The Theory of Strengths

About three years ago I first came upon the strengths theory and began giving talks about it to organizations. The theory was, at that time, quite new and had not been refined into a “product.” Even at this point in time it has not gained general acceptance. But employers, in increasing numbers are beginning to evaluate job applicants using diagnostic instruments that have been developed on the theory of strengths.

Simply put, everyone is uniquely different. Each person has more than one (usually five) intrinsic (God-given) strengths that, when discovered, developed, and engaged enable them to perform at near genius level.

In the process of researching my book, “Creating the Future of Work,” experts in the areas of education, sociology, psychology, economics, futurism, and other fields, have helped me refine and polished the strengths theory into a breakthrough idea that must be promoted. It is a certainty that the future success of individuals, organizations, communities, even countries will depend on their ability to incorporate these findings into their lives.

What are these findings?

In brief, the engagement of strengths requires three things:
1. The discovery, development, and assessment of personal strengths (through testing or close personal examination).
2. The creation of supportive networks/teams/associates that complement an individual’s strengths and compensate for their weaknesses, while at the same time sharing their values and goals. (Working in a supportive environment.)
3. The skill of spotting and/or creating opportunities that:
a. Can be capitalized upon by the strengths of the individuals’/team’s/community’s strengths and values.
b. While fulfilling a need (or want) of the market (or society).

While these three findings are, on the surface, very simple, they are by no means easy to learn or master.

If you were to read some of the books on the subject:
The End of Work by Jeremy Rifkin
JobShift by William Bridges
Good to Great by Jim Collins
Now Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton
A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
And dozens others, you would find that each one gives a piece of the puzzle. A complete synthesis heretofore had been lacking.

Did you ever hear of Franklin’s Rules?

I stumbled upon Franklin’s Rules, written by American Founding Father Benjamin Franklin as guidelines for operating a business organization, nearly a decade ago. Through application of the Rules, Franklin’s Junto became a pivotal factor in the success of dozens of small business owners during the Colonial. They transformed small business then, at the beginning of the Industrial Era and they could be used again to transform our nation’s small businesses and the way we do business.

The Rules overcame the natural tendency of inertia that exists in all of us by forcing members of the Junto to discover their strengths, build support networks, and discover opportunities.

Even though these guidelines are nearly 300 years old, they could not be more timely. As the industrial age created jobs and undermined family and home-based businesses, so now with 53% of all businesses being home-based, it is again time to employ these success rules. And, fortunately, we have some terrific help from the psychological and business communities.

Work done by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Martin Seligman, and Elaine Jacobson (to name a few) has resulted in psychometric tests that show aptitudes, attitudes, preferences, and strengths. Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton, working for the Gallup Organization focused only on strengths as success factors. The findings of these disparate groups were that working with strengths leads to success. For that matter, job dissatisfaction and burnout are attributed to the lack of using strengths on a regular basis.

The real challenge for most individuals is not merely to discover their strengths, or as British business researcher Charles Handy writes, “people, even in their forties and fifties, may have talents which even they are not aware of.” The challenge is to discover your strengths and to put them to use most of the time. Most pre-arranged job situations do not offer this possibility.

Another Englishman, Marcus Buckingham, discovered that the higher one advances in their career, through the traditional career track, the less one uses their strengths (the things that got them there in the first place).

The real test of our acceptance of our own intrinsic, God-given strengths, is having the courage to put them to use before making money with them. Unfortunately, most of us pursue the money (and earn the dissatisfaction and burnout) to the exclusion of our strengths.

We’ll talk more about this in future articles.

Career Success Secrets

It seems that there are certain people who are gifted with certain attributes that lead to their ultimate career success. Maybe it’s hard wired into them. Or, maybe they were born into families that understand the system of making money, or achieving great things. Or maybe it’s just another of those success secrets that has to be discovered by each individuals.

Whatever the “secret” may be, Earl Nightingale, one of America’s many authorities on achievement, who composed a great number of success pieces that he aired on radio for many years believed that success was achieved through rigid adherence to goals led to ultimate success. And, this philosophy has held sway for some time.

Nightingale also believed that some people, for that matter very few, who did become financially successful without the employment of rigid adherence to goals, just happened to swim into the right river. They became successful by swimming with the current of that river. He called these people River People. And their ultimate success was a little more than a fortunate accident.

It has been my experience that the “secret of success” lies somewhere between the two poles of goal-centeredness and stepping into the right river. For that matter, it is more likely that a person will become successful by finding their river than by setting goals. And the measure of success is not always a measure of possessions.

We know that success is not just about money. As Professor Tom Morris tells us, in his book, True Success, that:
“The happiest people in the world are people who love what they are doing, regardless of whether wealth, fame, power, and elevated social status ever come their way.”

It is becoming increasingly obvious to most of us that the best laid plans often go awry in a rapidly changing economy. So, it may just be that those people who boast and brag about their fabulous, methodical goal achievement may just have fallen into a stream that leads him to the accomplishment of his goals.

The simple facts of the matter are that those who are willing to make great personal sacrifices to accomplish their goals usually gather to themselves those people and circumstances that support their aims.

I heard somewhere a few years ago that the “average” successful business person tried and failed at 16 businesses before he found the one that was just right. It may just be that a willingness to fail and fail often, combined with the ability to fail quickly and move on, is exactly what success is made of.

Before we go much further I would like to share with you what Nightingale had to say about “river people,” those who find the right stream to swim in.

“If you're going to be a success as a human being, you have to fit into one of two groups, or belong to both of them.
The first group belongs to what I call "the river." These are men and women who have found, often early in life, although not always, a great river of interest into which they throw themselves with exuberance and abandon. They are quite happy to spend their lives working and playing in that river.
For some, the river may be a particular branch of science; for others, one of the arts. There are some physicians, for example, who are so wrapped up in medicine that they hate to leave; even after a 16 hour day, they can't wait to get back to it.
These people are happiest and most alive when they're in their river — in whatever business or career or profession it happens to be. And success comes to such people as inevitable as a sunrise. In fact, they are successes the moment they find their great field of interest; the worldly trappings of success will always come in time. Such people don't have to ask, "What will I do with my life?" Earl Nightingale

Where I differ from Mr. Nightingale is that while many “river people” as he called them may find their river of interests, it is not their interest in a subject or field that engages and captivates people for many years. Quite the contrary, interests change over time. Most people lose interest quickly or find new interests as they mature and age.

The waning of interests over time does not apply to strengths. Strengths grow over time. A strength, because it is somehow wrapped up in a person’s mental, physical, and psychological makeup grows because it is intrinsically a part of them. A strength is so integrated within a person’s character that, once he or she discovers their strengths, and takes ownership of them, they become their calling card, their unique selling proposition, their “brand.” And, strengths denied or left undiscovered don’t die, but remain as urges or callings throughout an individual’s life.

Once a person discovers and identifies with her own strengths she operates in her field(s) of endeavor as the strengths guide her to do so. If wise and attuned with her strengths, she learns to avoid working in areas that are her weaknesses and delegates her weaknesses to those who have strengths in those areas.

To further disagree with Nightingale, I would go so far as to say that one’s strengths direct their interests and anywhere that she knows her strengths can manifest themselves in a contribution, she will have an interest.

Strengths are not the same as personality types. But there appears to be a strong correlation.

Unfortunately,
“Fortune favors the one who can early in life divine what they are good at. ... people, even in their forties and fifties, may have talents which even they are not aware of...” Charles Handy The Age of Unreason

I believe that Handy was talking about strengths more than talents here. His work also shows that, choice based upon understanding of oneself is the most powerful choice one can make.

The greatest challenge facing us all is to discover our strengths while we are involved in all the busy activities that challenge us each day.

If you are like most people, you have chose your career when you chosen your field of study. Let’s take business, for example. More men and women have been entering college on a business career path than any other, turning their back on the sciences. Among those who know they should go to college in order to succeed, many try to “find themselves” by going to college to get some sort of diploma. They often choose liberal studies in lieu of any career path that will lock them into a specific field. It has been said more than a few times that someone who is taking liberal arts courses is wasting their time because there are no jobs for liberal arts majors. This may or may not be true.

Suppose those who do not take enter college on a career path to high paying jobs, but to gain a “liberal education” graduate with a broader understanding of a complex world. Suppose they are able to see patterns in human behavior or have discovered fields of interests that match their strengths. Could they have made a better choice than those who chose a field at age 18 and are now working in fields they hate?

These questions are not merely rhetorical. Many recent studies show that less than 20 of all college graduates – only a few years after graduation – are working in the field in which they received their degrees. Perhaps a liberal arts degree could be more helpful in the job market in future years. Many employers are beginning to believe that as well as they now see the value of a broad, versus a narrow educational background as an asset in the changing world of work.

It may just be that it is better to get a broader feel for one’s talents and interests, for one’s strengths early on and not be confronted with the middle age question, “What should I do when I grow up?”

Perhaps job hopping is the same as river jumping, not aimless as some may think but part of a purposeful search for meaningful work.

Turning Strengths into Benefits Employers Buy

Think of yourself as toothpaste. Sure, you might have nice packaging, a great taste, and be easy to use. But, do you really think that anyone buys toothpaste for those reasons. If they did, then you wouldn’t see all the pretty girls and handsome men smiling at each other in the commercials. Toothpaste is sold for the results. For parents it’s fighting tooth decay. For young adults it’s sex appeal. For others it may be fresh breath. But, whatever the reason, people buy toothpaste for the results. The same is true for employers. If you have completed the exercise in A Checklist for Discovering Your Strengths then you know what your top five strengths are. This next exercise brings you further along the path of job success. It enables you to turn your strengths into benefits that employers buy.
For a simple excersice & a form you can print click here.

Are You Under-Employed?

Performance, in the new workplace, is the name of the game. Corporate managers call it productivity, one person doing the work formerly done by two or three. While a person must perform at an exceedingly high level, it is entirely possible, indeed highly probable, that the person is underemployed, because the jobs they are doing may not match with their intrinsic strengths.

Keeping your eye on the next promotion is not the answer. Marketing yourself for the right position, the one that matches your strengths and gives you the greatest probability of job success, career control, and making an impact, is the only true solution for underemployment.

Marketing yourself doesn't mean endlessly parading your list of credentials and accomplishments to the world at large. It doesn’t mean constantly sending your résumé out either. It means continually refining your New Résumé, and letting other key people know about your strengths and how they can add value to others.

You need to keep potential clients informed of your significant accomplishments and how they can be applied to meeting their needs. You must cultivate and maintain an active network, inside and outside of your profession.

You need to be continuously networking in a purposeful way. This means you must be continually building knowledge networks. This is very different from handing out business cards or accumulating email addresses at business or association meetings. Good networkers are "wired" into their networks. They are connected to a broad range of individuals and interests outside their professional field boundaries. Networkers cultivate relationships with people who know how to get things done. In doing so they are connected to people they can approach for information, referrals, or work assignments.
Not everyone is comfortable in face-to-face networking situations. They learn to develop alternative networking strategies. In the process they become known as experts in their particular field. They write articles for trade magazines, speak at professional events, set up their own Web pages, or chair professional conferences or meetings.
There is nothing more important to busy potential clients or employers than hard information that they can use and the people who can provide that information are of extreme value to them. You want to be one of those people, don’t you? Networking is about a lot more than just "schmoozing.
Develop long-term relationships with people based upon your ability to share and access knowledge will help you greatly in your career growth. Many people who suffer from underemployment do so because of their inability to access and utilize personal networks.
Since you will be moving back and forth between different employers in numerous job/career changes, you may well find yourself working again for a previous employer. Treat everyone with whom you work--whether a boss, coworker, customer, or supplier--as a potential client and network partner. In our next article we will explore the apparent paradox, you must do what you are and be what you aren’t.

Career Advancement Basics with a Twist

As we said previously, the primary advancement skill EVERY employee must learn is how to help his/her employer make more money. That said, becoming a corporate success also requires performing the basics.

Let’s take a closer look at the five basic steps for career advancement.

1. Competence.

You must be able to effectively complete your assigned tasks. Polishing your skills and making them shine is a primary task for every careerist.

And just at this is important for keeping your current position, it may actually be of greater benefit to learn some completely different skill than you now have to broaden your career possibilities. How will you know if learning new skills is the right thing to do? There are two ways to know: 1. Will it make a greater contribution to your employer’s bottom line? 2. Does it appeal to some of your intrinsic talents? If both these conditions are met, then by all means, learn something new.

2. Discover your boss’s hot buttons and how to press them.

This is beyond politics and apple polishing. It’s not about making your boss like you. It’s about discovering what his ideas are and offering him some ideas of your own that he can adopt, adapt, or even steal. But, remind him of your doing so.

Bringing your boss novel ideas and profit-making opportunities will definitely enhance your position. I’m even aware of one man who became a vice president of marketing at his firm by getting his bosses promoted, and filling their vacant position.

3. Build relationships and visibility.

Studies have proven that competence (skills and knowledge) gets jobs and soft skills (working with others, building a good reputation, helpfulness) keeps them. Developing listening skills and communications skills and finding people above you from whom you can learn will go a very long way in career advancement.

Developing a reputation as an idea person who gets results and who enhances the performance of the team is a winning combination..

4. Be a cultural enhancer.

Many people find it best to fit in, to get along, you’ve got to go along. They dress alike, act alike, talk alike, etc. After all, you don’t want to be an oddball, do you?.

But getting along by going along does very little (actually nothing) to enhance the culture of your organization and to help it grow. In most ways, a fresh approach is what most organizations need. As long as your ideas and your way of presenting them are not off the wall, you will benefit greatly if you bring interesting and innovative ideas to your company instead of just “fitting in.” As the late business expert, Peter Drucker used to say, a business has two obligations: marketing and innovation. Most emphasize the marketing and forget the innovation. How can you help them succeed through innovation?

5. Be business savvy.

You must know how your employer makes money, its primary revenue sources (best clients, most profitable product or service line) and how they measure success. Then help them achieve their numbers.

In my first management position the company focus was on gross sales and net profits. The advertising budget gave very little room for promotion and sales growth was not as robust as desired, so I focused on reducing returns and improving customer satisfaction. The result was a slight improvement in the gross, but a significant increase in the net profit. My boss was very happy to have more money retained (profit) even though headquarters appeared disappointed by the lower growth numbers. It also won a promotion for me.

As I said previously, know the important numbers and improve them. You’ll be rewarded for it, in any economy.

Career Advancement – Beyond the Traditional Steps

Is there a magic formula for career success? Or a set of steps that guarantees rapid career growth? Could there be a foolproof method for becoming your company’s “golden” boy or girl?

If there is, then, according to Theodore Pietrzak and Mike Fraum in a recent column written for the American Society for Training & Development, these five elements are needed:

1. Build your job/career competencies.
2. Learn to work with your boss and his/her agenda.
3. Build relationships and polish your visibility.
4. Know and learn to fit into your organization’s culture.
5. Develop business savvy.

This seems pretty much like traditional advice. But, in offering it, they ignore the most important single factor that any employee can discover to virtually guarantee a successful career.

Find out how the business makes profits, and become a significant contributor to that activity.

If you’re a salesman - sell more products or services.

If you’re in production - help them develop better products, at better prices.

If you’re in marketing – work on more effective promotions and advertising campaigns.

If you are not working directly in a profit-generation center, then work on efficiencies, productivity, reduced employee turnover, or some other factor that reduces expenses and improves the bottom line.

For example, a secretary - might streamline administrative processes to so sales and marketing executives can spend more time selling and less time administering.

A shipping department employee – could make the department more efficient so the product moves faster, improving customer satisfaction and resulting in more repeat business.

An information technology employee - could help “mine” valuable competitive data that feeds company sales executives.

If you use this strategy to advance your career, be sure to write down everything you do, the effects each of your efforts has on improving your company’s bottom line. Then include this in your New Résumé as well as letting everyone know about it.

These are not necessarily relationships or cultural steps, as suggested by the experts, but nuts and bolts, bottom line contributions that will get you noticed.

In our next post I'll talk about practical and traditional steps that too many people overlook once they have the job. Remember, we’re talking about career advancement, not career complacency.

Your Job Agenda – 100 Days After Hiring

By Chris Hansen
Jim, a friend of mine, was certain he was going to get the position of district sales manager. He had all the qualifications and a track record that was outstanding. But, to his surprise, he was passed over. He was so angry he was going to quit. But, he thought better of it. Weeks later, when the injury to his ego had healed somewhat, he got up the nerve to confront the regional boss about why he was passed over. The boss told him, you really didn’t act as if you wanted the job. You never asked for it.
The man who did get the job not only asked for it, he also presented a 100 day agenda to the decision-maker showing what he would do during the first 100 days in the position.
In essence, he did a full-on personal marketing assault. Here’s what he did:
· Standard resume to the interview committee and reference letter people (see below)
Standard internal application to the interview committee
2-column spreadsheet analyzing the job requirements and wish list against his KSA’s (knowledge, skills, abilities) to the hiring manager. Each cell in the leftmost column included one of the job requirements, copy/pasted directly from the job posting. The rightmost column included his corresponding experiences, etc. He color coded the rightmost column–yellow meant that he met less than 100% of the requirements. Green meant that he met 100% or more of the requirements. This was also a great personal exercise–if he had more than a couple of yellow cells, he probably wouldn’t have continued the application process.
He emphasized his experience as it pertained to the job, including projects he had done and how they translated to the job opening.
He sent the 100 Day Strategic Agenda to every person he met in all the interviews (roughly 20 people).
He sent post-interview "thank you" emails to everyone he interviewed with. The difference between Jim and his new boss was not that he knew he could do the job and would enjoy the work, but that he asked for the position and showed that he wanted it by submitting an agenda in advance of receiving the position

If Your Old Résumé Isn’t Working, Try a New Résumé

The New Résumé is both a document of accomplishments and a projection of your value to prospective employers. Different from the old resume, the new résumé looks primarily at the talents and skills you have developed over your long (or short) work (paid or volunteer) career. It stresses your strengths as they contribute to your value and it focuses on the needs of the prospective employers, their wants and their needs.
Background for the New Résumé are the things you have done that added value (by increasing income, productivity, or stature of others; and decreased costs through innovation, technology application, or other means) in other situations.
The exercise of developing the New Résumé begins by:

Listing two or three completed projects.

This process causes you to focus on the positive impacts you and your strengths have had upon work-related situations. Then…

List quantitatively or qualitatively the benefits customers derived from each of the projects.

Customers, in this case could be internal customers, other departments or divisions within your former employment. It also reflects on how your work impacted the customers of your former (or current) employer and the ways in which they benefited through your work

List names, addresses, e-mail, phone & fax numbers of people (clients) who will testify to the fact that you did good work during the past year.


a. This step seems self-explanatory. It isn't. Too often we receive compliments (or not) and have had a truly beneficial impact upon others. If you haven't been listing them down, begin to do so now. And go back through all your tasks and projects for the last year, looking for direct beneficiaries. Write their stories out in newspaper form: who, what, when, where, and how.

List as many things as possible that you learned the past year and how that makes you more valuable in the marketplace.

Did you take courses?

Were you involved in self-study?

Did you serve on committees?

List or give a total of the new listings in your rolodex or address book that you have added in the past year.

a. Harvey MacKay says the only thing that successful people have in common is a huge rolodex. Learn to cultivate yours.

List the differences between your résumé this year and last year.

How did you grow?

What makes you better this year?

Who do you know (that you can contact immediately) that you didn't know last year?

The objective of this exercise is to get you to focus on at least a few things for which you would be proud to be known. There is another résumé process for those who wish to achieve job growth with their current employer. It is similar, but has significant differences. Please let us know if you would like to have the New Resume for Job Advancement Guidelines.

Resume Prep Pt. II

How to Dollarize Your Value to a New Employer
In our last post on resume preparation we wrote about the need to list all your talents, the individuals or companies you have benefited through the application of them and the need to dollarize your contribution. Many people become confused by the term dollarize.
Let’s look at the type and kind of dollarization you may be able to contribute to your employer.
For example, as a manager for a retailer your department increased sales by $350,000 in one year. The gross profit on that increase was 40 percent or $140,000. So, one of your lines on the talents list would be the ability to manage people to achieve results. The company XYZ Retail, and the dollarized result $140,000 profit increase.
Or, let’s say that you worked for a non-profit association. Your talent of being able to recruit new members led to an increase in membership of 200 new members in one year. The average membership contribution is $250. So your talent for recruiting members increased the ABC Membership Group $50,000 in that one year.
Or you are an elected official, through your negotiation skills you were able to create new contracts that saved the taxpayers $2,000,000 for needed municipal repair projects. So, your negotiation talent resulted in a dollarized amount of $2,000,000 savings for the town.
For an exercise on how to determine your dollarized value click here

Resume Preperation

Getting a job is not as simple as writing a cover letter and résumé and sending them in to a waiting employer, who anxiously hires you because your resume is right on the money. Using this exercise in your resume preparation will help you greatly.
There are anxious moments on both sides of the hiring table. The applicant who can best think and act in terms of the employer’s needs and interests and who can show that he is the best person to fill the opening will usually get the nod.
For a useful exercise to help you be the one who gets hired, click here.

Resume Don'ts

You should (almost) never include the following:
1. Dates that reveal your age
2. Unless your hobby is directly related to your career it's best to leave it off.
3. "References available upon request."
4. Generic objectives.
5. Short lived jobs.
6. GPA.
7. Information that reveals your religion, gender, sexual preference, political party, or anything else remotely controversial.
8. More experience than the job requires.
9. High School Information.
10. Anything negative.
For a More in depth breakdown, click here

Career Control III

If it’s true that, in the future we will hold ten to fifteen jobs and be involved in five to seven careers, then it’s understandable that many people, those who don’t understand the need for career resiliency, will be alarmed. They think frequent job and career change means their livelihood is without substance, their skills have no enduring value. If their work lives are programmed to self-destruct every few years, then won’t they be required to reinvent themselves constantly?
Actually the answer is no, if they understand their intrinsic strengths and how to use them. It won’t be a matter of embarking on entirely new careers (engineer to hair dresser) as much as it will be adapting existing talents to changing fields and job opportunities.
Those who know their core skills and underlying strengths, will be able to reconfigure their strengths and apply them to new situations as they arise. In a similar fashion to a child assembling, disassembling, and reassembling Lego pieces, a person’s intrinsic strengths are the building blocks they can use in newer ways and slightly different configurations, when they move through their career path, from job to job and field to field.Identifying your key strengths and skills requires a rigorous self-assessment. Ask yourself what unique talents and special skills you bring to the table. For more ideas click here

Career Control PT II

Actively taking control of your career means that you must step back from the frenzy of daily business and reflect on what you are doing, why you are doing it, whether it meets your short- and long-term needs, and if it engages your personal strengths on a regular basis. It means taking the long view of your career, rather than only taking your "career temperature" when you think you have a fever. [It’s not about your job or career; it’s about your life.]
There are quite a few strategies that can improve your economic prospects for the future: Ensure Your Employability & Create a Fallback Position
For more info on these statergies click here

Carreer Control

Is there such a thing as career control?
With rampant job dissatisfaction and the resultant job insecurity, career control seems to be an oxymoron. How could it be possible to be in control of your career when businesses seem to be out of control with their sales and profits. (Look at the turnover of the Fortune 500 to see how unstable, er…dynamic our economy is.) While career control is not something we can guarantee, it is something that can be achieved through the application of career management techniques and strategies. For some examples click here

Job Search Strategies III

Show them the money!
Employers are no different from you and me. They want to, need to focus on the bottom line. It’s not how much you earn (gross); it’s how much you take home (net). And 100% sales increases with 0% profit increases are not something employers consider to be a success. This is why they dislike hiring.
Let me say that again, employers dislike hiring…unless they can earn a lot more from your work than what it costs to have you on the payroll. And, if you aren’t able to show them how you have made money or saved money for others, they really don’t want to take a chance on you.
Résumés are B.S. pure and simple. Employers know that you exaggerated your responsibilities. They know that you aren’t as great as you say you are. They take that into account when they compare you to others applying for the same position. This is the reason so much emphasis is placed on titles, degrees, and the like. At least someone else says you are capable of doing something.
So, unless you have a stellar résumé, one that shows continual growth, and repeated accomplishments, employers are very skeptical.But, a job strategy where you show them how you have contributed to the bottom line of former employers, using the recognized and intrinsic talents and strengths, which you carry with you from job to job, they will sit up and take notice.
For more info and an expanded article click here

Job Search Strategies (Part II)

most people, apart from their cover letter and résumé, have no marketing tools or strategies at all.
Their lack of marketing materials is a great advantage for you, if you develop materials and a strategy. The purpose of additional marketing tools and your marketing strategy is to get people in a position to say yes to notice you and invite you in for an interview.To recap, the first three steps are: discover your strengths, analyze your history of successes, and begin targeting who you want to work for. (For more information on employer targeting, click here)

Job Search Strategies

99% of those who are actively looking for their next (or the right) job have little or no strategy whatsoever. They regularly and routinely ask everyone they meet or know if the have heard of any openings, and leave it at that. The “throw the words against the wall and see if any stick” approach works for some people.
This, of course, is in addition to the traditional résumé and cover letter approach that everyone else uses. Supplemented by a little Monster here, some CareerBuilder there and maybe going back to school to take a few courses in computers, the Internet, or nursing. Job search strategies, I mean real strategies, based upon your unique strengths and the contributions that you alone can make to the success of a company, team, or mission are rare indeed.
It’s time (at least the people with whom I have been working on creative job search strategies believe) to establish some new methods and strategies that enable you to change jobs, change careers, and move ahead on your career path.
For more information click here