Ian Christie’s Bold Career Blog

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If you visited in the first half of yesterday, you may have been greeted by an error page. Our apologies for that. There are a few intermitent bugs that we are trying to nail down in our process to make this blog and site a better user experience.

On the site renovation front:

• We have a new header. That little fish represents the bold career hero – swimming in his own direction. Hope you like it.
• And, finally, we have migrated this blog into the navigation of BoldCareer, so there is one seamless navigation throughout the site.

Thanks.

Delighted to see that the Bootstrapper blog put this blog on their Bootstrapper » Top 100 HR Bloggers list.

I had the great pleasure of delivering the keynote and a workshop to the 2007 European Management Assistants (EUMA) conference in Belgium last month. I spoke to the conference theme of creating career opportunity and used the workshop to deliver a practical planning approach for attracting and creating more career opportunity.

I was immensely impressed by the enthusiasm, openness and professionalism of the organizers and attendees and truly enjoyed Belgian hospitality.

Location: Brussels, Belgium
Audience: European Management Assistants (EUMA)
Tools: iWork Keynote

An all too common reaction to jobs that don’t engage. Once in a while, very normal. But I hope you don’t feel this way all the time.

One of the neat and necessary things that happens before we engage with a client for job search, career change, and general career coaching is a preliminary conversation. Whether email, phone, or in-person, it is a chance to establish mutual fit.

With that in mind, we have a new and improved online form to facilitate that conversation. The form is the place to go when you have had a look at the career services section of the site, or have downloaded the brochure, and are then interested in exploring the fit with our professional career services or getting your specific questions answered prior to purchasing.

Using the form, you can confidentially share your situation, resume, goals and questions with us. We can then mutually establish if there is a fit in working together.

You can find it on the site, but here it is as well. Interested in working together? Let’s start a conversation…

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Next time a significant career-related decision comes up, pause and give some careful thought to your decision-making criteria.

When I am interviewed by the media and the topic comes up, I share what is in my opinion one of the largest problems or mistakes in career management.

When it comes to making decisions about job offers and other career opportunities, saying “yes” when you should say “no” ranks right up there as a key factor in career management problems.

Saying “yes”, when you should say “no” is a major cause of career derailment, frustration, shattered self-confidence, unemployment, or even worse, just plain misery in terms of how you spend your Monday - Friday working hours.

• Your Yes vs No analysis applies when:
• You decide which opportunities to spend your time on
• Job content and task orientation turn out to be focused on areas that aren’t interesting or configured to allow you to be successful in this job
• You gather information about the organizational environment in which you will be working. Lack of fit here can really lead to problems for you
• After interviews or gathering information, you sum up how well you can work with your potential new boss. Trust your gut. If something doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t

Most importantly, feeling that you have the freedom to say No means that you have created a situation where you know you are going to have choice and don’t have to settle on the first thing that comes along.

If you can’t be successful (in broad terms) in the role you are being considered for, don’t say yes.

Technorati Tags: career change, career coach, executive search, job search

If you do find yourself in a situation where you are resigning from your post, be classy. How you quit your job can actually be a career booster. And conversely, resignations that are ill-timed, angry or emotional or clumsily handled can be career limiters.

Here are some obvious reasons why resigning in a classy way will help your career:

• You might get hired back in the same or bigger job
• Every single person you worked with is a potential formal or informal reference
• Every single person you worked with has the ability to think of and recommend you for opportunities their networks serve up. Or not.
• It is a really small world, and bad business behaviour does get around.
• It is the right thing to do, and ultimately, you will feel better about it.

As I reported on a previous post, developing a strong set of references is high on the list of challenges people face in their job search. Well guess what. A lot of that problem begins right here with how you leave your workplace.

No matter how aggrieved or justified you feel, avoid the impulse to screw your current employer. Be classy. You want them to miss you and regret your loss, not celebrate your departure.

• Give proper notice. Consider your timing when possible
• Break the news appropriately - to the right people, in the right order
• Tie up loose ends
• Help train your replacement
• Speak with your colleagues and collect their contact information (don’t leave without establishing those connections)

There, that wasn’t so hard.

There are times in your career when your employer, business unit, team or boss will experience a crisis of some sort.

Save the day! These crisis moments represent opportunity for you.

I strongly believe that striding into the breach during crisis, change, turmoil and situations where workload exceeds capacity is a smart career move. Like anywhere else in life, when you stick your nose out, it can get burned. How does the old adage go? If you want to be more successful, increase your rate of failures.

And like everything else in life, “how” you do it is an important component in increasing the probability of success of the “what” you do. Sometimes it takes finesse not to step on toes. However, showing this kind of leadership in a difficult time will likely:

• Earn the appreciation of the higher ups
• Get you noticed
• Demonstrate your leadership traits
• Show you as a team player

Step-up and stretch yourself.

Technorati Tags: career coach, work

If there is ANY chance that you might intentionally, or unintentionally be on the job market in the next year (and even if you think not), do yourself a big favour and invest some time developing and updating your professional and personal reference list.

You have heard that business is about people and relationships. This is doubly important when it comes to your references. Sure, you can email a boss from 7 years ago out of the blue and he/she might help you out, but wouldn’t it have been better to have maintained that relationship over time? Would the results be a bit better perhaps?

Action Items:

• Retrieve your reference list. If you don’t have one, open a new document and start creating it.
• Touch base with your references.
• Contact people who you think you would like to ask to be a reference.
• Show some interest in their life. The simple act of touching base, or pinging your references can go along way. “How are things? Can I help?”
• Update their current contact info while you are it.

This is not only a smart move in terms of being prepared, but it will also highlight potential gaps in your reference list in advance of the critical moment.

Watch this space for news on my upcoming solution. I will teach you the art of managing and leveraging your references. Coming in September.

Technorati Tags: career coach, executive search, job search, job search references

This doesn’t apply to everyone, but be open-minded for a moment, and consider this:

Can you show some thought leadership this year?

Thought leadership is the act of contributing to the intellectual evolution of your professional area or industry.

And being a thought leader is a powerful means of boosting your personal brand, profile and success.

Success? How?

Case in point 1: Take the professional services industry for a second. Consultants. Lawyers. B2B and B2C service providers. And so on. Lots of people competing for the same dollars.

One way of standing out from the crowd and building credibility with your potential and current customers is to offer extra value, before, during and after the sale. Delivering thought pieces is one way to do that.

Case in point 2: Let’s say you work in a company and you are in IT, or finance, or business development, or well, pretty much anywhere. Developing expertise in a relevant, up and coming area and then demonstrating that expertise and knowledge in a tangible way (with finesse of course), can get you profile and open doors into project assignments or job opportunities.

Here are some ideas:

• Write a white paper
• Do a survey and publish the results
• Conduct and write-up an analysis
• Blog on your industry
• Do a podcast
• Pose provocative, future-based questions
• Present to small or large audiences
• Study, research, investigate so that you have the expertise
• ….

Action Item:

• Brainstorm or mind map how you could show some thought leadership this year.

Technorati Tags: career coach, personal branding