Bruce’s Top Ten List got me thinking along similar lines, so here are the 10 things I think are the best tools in job search.
1. Friends; Kind of weird to put our friends in the category of tools, but they are the single most important piece of your job search. Study after study and anecdote after anecdote tell us the same thing, The precise numbers vary, but they all say, “More than 80% of all jobs come with some level of personal introduction.” In other words, a friend introducing you to someone who introduces you to ….. So your friends are your most important tool in job search.
2. Pay-it-forward networking. This is a direct corollary to 1. We make friends by helping people we genuinely like and the people we like are those very friends reviewed in 1. Look at the book “I’m at a Networking Event, Now What” by Sandy Jones-Kaminsky, it provides simple clear tools for effective networking. Its all based on the idea of helping first. Useful networking starts with relationships that go beyond a simple business card and elevator pitch. That comes from trust and common values etc. There simply isn’t a better, faster way of doing this then helping.
3. Linkedin. Speaking of our friends or “network”, Linkedin is the best tool for documenting and mining that network. It’s work related social networking and allows us to understand how to help our friends and allow our friends to help us.
4. Internet “aggregators” . Tools that allow us to set up one search that covers a bunch of web pages on a regular basis. For example, Indeed.com covers several hundred job boards, so we can set up a single search that routinely sends the results to your email, or on an RSS feed. Another one is Linkup.com, it searches company pages with opportunities. Google Alerts does the same thing with information, so if you are focused on a particular company or job title, virtually anything, it will give you a daily list of updates
5. Work-Life DB™. This is a tool we created (and trademarked) and I haven’t found anything as effective or as complete in helping a person document their success and their history. We all know and pay at least lip service to the idea that job search is a sales position. The first step in effective, ethical sales is product knowledge, in this case that translates to the history of our success.
6. Strengths Finder. A corollary to 6. This is an outstanding test/process that helps us refocus our heads on our strengths, those things we naturally do very well… which is the same list of the things we do in a non-voluntary way. Check out my earlier post on this, it’s very cools stuff.
7. Public Libraries. Given that research is one of the crucial steps in job search, there simply isn’t a better place to do research. Locally, King County Library has this amazing list of research tools for job search and researching companies.
8. GIST. If research is one of the keys to success in the job search, then this add-in to either Gmail or Outlook is an amazing shortcut in that process. It automatically collects basic info, actually more than basic, about our contact list. Once someone is set up as a contact, Gist will provide you with an ongoing way of staying current. Is someone on Twitter? It will give you their last 5 tweets each week, Blogger? Their last posting. Linkedin? Any changes.
9. Bing/Google. Our old friends the basic search engines. What can I say that hasn’t been said? I include both because Bing has become a very useful tool and isn’t a clone of Google, so running searches in both tools provides additional information and both are very helpful.
10. Job Clubs. Groups like Notes From the Job Search (check out our schedule in the right column) provide support as we go through job search. So much of job search is incredibly difficult simply because of the isolation inherent in spending time looking for opportunities. Even the most qualified candidates can spend weeks and months sending off 10’s, 20’s even 100s of resumes without any response, so how the dickens can we remember that much of the craziness isn’t personal. Heck, it’s not even related to the quality of your applications. Finding a peer group going through this makes it much much easier.
Showing posts with label Marcus Buckingham. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marcus Buckingham. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Strengths (again)
My last entry was on the book Now Discover Your Strengths so obviously it’s a key element in the Notes From the Job Search (NFJS) approach to job search. Another component of NFJS is our suite of weekly support groups for professionals looking for new jobs. What these groups provide is a continuing reality check for ideas and strategies in general. This includes the ideas expressed in Now Discover Your Strengths. (http://www.strengthstest.com/)
This book, as well as the others in the series, positions our strengths as tools we have choices regarding. Which isn’t the experience NFJS has of them, or at least isn’t a complete description of our experience with strengths. The Top Five Strengths, which is the report we get when we take the test, look far more like a description of how we approach the world. One friend of mine took the test last summer and found her number one strength is “woo”. This means she always finds ways to embrace the people around her and have them embrace her. This is who she is. One example of this is she has never been in a job interview without getting a job offer. She is certainly smart and hard working and other good things, but so are lots of other folks. Her consistent approach to relationships—all relationships—is to find ways for people to align with each other.
As I mentioned in my last entry, my greatest strength is “ideation” and my second greatest is “strategic.” I also wrote about how those have played out in my career. Turns out that is a darn good description of how I function. I always want to understand the ideas that drive how something works and I always approach it strategically first. When working on new development, this can be a huge advantage. It allows me to create clear coherent programs that do what they are supposed to do and that can be changed over time, etc, etc.
When working on maintenance (fixing/modifying something someone else created), I still approach it looking for the ideas behind the whole, and then how a particular piece fits. That doesn’t work—essentially it’s as big a problem as it was an asset for new development.
There is just very little that is as much fun for me as a discussion of how something works. It’s part of what drives me at NFJS. What is the suite of tools, the process that allows people to identify and achieve their dream job? That’s what I can build on. It’s a strength; it’s also not especially negotiable. I can acknowledge it and build on it, or I can frustrate myself and everyone around me by ignoring it and trying to be what someone else wants.
I can give lots of examples: A “learner” I know is always investigating new ideas and new areas of knowledge and new ways to do his current job. He is partially motivated by the enjoyment of solving problems, but mostly he is simply trying to learn something new.
Where taking the “strengths test” helps in the job search is by giving us words to describe what we do and why we are special. Then as we examine our work history, it helps us identify more easily where we were successful and how that success occurred. It gives us a coherent set of characteristics to build our “brand” around. What is it that makes you special? Looking back at your career through the filter of your strengths will help you identify those characteristics and help you identify the proof required to make you stand out in this market.
This book, as well as the others in the series, positions our strengths as tools we have choices regarding. Which isn’t the experience NFJS has of them, or at least isn’t a complete description of our experience with strengths. The Top Five Strengths, which is the report we get when we take the test, look far more like a description of how we approach the world. One friend of mine took the test last summer and found her number one strength is “woo”. This means she always finds ways to embrace the people around her and have them embrace her. This is who she is. One example of this is she has never been in a job interview without getting a job offer. She is certainly smart and hard working and other good things, but so are lots of other folks. Her consistent approach to relationships—all relationships—is to find ways for people to align with each other.
As I mentioned in my last entry, my greatest strength is “ideation” and my second greatest is “strategic.” I also wrote about how those have played out in my career. Turns out that is a darn good description of how I function. I always want to understand the ideas that drive how something works and I always approach it strategically first. When working on new development, this can be a huge advantage. It allows me to create clear coherent programs that do what they are supposed to do and that can be changed over time, etc, etc.
When working on maintenance (fixing/modifying something someone else created), I still approach it looking for the ideas behind the whole, and then how a particular piece fits. That doesn’t work—essentially it’s as big a problem as it was an asset for new development.
There is just very little that is as much fun for me as a discussion of how something works. It’s part of what drives me at NFJS. What is the suite of tools, the process that allows people to identify and achieve their dream job? That’s what I can build on. It’s a strength; it’s also not especially negotiable. I can acknowledge it and build on it, or I can frustrate myself and everyone around me by ignoring it and trying to be what someone else wants.
I can give lots of examples: A “learner” I know is always investigating new ideas and new areas of knowledge and new ways to do his current job. He is partially motivated by the enjoyment of solving problems, but mostly he is simply trying to learn something new.
Where taking the “strengths test” helps in the job search is by giving us words to describe what we do and why we are special. Then as we examine our work history, it helps us identify more easily where we were successful and how that success occurred. It gives us a coherent set of characteristics to build our “brand” around. What is it that makes you special? Looking back at your career through the filter of your strengths will help you identify those characteristics and help you identify the proof required to make you stand out in this market.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Now Discover your Strengths
If you read this regularly, you will have noticed that I try to focus on the positive and help people build on their strengths. A piece of this comes from Now Discover your Strengths, and somehow I've missed writing the book up. What this book does is validate things most of us know intuitively, but may be afraid to commit to.
In my case, math and science are noticeably easier for me than reading and writing, or at least it started out that way. :) Unfortunately, I was 32 before I allowed myself to use that information in relationship to my career. I also have a need to understand how things work and while that’s useful in lots of areas, I didn’t nurture that as part of my career until about the same time. This combination led to changing careers and embracing computers and systems development... More accurately, my previous careers hadn’t been all that successful, so when I chose a new path, I actually included this information in the equation. The result was a career in computers and development that lasted most of 30 years and that was very successful.
The point is not about me, but what happens when building a career based on strengths, which leads back to Now Discover your Strengths. One element in their process is an online test that can provide a view of your natural strengths. You can go straight to the test via http://www.strengthstest.com , but context helps, so maybe you borrow the book and take the test. What you will get back from the test will be a list of the five areas of how you approach life and problem solving that are your strongest tools. For example my first one in “Ideation”, in this case it means I need to understand stuff, there’s more to it of course and you can look that up if you care, but the real point is that when I took the test 20 odd years after I switched into computers systems, I found something that actually had language around why my choice worked. Very powerful stuff.
When you take the test, it will not tell you what your career should be, “ideation” doesn’t tell me I should be a developer, but when I look at an opportunity, it allows me to evaluate my chances for success much more clearly and with significantly better tools. It will also help you understand the styles of work that will facilitate your success.
In Now Discover your Strengths Marcus Buckingham defines a strength as “consistent near perfect performance in an activity.” The level of performance must be consistent, which means you’ve done it before and can expect this when you do it again. One of Buckingham’s examples is Tiger Woods. Woods drives are amazing and consistent and he can (and does) rely on them. Realistically, there isn’t anyone who drives like Tiger, but driving is a strength for a lot of golfers and many of them build their games around their drives. In other words, “near perfect” is relative. What the test will give you isn’t a description of your drives, just a description of how you can optimize your approach to many things.
Using my own example again, “ideation” is my first strength, and “strategic” is my second. As a developer, I found I did a great job on new development and honestly struggled with maintenance work. My strengths translate to someone who is almost exclusively a top down thinker, and if I don’t understand context I struggle until I get the context. The strengths of a good new system developer includes an ability to understand the whole and to get the details right inside that whole. A maintenance developer works best if they don’t need the whole, just the three or four details required to fit the new code into a program/system etc. Prior to taking the test, I understood that my performance was distinctly different in maintenance mode vs development mode and I just could not figure out why. Taking the test made the reasons very clear and really drives me to focusing on one vs the other. What the test did for me was give me vocabulary to understand why one function was relatively easy and very satisfying while what seems to be a very similar track was just a major challenge and nothing but frustrating.
Equally important, the test results help me understand what would be a successful future choice. Moving from IT to career coaching, it’s clear to me that I need to base my coaching on my strengths… Actually it’s clear that I will base it on my strengths because I don’t know how to do it any other way. If that way is incompatible with career coaching then I need to come up with a plan B. Your particulars are different than mine, but you do work from your strengths or you struggle, just like me. Knowing what these are allows you to avoid a lot of frustration.
Start by reading the book and taking the test. The words it will come back with might not be all that familiar so read the descriptions. Think about how those apply to your work life. The descriptions will be describing things you did when you were successful, how can you build on these? How can you use more of these in your life? Your work?
In my case, math and science are noticeably easier for me than reading and writing, or at least it started out that way. :) Unfortunately, I was 32 before I allowed myself to use that information in relationship to my career. I also have a need to understand how things work and while that’s useful in lots of areas, I didn’t nurture that as part of my career until about the same time. This combination led to changing careers and embracing computers and systems development... More accurately, my previous careers hadn’t been all that successful, so when I chose a new path, I actually included this information in the equation. The result was a career in computers and development that lasted most of 30 years and that was very successful.
The point is not about me, but what happens when building a career based on strengths, which leads back to Now Discover your Strengths. One element in their process is an online test that can provide a view of your natural strengths. You can go straight to the test via http://www.strengthstest.com , but context helps, so maybe you borrow the book and take the test. What you will get back from the test will be a list of the five areas of how you approach life and problem solving that are your strongest tools. For example my first one in “Ideation”, in this case it means I need to understand stuff, there’s more to it of course and you can look that up if you care, but the real point is that when I took the test 20 odd years after I switched into computers systems, I found something that actually had language around why my choice worked. Very powerful stuff.
When you take the test, it will not tell you what your career should be, “ideation” doesn’t tell me I should be a developer, but when I look at an opportunity, it allows me to evaluate my chances for success much more clearly and with significantly better tools. It will also help you understand the styles of work that will facilitate your success.
In Now Discover your Strengths Marcus Buckingham defines a strength as “consistent near perfect performance in an activity.” The level of performance must be consistent, which means you’ve done it before and can expect this when you do it again. One of Buckingham’s examples is Tiger Woods. Woods drives are amazing and consistent and he can (and does) rely on them. Realistically, there isn’t anyone who drives like Tiger, but driving is a strength for a lot of golfers and many of them build their games around their drives. In other words, “near perfect” is relative. What the test will give you isn’t a description of your drives, just a description of how you can optimize your approach to many things.
Using my own example again, “ideation” is my first strength, and “strategic” is my second. As a developer, I found I did a great job on new development and honestly struggled with maintenance work. My strengths translate to someone who is almost exclusively a top down thinker, and if I don’t understand context I struggle until I get the context. The strengths of a good new system developer includes an ability to understand the whole and to get the details right inside that whole. A maintenance developer works best if they don’t need the whole, just the three or four details required to fit the new code into a program/system etc. Prior to taking the test, I understood that my performance was distinctly different in maintenance mode vs development mode and I just could not figure out why. Taking the test made the reasons very clear and really drives me to focusing on one vs the other. What the test did for me was give me vocabulary to understand why one function was relatively easy and very satisfying while what seems to be a very similar track was just a major challenge and nothing but frustrating.
Equally important, the test results help me understand what would be a successful future choice. Moving from IT to career coaching, it’s clear to me that I need to base my coaching on my strengths… Actually it’s clear that I will base it on my strengths because I don’t know how to do it any other way. If that way is incompatible with career coaching then I need to come up with a plan B. Your particulars are different than mine, but you do work from your strengths or you struggle, just like me. Knowing what these are allows you to avoid a lot of frustration.
Start by reading the book and taking the test. The words it will come back with might not be all that familiar so read the descriptions. Think about how those apply to your work life. The descriptions will be describing things you did when you were successful, how can you build on these? How can you use more of these in your life? Your work?
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