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I spent yesterday morning in a sales workshop.  One of our executive sales leaders took us through the process of using insights to help customers get a better understanding of how we do what we do.  The insight part was not really new – we have always been pretty consultative on the whole.  The new part was actually laying out a specific plan on how we were going to take them through the conversation, almost like chapters of a story.

Two things struck me.

This is exactly the same process we use to write a stand-up comic bit.  You lay out a scenario, take your listener through the details and then, BOOM, drive them to the punch line.

That was a very fun (but unsharable) realization midway through the morning.

Here is the more relevant part:  everyone in the hiring process needs to get a handle on this technique.

As a job seeker, the only way for hiring managers to understand what you can do, is to take them through what you have done before.  You need a concise, relatable way to share those details.

As a hiring manager, you need to be able to paint a picture of your group and the cool things they are working to accomplish.  That’s how you attract the really great talent.

When someone asks for an example of a behaviour or a situation, they are really asking for a story.  Smooth story telling does require some practice.  Your best joke is the best because you can tell it with the right amount of details and you don’t leave out anything that’s important.

Your best stories are the same thing.

Describe the setting (A string walks into a bar) and some details about what transpires ( he asks for a martini, the bartender tells him they don’t serve strings).  He ties himself into a knot, tousles one end and asks again. (Bartender says “Hey aren’t you a string?”.  String says “No, I’m a frayed knot.)

That may be a little too simple to explain real work situations but you get the idea.  It does not have to be complicated but it does take practice.

Take some time this weekend to practice telling some good work stories.  You will be glad you did.

Do you know where your resume is?  When was the last time you updated it?

I know you don’t need any more pressure in your life but keeping an outdated resume on a memory stick or worse, on your work computer is not going to cut it.

Telling a recruiter to refer to your Linkedin profile is not the answer either.  Sure you can keep it up to date but it is never going to have all the information that a resume will nor can it be forwarded to someone else.

When a person of influence says “send your resume and let’s talk”, they don’t mean next week when you get your act together.  They mean in the next 24 hours.

Spending time at work or time after midnight updating what you have been doing for the last two years it really not going to show your best self.

Tips:

• Put an appointment in your calendar to review your resume every month.
• Keep it in the cloud (dropbox, google drive)
• If you are starting from scratch, use the templates that are set up in Word and Pages. They are clean and attractive and will give you a strong framework to start with.
• Send your resume to at least two friends (best if you can find an English teacher) to check your spelling and grammar.

If you get lost in the weeds reading blogs and articles about resume building and formatting, remember this:  it is a document that represents what you do and where you have done it.  You can listen to all kinds of arguments about fonts and styles but ultimately, if you feel proud when you hand it to someone, you have done it right.

It is graduation season.  Lots and lots of new grads will be looking for their first full time jobs.  You will be contacted by nieces, nephews, neighbours kids and who knows who else.

You have two choices: make a few minutes to talk with them and answer their questions or ignore and procrastinate until they go away.

Take the first option.

Not just for karma, although that’s important.  Do it because every successful person can point to one or two conversations that were pivotal in making decisions about their early career.

Wouldn’t you like to be at least partially responsible for someone’s meteoric rise?

College and universities are not preparing people for the process of looking for a job.  They are not talking about LinkedIn or networking or how to polish their resume.  As far as I know, only MBA programs offer this sort of preparation.  Most kids are graduating without any idea how to get anything but a job at the mall.

So be helpful.  Talk about how people get hired at your company.  Talk about companies you know that are hiring or have new grad programs.

Point them to the Jobs page on LinkedIn, Indeed and Talent Egg.  Offer to connect with them on LinkedIn.   Ask them about their introduction/elevator pitch and help them refine it so that it’s smooth and interesting.

These may seem like little things but they could be enormously helpful to someone looking for their first job.  Plus it could come in handy if you discover in ten years that they are your new boss.

If you have not been on Linked In lately, shame on you.  If you have, you have probably noticed the new steaming video feature.

This offers users some nifty capabilities but honestly, for the first week, all I saw was the same cute crap I see on Facebook.  I don’t log on to LinkedIn to get sucked into the kitten/puppy vortex.

I want to see what colleagues are doing and read interesting material posted by people I admire.

So what can we really do with this feature that is not annoying?

It is, at its heart, at huge differentiation.  If you get video in your profile in the next few months, you will be able to ride the novelty factor.  People are going to be curious and it will be easy to capture their attention.

• Post a video of you giving a presentation.
• How about a video resume?
• Before and after of a transformation.

Ultimately, it is a great way to show more about who you really are; the stuff that your experience and credentials alone can’t show.

The only thing to keep in mind is to keep it professional.  This stuff follows you forever so be careful what you post and for heaven’s sake, don’t let anyone else post for you!

I was at a business thing last week and I started talking with this really interesting woman.  I asked her what she did and she said “I am an account manager”.

What a useless answer!

With no descriptive words or context, I have absolutely no idea what she actually does. Does she spend her day making sure accounts are in the right place at the right time?  Does she deal with products? Customers?  Beats me.

Turns out she works for a really cool food manufacturer and she is responsible for taking care of all their sports and event venue customers.

I had to ask several questions to get that information.  This borders on tragic and not just because I am a headhunter.  It does not matter who you are talking to, your introduction should focus on what you DO not what you ARE.

Compare:

I am an Account Manager.

To

I make sure that our new SuperSnacks are in all the arenas and ballparks on the east coast.

Big, big difference.

You only get one crack at your initial introduction.  Only people like me and really curious (sometimes creepy) people keep asking questions to really understand your job.

You never know when you will be talking to someone who is the link to your next big thing so give it some thought.   Have a strong and confident string of words ready to answer the question “What do you do?”

Here are the two most interesting job postings I saw this week.  I bet you didn’t even know that you could apply for jobs like this.

MEDICINAL MARIJUANA TRIMMERS 
Adecco 3.87,420 reviews – Markham, ON 
$12.75 an hour – Temporary, Contract

If I brush up on my French, I could apply to both of them,

My point is that there are job postings in all kinds of places.  Don’t restrict yourself to the same old sources.  I love LinkedIn as much as the next person but not everything is posted there.

Watch for magazines, trade associations, community newspapers, business groups – there are so many possibilities.

Many jobs are only posted on company websites.  There are quite a few good webinars that you can watch to learn about how to google for jobs.  I am not sure it’s a skill you need to really develop.  Most people do not want to be professional job seekers but it can be an interesting way to spend a rainy afternoon.

So keep your eyes open and remember, don’t just read postings for you.  Think about people in your circle as well.  There is no better karma than helping someone find a job.  I know because it’s what I do for a living.

There was a really good article in Fast Company yesterday about Uber.  It seems that the on-demand service is so popular that people are trying to offer different types of services using a similar platform

If you need your house cleaned, you login to an app and an available cleaning crew shows up at your house.

If you need a babysitter for an impromptu date night, type in your address and the duration and a qualified sitter arrives.

Will recruiting go this way too?  Could you log on and get a couple of mechanical engineers with expertise in aerodynamics?  Or how about a CA who knows about managing the funds in a not-for-profit?

I don’t think so.   It’s just not that simple.  Many roles require more than a list of skills.  They require a certain kind of communication style or the ability to handle sticky situations.

Or you are not really sure how to describe the person you need or what to call them.

Real recruiting is complicated.  It’s a process that involves reading, writing, research, assessing, probing, negotiating, patience and perseverance.

There are an awful lot of variables in selecting people for jobs.  And it’s pretty costly if you choose the wrong one.

So it’s fine to use Uber to get to your meeting but use real people to do your recruiting.

It’s a long weekend and if you are like me, you will spend some time working on projects around the house.  Maybe switching your clothes around.  Moving the golf shirts and flower prints to the front and shoving all the black stuff into a box in the garage .  Maybe cleaning up the back yard.  That’s what we like to do in spring.

It is not just your home that should be sorted and updated.  Your resume should be refreshed too.

It may not be as important as your changing your smoke detector, but in terms of your career, it should be right up there.

Here are the things to consider:

Has your title changed?

Has the scope of your role  changed?

Did you take any courses or workshops over the winter?

How about any special projects?

Any new volunteer committees or fund raising (yes, the Ride to Conquer Cancer counts)

Once your resume is refreshed is done and stored in a place that’s easily retrievable, like Dropbox, you might want to apply the same logic to your LinkedIn profile.

And if you have a few minutes at work, find all those emails that say “thank you” and “you’re a star”.  Email them to your personal account and then print them and take them home.  You just never know when you are going to need a little pick-me-up or evidence of your great work.

So put on your favourite spring shirt and get to it!

Getting your resume ready for public consumption can be a daunting task.  You have to find it amongst all your folders and when you do find it, you have to hope that it’s relatively current.

Here is a neat cheat.  LinkedIn Labs (http://resume.linkedinlabs.com/)  has created a nifty app to convert your LinkedIn profile into a resume.

You grant access for the app to use your profile, wait a moment while it is compiled and then, voila!  A resume!

What’s really interesting is that you can see your resume in ten or twelve different formats.  It’s a very quick and cool way to see what’s possible.

You can also edit what you create in terms of moving things around and choosing what you want to have included.  It’s a little bit clunky but useful.

It allows you to make changes to your profile on the fly and then refresh the resume to see the changes.

When you are happy with a version, you can save it within LinkedIn, you can make it publicly accessible or you can save it as a pdf.

I was not able to get it to the point where I was really totally happy with the LinkedIn version.  There was more tweaking that I wanted to do.  I chose to save it as a pdf.

Now, I am going to find a nice little pdf hack so I can turn it into a Word document and then put my finishing touches on it.

Take a moment to try this today – it really is pretty neat.