Recruiter's Couch

My son and I share an Itunes account.  He doesn’t have a credit card yet and I want the illusion of control over his listening habits so it kind of works out.

This means when we sync our ipods, we each get a healthy dose of age-inappropriate music.

I am sure he filters my Ella Fitzgerald and Beyoncé songs out in a nano-second.  I don’t usually get around to removing his, um, colourful noise until I have a spare evening.  (few and far between lately).

Even though his stuff tends to the rude or very rude, some of it is actually kind of catchy.  Here’s the problem -I was walking up the crowded sidewalk to my office absentmindedly singing along with the chorus of one of the songs.  All of the sudden I heard myself singing “Yippee Kay Yeah, mother f*&%^” (you know, like Bruce Willis says in Die Hard).  Whew – a bit alarming.

I realized that I do this at work too.  I nod when someone is talking and look as if I have a complete understanding of what they are saying and then, when I ask a question, the speaker looks shocked and is totally thrown off their game.  Perhaps this is why I do so well on the phone.  People can’t see me nodding.

I always considered myself to be a pretty in-the-moment person but I guess I have some work to do in this department.  So this week is all about staying present and paying attention.  If you see me looking zoned out, could you smack me on the arm and remind me what I was doing?  Thanks.

There has been a frequent theme this week in my conversations with candidates.  People tell me that they are looking for a place to hang their hat, to stay for the rest of their career.

While that may be the ultimate goal, I’m not sure it’s wise to share this in an interview.

Sure, we are all looking for that magical combination of great people and great work where we can be successful over the long term.  I think that it makes hiring managers uncomfortable if you declare that your intention is to retire with them.

Do people really have the faith that their organization will still be around in 10 or 15 years?  And if so, will there be a place for you?  Heck, will there be a place for them?

I wonder whether this makes hiring managers nervous – like they are committing that everything will be as it is today in five or 10 years.

As a candidate, it’s up to you to strike the right balance between stability and energy.  It’s up to you to read the mood in the room and decide how to answer the age-old question “Where do you see yourself in five years?”

There’s a great answer between lifer and jumper – you just have to figure out what it is.

Those little hamsters at LinkedIn have been very busy. They sent me an email yesterday to tell me that 18%of my network had changed jobs last year. They also suggested that I might want to send a few congratulations notes.

My first thought was – holy cow, that’s a lot of change. Of course, you have to take out the people who changed their title for vanity reasons and the people who changed it and then changed it back so that they could be in everyone’s status updates. Even taking that into account, it’s still a lot of change.

Then I got thinking about thank you notes. Where was LinkedIn when I got married?  How easy would it have been to send gift and shower thank you notes using LinkedIn?

But I digress. Lots of people made a change. And that change did not happen overnight. Oh sure, we all hear the story about sitting beside someone on a plane and having a new job by the time you land but let’s face it, unless you are a Google programming guru, it’s pretty unlikely that that’s how you will get your next job.

Nope, it requires thinking and research and <gasp> talking to people. Former colleagues, tweeps and vendors, are all fair game. When you start having conversations and someone refers you to an opportunity or a connection, don’t dismiss it out of hand.  Pick up the phone and make the call.  Explore it and then decide to cross it off the list.

You owe it to yourself and your career. Oh and if I forgot to tell you – thanks for the wedding gift. It was lovely.

If I see one more person eating salad, I am going to throw up.  Especially people who proclaim that they are eating salad without dressing.  Ugh.

I have not been in a fitness club but I imagine they are crammed.  You probably have to take a number to get on a treadmill.  Blech.

How many of those people are paying the same kind of attention to their career?  Doesn’t it deserve the same level of care and concern?

Are they reviewing their credentials with a trainer?

Stretching their multitasking muscle or strengthening their listening skills?

I know that cardio is important but so is collaboration.

When you are setting your goals and lining up the barbells for your new program, don’t forget your career.  When you look at the whole life package, it is important too.

In fact, maybe I’ll talk to the folks at GoodLife.  Maybe you could get four hours of career guidance along with your two hour fitness assessment and unlimited spin classes. I see a lot of potential for that kind of deal.

I am not going to write about resolutions, weight loss, smoking cessation or procrastination.  Nope.   No mention of the new year or new beginnings.  None of those things.

If you are old enough to be reading a blog, you are old enough to make your own decisions and you don’t need the turning of another year to tell you what to do. 

It is within your capacity to change your job, upgrade your skills or change the way you behave.

You can journal or go to a therapist.  You can “declare your intentions” (this is motivational speaker-ease for telling your friends what you are doing so that they can offer support/peer pressure).

Just decide and start.  Don’t worry about failing. Don’t even think about things not working out.  Just start whatever you are going to start.

It’s time.

I have been in two conversations this week about reputation management.  I am pretty sure that I had never heard of reputation management before this week.  It must be “trending”.

What does it mean to manage your reputation?  It’s not like we are celebrities or anything.  We don’t have teams of PR people putting a positive spin on our actions.

Nope, we have to manage them ourselves.

We do this by doing the right thing.  It’s easy to do the right thing when we need to cover our ass or when there is money involved.  We don’t give that a second thought.  And our lawyer friends have taught us, especially in the HR profession, that our actions have to be defensible.  And while that certainly is true, we can do better than that.

• We can stay in touch people from our old jobs and people who have moved on.
• We can make sure we check in on people during difficult assignments.
• We can ask for permission rather than forgiveness when we think things might go off the rails a little.

It might take a little courage but people recognize and appreciate those kinds of actions.    And that’s how you manage your reputation.

I was poking around in LinkedIn today.  I accepted an invitation to connect (even though it was an un-creative, un-personal invitation) and after I accepted, the lovely LinkedIn algorithm told me about a whole bunch of other people I might know or want to be connected to.

As my eyes drifted down the list, I was shocked and dismayed and I am not being dramatic at all.

First, there was someone in a Controller role whose tagline was that she was an expert in “fiancé and analysis”.  Come on.  There may be only one letter missing but what a difference in credibility, especially when a key characteristic of a successful finance person is attention to detail.  The accounting office is down the hall and to the left.  The marriage license office is in a whole different building.

Then there were three people who referred to themselves without using capital letters or only used capitals on some of the words.

• Mechanical engineering Specialist
• Customer Service supervisor

Call it grammar or call it low self-esteem but whatever the reason, fix it.  You are a professional person in a position.  Tell us what it is with respect and authority.

While I was on a roll, I looked up profiles of two people I know.  Their profiles had titles, dates and company names but no descriptions of what they do.  I know, for a fact, that these two women have complicated and demanding jobs but it was not reflected at all in their profiles.  It’s like offering someone a ham and cheese sandwich and then just giving them a plate with two pieces of bread and a pickle.  It may look attractive but it will never fill you up.

Maybe people just don’t care what their profile says.  Maybe it’s just there because someone told them to “get on LinkedIn”.  That’s okay but don’t expect it to turn any heads if there is nothing to see.

I know it’s getting busy.  Really I do.  But it’s time to review your resume.  Today (or this weekend at the latest).

For most of us, resume review involves several steps.

• Figuring out where you put the most recent version.
• Thinking about what has changed since you last looked at it.
• Making the changes so everything looks nice and is spelled right.

Now is the time to do this.  We are still clear eyed about the future. We have not yet run up the credit cards buying gifts or made the drunken gaff at the staff party.  We don’t have the pressure of New Year’s Eve hanging over our heads.

You can sit for a moment in a Starbucks or in your car and actually consider what has changed since you last stepped off the hamster wheel of everyday.  How have the changes affected you and your habits?

I am not talking about tearing apart your whole life – just a few minutes of reflection.  Then get down to the business of refreshing that door-opener of a document: your resume.

This way, when someone asks you about your new year’s resolutions, you can help yourself to another mimosa and tell them you are well on your way.