So I'm currently working on a plan and system that'll work for me to get through it and back to the level of work I was at previously. It's working out pretty well as I've returned to most tasks at least around the home. Work requires a whole new mindset and I'm not sure how that'll look just yet but I'm very confident it will work out. It's actually pretty fun to be thinking of how to do it. If anyone else has any suggestions at all as always I'm interested in hearing them. You can drop them in the comments or feel free to catch me on twitter. I'll also be updating the blog with the ideas and activities that work for me.

Forget Career Success What About Some Career Happiness!

I've spoken to a lot of people about success in their career, but more often I speak to people who are straight up unhappy. They haven't lost interest in being successful in their career but they know they aren't happy where they are right now, or happy doing what they are doing. These are smart people so if you quiz them on career success they'll answer intelligently about what they want to do and where they'll be when they succeed. Unfortunately, they rarely get that success because the real problem is that they aren't having any joy in their journey.

What's more important career success or career happiness? I've decided it's the latter and so I've started advising my candidates and clients that they need to spend some of their time really investigating where they find the joy and happiness in their career. For some of them focusing on this area has helped them engage with jobs they thought they were sick of!

So, how do you focus on finding more joy at work? Sometimes a problem defined is half way to solving that problem, so you need to investigate yourself in order to find job happiness. Asking the following questions might be a nice way to start exploring your thoughts:

1. What are the jobs/projects you've done in the past that you've felt the most engaged in?
2. When do you feel most happy at work?
3. Why do you think you felt engaged when doing those job/projects you identified?
4. Why do you think you felt most happy in the times you did?
5. What are the obstacles to me doing more work like that?
6. What are the opportunities to doing more work like that?

Good luck with finding that happiness at work, it'll make a huge difference to your life.