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4 Words That Ruin Your Personal Brand

In order to stand out from the crowd, you need to have a strong personal brand. Today, it's easier to build your brand than ever before. However, it's also easier to ruin it. Related: 4 Ways To Give Your Brand A Little Swagger One of the many things I appreciate about the web is the opportunity to connect with a really interesting and diverse group of people. Typically, we stay in the realm of cyber-networking, but occasionally we transcend the limits of the computer to connect in person. A little while back, I had the chance to talk with one of my favorite bloggers, a finance executive who writes meaty articles on leadership, governance, risk management, staffing, finance – the nuts and bolts of what it takes to be in business. He isn’t afraid to challenge conventional wisdom, to ask the tough questions, to point out the nakedness of the emperor, and he isn’t afraid to create content that requires readers to exercise their scroll-down finger.

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10 Bad Habits That Can Harm Your Career

When you get lazy or frustrated, you can develop some bad habits that can harm your career. When I have a pause in my day, I slump. Literally. I lean forward in my chair, rest my chin in my hand, and ponder what I’m reading and writing about. It’s a posture that feels right to me. It requires no thought or effort. It’s the pose I used for my online picture. You might even call it my comfort zone. As it turns out though, my slump is not working for me, and has actually been doing me some harm. I got my wake up call last week when I went to the chiropractor for a pinched nerve in my neck. By slumping in that particular position, I have managed, over time, to knock my neck, jaw and shoulder out of alignment. So, now, in addition to enduring some sounds-like-gun-shot chiropractic adjustments, I am having to do "sit up straight" exercises so I don’t fall back into my slumping habits. I can tell you, it isn't easy. Our careers can be prone to slumps – professional bad habits that become our comfort zone, but are highly detrimental to our long term career health.

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Interview Questions: What's Your Greatest Weakness?

How do you answer dreaded interview questions like, "What's your greatest weakness?" Here's some advice. Before I start this story, I need to make a confession. I never wear watches. Not because I don’t find the correct time an incredibly useful piece of information, but because I keep losing them. Watches are a distraction when I’m working, and so I take them off and they disappear. Or worse, I forget to take them off, launch into my latest DIY project, and they get ruined. So, now the story. Fifteen years ago I attended a week-long intensive on Strategic Planning, hosted by the Executive Development Program at Queen’s University. One hundred plus senior managers and business leaders from a wide range of industries came together to learn about best practices in strategic analysis, competitive positioning, and corporate visioning. In preparation for the seminar, we each completed a 20 page psychometric test to evaluate our individual teamwork style, the premise being that a strong team has a balance of styles. The weekend before the intensive, I made a deliberate effort to buy and wear a watch. I was meeting with executives, we would be on a tight schedule, my Administrative Assistant would not be there, I needed a watch, and I found one. It was a beautiful piece of art, dark blue face with planets and meteors, hand-tooled leather band, the kind of watch that, when you see somebody wearing it, you can say “hey, that’s a cool watch.” Unfortunately, it had no numbers, a serious defect in watches as it turns out, and so an unreliable indicator of time. But still, a really cool watch. On the first day of the Strategic Planning intensive, I was late (see above, about the watch), and walked in as the seminar leader was describing the four quadrants of teamwork style: Visionary; Analyst; People Person; Routine Keeper (actually, in truth, I can’t even remember the proper title of the last category, but it was along these lines). He was using pictures of watches to make a point about the personality differences of the various styles: The Routine Keeper: straightforward watch, no nonsense, no embellishments – black band, exactly 12 numbers in the appropriate places, three hands, precision set. The People Person: colorful watch, guy with big ears and white-gloved hands pointing out the passing minutes and hours. The Analyst: digital watch with all the bells and whistles – built in calculator, multiple time zone indicators, (today it probably would include a GPS). The Visionary: If they even wear a watch, which is unlikely, artistic, out-of-this-world embellishments, probably no numbers. This is where I walked in – the seminar leader was showing a picture of my brand new watch. Well, not exactly my watch but enough like my watch that I felt compelled to pull down my blazer sleeve as I slipped into the vacant seat between two clear Routine Keepers: six pencils each lined up at exact half inch intervals, no nonsense watches. The seminar leader handed out the results of our psychometric tests, and we each received a circular seismic graph with readouts of our scores in all four quadrants. I was literally off-the-chart on visionary, my score recorded outside the boundary of the graph. I also came in very strong on People Person and Analyst. It turns out, though, that I had zero natural capacity for routine. I mean zero – it didn’t even register on the chart – not even a blip. Now, I can’t say that the results came as a complete surprise. One week sorting Christmas mail for Canada Post when I was sixteen was enough to convince me that I would need a career with a lot of variety. And without my detail-oriented Administrative Assistant, my daily schedule would all-to-easily go off track. But it did provide me with an "aha moment." I now had the answer to the dreaded interview question, “What do you consider your greatest weakness?” Later that evening, while the Analysts sat in one corner discussing the latest gadgets, and the People Persons organized the social calendar for the balance of the week (I believe the Routine Keepers had all gone to bed early because ‘we have a busy day tomorrow’), the Visionaries in the group pondered the implications of our test results. Almost uniformly, we all turned out to be routine-challenged, and it was reflected in how we managed our day-to-day lives. We had filing systems that could best be described as archaeological digs (most recent layer on top). We were procrastinators with our taxes (yecchh, paperwork!). And we kept losing our watches. Visionaries don’t sweat the small stuff, so we quickly turned the conversation to more interesting things. Our projects. Each of us had at least half a dozen personal and professional projects on the go, and we quickly came up with at least a dozen other great ideas for new products, marketing strategies, fix-its, and anything else that crossed our conversational path. Unfortunately, without the benefit of a good Routine Keeper in our midst, there was nobody taking notes, and so our great ideas stayed as vaporware. And that was the point of the psychometric exercise. A good team needs a balance of skills and aptitudes: Routine Keepers who track the details, monitor the deadlines, organize the paperwork, and keep minutes of the meetings. People Persons who can communicate on multiple levels of language, build relationships, and broker solutions for stakeholder conflicts. Analysts who can evaluate the costs, risks and ROI of various options. Visionaries who can see the art of the possible, create compelling business visions, anticipate what’s coming down the road, and come up with various outside-the-box ideas to tackle issues and capitalize on new opportunities. Any group – whether a project team, a corporation, or a marriage – that is short-skilled in one of these quadrants is likely to run into problems. When I got back to the office I took a renewed look at our team to see if we were balanced across the four quadrants. I became much more aware of recruiting strategies to keep team balance, and I made a point of checking out people’s watches. I also made every effort to build bridges with the Routine Keepers in my midst, who were both my bane and my safeguard. On a personal level, I took a good look at how my “greatest weakness” was affecting my productivity, and developed strategies to close the gap. To Do lists became my greatest friend, as did notebooks. I could write down the great ideas that popped into my head in the middle of the night. My electronic calendar became my lifeline to the scheduled world, because it meant that I could commit myself with abandon to the person or project at hand, and know that an alarm would ring when it was time to be somewhere else. I made sure that all the clocks, dashboards, computers and cellphones in my range of influence were set to the correct time. I married an accountant (well technically, I married somebody who later became an accountant), so there was the tax issue addressed. And I made a concerted effort to start listening more attentively to the details, the dotted i’s, the crossed t’s, so that I wouldn’t be blind-sided by them. As a career coach and resume strategist, I enjoy the process of helping my clients map out their strengths, but I also commit time to exploring the dark side. Your greatest weakness is only a liability to the extent to which it goes unacknowledged and unaddressed. A little self-awareness can be immeasurably valuable when assessing whether a new career opportunity is right for you, and it can help you understand exactly how you can be of value to a new organization. Moreover the exercise of self-discovery can give you a really interesting and authentic story to tell when the interviewer asks about your greatest weakness. Because really, they won’t believe you when you say “I work too hard.” Enjoy this article? You've got time for another! Check out these related articles: Photo Credit: Shutterstock

How To Ease The Tension In The Recruitment Process

If you’ve monitored the social network over the past nine months, you may have noticed a litany of complaints from both candidates and recruiters about the challenges of the recruitment process in today’s job market. Recruiters complain that a single advertised opening is attracting hundreds of candidates, many of whom are unsuitable for the role. Job seekers, on the other hand, describe the experience of applying to advertised openings as “tossing my resume into a big, black hole,” and complain about never hearing back from employers. Having reviewed the most common complaints from both sides of the hiring table, I can offer the following suggestions to reduce the tension and disconnect in the recruitment process.

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Want To Change Jobs After The Recession? 12 Proactive Tips

Want to change jobs? Prepare for your transition the best way possible. A little while back, I had lunch with a senior HR Manager who was contemplating leaving her job after more than 20 years with a large corporation. “I’m having trouble living with the disconnect between what the company claims are its core values, and how it is handling staff relations during this recession.” She went on to describe a litany of incidents, from a service agent who was terminated after revealing she had cancer, to an entire team that was being laid off so that the division director could meet his cost-cutting targets for his performance bonus. Employees have seen a drastic attitude change from their managers. This attitude of ‘Well, be happy you have a job’ is wearing thin. There is going to be a tsunami of job searching once the economy picks up, and some of the most active job hoppers are likely to be HR personnel who are disgusted with how companies have chosen to treat their staff. More than a few people, from both HR and non-HR backgrounds, contacted me directly to applaud my answer and reiterate my observations. In one contact’s words, “a huge changeover in staff is coming, and I don’t think management understands exactly how deep into the organization this discontent has spread.” If you are considering making a career change once the economy picks up, be proactive. Don’t wait for a “tipping point” incident. Take control now by mapping out your career plans for the next six months to two years and equipping your job search arsenal. Here are some tips:

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2 Important Myths About Passion

If you Google “find your passion” you will get 39,000,000 hits. Go to the self-help section of any bookstore and you will see 50 or more volumes on finding your passion, following your passion, and living your passion. Every other Twitter bio or LinkedIn bio has a reference to “passionate about.” Passion, as they say, is the new black. So, I was hardly surprised when a young friend came to me for career advice, and started the conversation by saying, “My job stinks, I’m bored to tears. I just can’t figure out what my passion is.” She spoke as if somewhere, out there, is a single career-related purpose that, if she could but find it, would lead to eternal fulfillment. This was her fifth “it stinks” job in three years, and it was clear she had fallen for the passion myth.

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When It Comes To Networking, Don’t Be A Jack

Some people have a natural ability to network. They can fearlessly enter a room, strike up a conversation with anybody, exude confidence, and walk away with a dozen new friends and business contacts. But for many of us, networking is an acquired art. Sometimes a painfully acquired art. I recently had the opportunity to watch various people practice their networking skills (I’m an inveterate people watcher, in case you didn’t know), and got to meet some genuine networking artists, a few artists-in-training, and one memorable my-kindergartener-could-have-painted-better-than-that. I’ll call him Jack. That’s not his real name, but it’s apt. Halfway through a three-day event, many people were calling him Jack, only with three additional letters attached.

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Don’t Put All Your Eggs In The Social Networking Basket

As with many of my blogs, I will begin with a true confession. I’m a Twitter junkie. I enjoy exchanging banter and ideas with industry colleagues around the world. I use Twitter instead of RSS feeds to find interesting articles, blogs, and people. Also, I have lists of hundreds of recruiters and career services professionals that I follow daily. I am also on LinkedIn and I have a Facebook page for my business. As you can see, I love social networking. So, the advice I’m about to give may seem strange coming from me. But here goes. Job seekers, get off the computer already! The media is abuzz with news on social networking, and a day rarely passes when some headline-grabbing article doesn’t tout social media as the next miracle cure for your job search. Don’t drink the kool-aid. As somebody who is old enough to remember, it has the same hyped-up do-it-now-or-die, if-you-aren’t-doing-it-your-out-of-the-loop feel as the late 90’s when financial advisors pushed dot.com companies as must-haves in your investment portfolio. Sure, there are stories of people who social-networked their way to a new job, just as there used to be stories of dot.coms that actually made money. But now, as then, genuine success stories are few and far between. On the job search front, you will find the social-network-to-success stories tend to have a few things in common. The position for which the job seeker was hired had social networking somewhere in the job title, or at a minimum in the first paragraph of the job description. More often, the job seeker actually found the job through connections they cultivated offline, but social networking helped to strengthen their credibility. The real risk of social networking is its capacity to suck up hours of time in a blink of an eye, and at the end of a day spent entirely on the computer, you may be no closer to your job search goal. Does that mean you should abandon your social networking efforts? Absolutely not! Social networking is a useful tool in your job search arsenal. When somebody Googles your name, you need to be findable (and not just in your cousin’s wedding pictures). When a recruiter Boolean searches keywords in your area of expertise, you need to rank high in the search returns. The contributions you make to online conversations, the information you share, the contacts you make can go a long way to cementing your reputation as must-hire candidate. Some of the contacts that you make online can evolve into strong, positive connections in the real-world. But social networking needs to be one arm of a well thought out and executed job search strategy that includes cold calling companies (read Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters 2.0 for innovative ideas on how), conducting industry research so that can identify and even create opportunities, attending industry events, lunching with former colleagues and clients, and giving back to the community. My social networking recommendation for job seekers: Schedule time for social networking, and when the time is up, have the self-discipline to push away from the computer. Spend time each day working on the real-world connections that result in job offers. If you don’t, then chances are that while your job search competitor is being on-boarded for his new position, you will be trying to unglue eyelids that have lost the capacity to blink.

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