Know What You Want–Want What You Know

One of the hardest type of candidates to place is the one who has so many talents they have no idea what they want to do next.  Some expect a hiring company to see all their talents and invent a position suited to their abilities.  It typically doesn’t work this way.  At least not when you’re working through recruiters.  They have specific jobs to fill today, and future positions to fill within their specialty or industry.

The key to working with recruiters is to know what you want to do.  And, to want a job that will leverage your expertise.  It is very hard to jump to new job titles where you have little experience.  Recruiters will present only the most qualified candidates.  Period.  Once you are within a company, there may be ample opportunities to cross-train or gain exposure to other talents (and then make that jump).

In my latest article for Job-Hunt.org, I offer a step-by-step approach to determining the job description you want to share with recruiters.  I hope this helps those who feel a little lost in the job search process.

Article:  Knowing What You Want So You Can Find It

Compassionate HR podcast with Margo Rose

Today I had the opportunity to be a part of Margo Rose’s Compassionate HR program.  She has periodic podcasts focused on helping job seekers, business owners, and recruiters.  The recorded episode is available on her BlogTalkRadio channel–click this link and scroll to the 12/8/2011 timeframe in the index to find my podcast.

We covered topics such as:

• How I got into recruiting.
• How the economy has effected the industry.
• What job seekers can learn from recruiters.
• What is the most appropriate way for job seekers to market themselves to recruiters in their industry.
• Anticipated accomplishments in 2012, both professionally and personally (Margo is a cyclist and couldn’t help asking me about my cycling goals)

If you have a question stemming from the podcast, leave a comment on this blog, and I’ll do my best to answer it.

It’s Never Too Late For College

Recently, I’ve had several discussions with colleagues and candidates about the value education plays in their candidate selection.  There is no doubut that formal education enhances one’s standing amongst candidates.  In past articles, I’ve even mentioned going back to school during the job search to show you’re proactive about keeping skills sharp or learning new talents.

Brian Jenkins, a member of the BrainTrack.com, offered to share his insights on the topic of online college courses and provided several resources in the guest article below.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

Online college courses provide a great way to enhance your resume and improve your chances of getting a job. Taking the courses shows prospective employers that you’re making an effort to increase your value to a company. They help you stand out from the rest of the job pool, which is probably full of people just as qualified as you. For example, engineers seeking a management position can greatly enhance their report and memo writing skills by taking free online writing courses. Once you’ve completed a course, you can include it in the “education” or “specific skills” section of your resume.

Taking relevant free courses also gives you a competitive edge over co-workers for higher-level jobs. Besides the additional skills you’ll acquire, taking the classes shows initiative and a strong desire to learn as much as you can.

OpenCourseWare

Through OpenCourseWare, many colleges and universities offer free access to courses taught during previous semesters. OpenCourseWare provides actual materials used in classes, suggestions for reading material, and lecture notes. Some classes include audio or video lectures, and others offer quizzes so you can test your knowledge before taking the next course.

To see a list of the colleges and universities that offer free courses through OpenCourseWare, check out the OpenCourseWare Consortium’s web site.  Some of the schools that offer free classes in a wide variety of subjects:  Yale University, UMASS Boston, Utah State University, UC Irvine, and Notre Dame. 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

MIT offers a a great deal of free courses in Business; Engineering; Architecture and Planning; Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences; Health Sciences and Technology; Science; and Management.  MIT’s Sloan School of Business Management also allows you to take many of its popular undergraduate business courses free of charge.

Columbia University’s Seminar in Branding

Branding is important to many businesses. Columbia University’s Columbia Interactive provides a three-part series on Brand Leadership. Part one of the e-seminar, Brand Identity and Strategy, includes a video lecture, visual examples of strong brand identities, and guest speakers from the private sector. The second part of the series focuses on experiential branding while the third part delves into branding and the creative organization.

Free Writing Classes

Many employers complain that employees lack good writing skills. This can be a major problem for those seeking management positions due to the need to write reports and memos. MIT’s Advanced Writing Seminar exposes you to the various types of writing you may encounter in a professional career. The UK-based Open University offers a free class called Essay and Report Writing Skills. New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) makes available its Technical Writing Course which combines theory and practice to prepare people to become technical writers. NJIT also provides a free Proposal Writing Course.

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing has become extremely important for many businesses with an online presence. Laura Lake, a marketing consultant, social media marketing strategist, and About.com guide, provides a free, seven-day Social Media Marketing Online Crash Course.

Web Design

Many small businesses would like a strong online presence but may not be able to afford an expert web designer. Also, even if a company has a web site, management needs someone to maintain it. You can get the skills to create and maintain web sites at w3schools.com, an organization that claims to be the world’s largest web development site. Training is available in HTML, Browser scripting, XML, server scripting, web services, multimedia, and web building. These types of skills make you valuable, especially to small businesses that don’t have a Web expert on staff.

Savvy job seekers can take these free online courses to enhance their resume and to get an edge on the competition. And since you can take these courses online, it’s easy to work them into your busy schedule.

 

This article was contributed by Brian Jenkins, a member of the BrainTrack.com writing staff. Brian writes about careers in management, among other topics related to college and careers.

Jobs of the Future Require Planning in the Present

If your kids are entering high school right now, they probably need to start thinking about what professional fields interest them. If you are anticipating a mid-life career change, you need to be thinking, too. The hard part in this exercise is picking a career path that will exist in our country eight years from now. It’s a continuously moving target.

Check out my latest article for AOL for a good reference for this exercise and some thoughts on strategy.

Article:  Top Future Jobs: Where We’ll Be Working in 2018

The Amazing Reappearing Job Trick

Are you an expert in a disappearing field or specialist role?  Is your current job in danger of becoming obsolete?  Don’t become the victim–take ownership of your career path.  The data is staggering.  Jobs are disappearing, but they sometimes reappear in a slightly different flavor or industry.  Read my latest article for AOL to learn more.

Article:  Disappearing Jobs Can Reappear — Know Where to Look

Why You Should Know About "The Rise of the Creative Class"

This guest post is contributed by Angela Martin, who writes on the topics of Job Search Web sites. She welcomes your comments through email: angela.martin77@gmail.com.

So you may be on the job hunt right now, or perhaps you already have a job and you’re considering switching careers. Now as all of us who are hyper-connected to the Internet know, there’s a glut of career advice tips out there, and they all promise that if you follow the advice, you’ll land that job immediately. Of course some pieces of advice are better than others, some are given by recruiting experts, like here at Jeff Lipschutz’s Blog, and some by people who may just be unemployed bloggers themselves.

What I propose to discuss is not any specific “trick of the trade” that will supposedly net you a paid gig, but rather a current trend in economic development that demonstrates the future direction that jobs will take in America and arguably around the world. Being aware of this trend, I think, will be helpful in understanding the subtle shifts in attitude that many in business are taking toward hiring. Richard Florida, an economist and social scientist, wrote about this particularly theory in a book called “The Rise of the Creative Class.” He also wrote an accompanying article for the Washington Monthly that previews this theory.

To sum up Florida’s ideas, basically, what typifies the creative class is knowledge and, as the name implies, creativity. Florida believes that the best jobs will be taken by those in the creative class. The “Super-Creative Core” is the smallest but most important of the group, and it is comprised of individuals who “fully engage in the creative process,” and along with “problem-solving…their work may entail problem-finding.” This core group of creative people can be found in a wide variety of fields including engineering, education, research, and computer programming.

The secondary group that comprises the creative class is what Florida terms “Creative Professionals,” and these people, too, encompass a broad range of specialty fields, like business and finance, law, healthcare, and education. The two groups together form a discrete entity of people who are driving economic development and are generally looking for work in “creative” cities that appeal to their lifestyles. In Texas, the state’s three major metropolitan areas—Dallas, Houston, and Austin–all make the cut for the top ten cities that have the conditions needed to satisfy this growing class.

But what does Florida’s theory of the creative class have to do with a typical professional’s job search, and ultimately, the recruiting process in general? Well, Florida proposes that recruiting strategies will change in order to attract this creative class. Gone will be the days of static interviews. Now, recruiters will increasingly be trying to gauge creative capacity, to understand what makes each candidate really tick, and what he or she can do for the company that will be innovative and forward-thinking. Thus, something to think about in your own job search is to not only reflect on what you have already accomplished, but what you can accomplish in the future in creative, unusual ways.

2009-10 Dice Tech Salary Survey Results

In the face of nearly flat salaries for tech professionals – a one percent increase in average pay to $78,845 – technology professionals cited an increase in salary dissatisfaction, according to the 2009-10 Annual Salary Survey from Dice. Further, technology professionals were disappointed with efforts by employers to keep them motivated via non-compensation related incentives during the recession.

Close to half (47%) say their employers are doing nothing to keep them motivated; just 19 percent are being offered more interesting or challenging assignments, and 14 percent are benefiting from more flexible work hours. Nearly a quarter (24%) of surveyed tech professionals said that they received a bonus last year. But those who didn’t receive bonuses reported higher levels – at 42 percent – of dissatisfaction with their compensation, than their rewarded colleagues of which just a quarter (27%) were displeased.

Technology salaries are up four percent in Washington, D.C. to $89,014. In fact, technology pros in the Government and Defense sector enjoyed a 4.4 percent average increase – nearly equal to last year’s overall 4.6 percent surge in salaries. Silicon Valley still reigns as one of the top metro areas to work in, with a reported average IT salary of $96,299. New York City reported a 1.5 percent increase in average salaries to $86,710, similar to the wage increase reported nationally in financial services.

Continuing to lead the pack in top paid skills is ABAP – Advanced Business Application Programming ($115,916), followed by SOA – Service Oriented Architecture ($107,827), and ETL – Extract Transform and Load ($105,844).

Additional Findings of the Survey Include:
• Seattle technology professionals earned $84,144 on average, an increase of nearly two percent. Dallas tech pros gained on their counterparts in Austin, with a two percent gain to $78,438. However, Austin-based pros still have fatter paychecks, on average earning $81,503, a slight decline year-over-year.
• Applications server skills JBoss and Weblogic joined the $100,000 salary ranks with annual salaries topping $101,869 and $100,313, respectively. Individuals with Solaris ($96,672) and AIX ($95,464) skills were the highest paid operating system skills.
• The highest paid titles include IT Management ($114,874), Information Architecture ($105,247), Project Manager ($103,437), Software Engineer ($91,342), and Database Administrator ($91,283).

Survey Question:  FOR 2010, WHAT’S THE BIGGEST CONCERN YOU HAVE ABOUT YOUR CAREER?
Position Elimination 24%
Keeping Skills Up-to-Date / Being Valuable to Employer 17%
Lower Salary Increases / Lower Billing Rates 15%
Canceled Projects / Fewer Projects 15%
Increased Workload 11%
Increased Outsourcing 5%
Position Relocation 3%
No Concerns at this Time 10%

AVERAGE SALARY BY JOB TITLE

Listed under each title are the figures for  2009-10 and Previous Year % Change (for previous years, see 2008-09 Survey data).

IT Management (CEO, CIO, CTO, VP, Dir., Strategist, Architect):  $114,874 2.6%

Information Architecture:  $105,247 n/a

Project Manager:  $103,437 0.0%

Software Engineer:  $91,342 1.5%

Database Administrator:  $91,283 1.7%

MIS Manager:  $89,741 -3.8%

Developer: Applications:  $86,663 2.4%

Security Analyst/Architect/Engineer:  $86,499 -0.3%

Business Analyst:  $85,306 -0.7%

Developer: Database: $81,735 -2.9%

Technical Writer: $75,028 1.7%

Programmer/Analyst: $74,333 -0.7%

Quality Assurance (QA) Tester:  $72,911 5.5%

Network Engineer:  $72,609 0.2%

Systems Administrator:  $71,576 1.8%

Web Developer/Programmer:  $66,500 -4.8%

Technical Support:  $51,193 2.5%

Desktop Support Specialist:  $47,026 1.5%

Help Desk:  $39,774 -5.2%

Are You The Dream Employee, Parts 3 & 4

In this series of articles, I have been discussing managers’ opinions on qualities they value in a “Dream Employee.” In Part 1, I shared three aspects: Servitude, Attitude, and Intelligence. In Part 2, I highlighted Good Communication and Being the “Real Deal.”  In the final two parts, I discuss being well-rounded, value-added, forward-thinking, and a cultural fit. 

Articles:

Are You a Hiring Manager’s “Dream Employee?” Part 3

Are You a Hiring Manager’s “Dream Employee?” Part 4

Career Comebacks are Tough–Just Ask Lance Armstrong

Coming out of “retirement” to compete at the highest level is no simple matter.  Seven-time Tour de France winner, Lance Armstrong, has recently shown that there is a lot required to stage a strong comeback.

In your career, you may have had long stretches of similar success. Then, the unexpected. Perhaps a layoff or a merger. Set backs happen to even the best.

How you respond to the setback is what sets you apart from others. Take some pages out of Lance’s playbook to ensure a solid career comeback.

Article:  The Career Comeback Can Be Tough–Just Ask Lance Armstrong

Are You The "Dream Employee?" Part 2

In this series of articles, I have been discussing managers’ opinions on qualities they value in a “Dream Employee.” In Part 1, I shared three aspects: Servitude, Attitude, and Intelligence. In this post, I highlight two more essential qualities to master for career growth: Good Communication and Being the “Real Deal.”

Article: Are You a Hiring Manager’s “Dream Employee?” Part 2