Jill MacFadyen's Career Coach Blog

February 2010
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THE NETWORKING BRIEF OR HANDBILL

Sunday 7 Feb 2010 by Jill | No Comments
Filed under: Career Resources Tags: career, Dealing with job loss, Elevator Speech, Hand Bill, job search, Networking Brief, Personal Commecial

As promised, today’s blog is about the Networking Brief or Handbill. The emphasis is on the word brief. You might ask, “why do I need this if I have a resume.?” The resume doesn’t tell the reader what you want in a position, plus it might make the recipient feel as if he/she has to find you a job. The Networking Brief lets the recipient know exactly how you can be helped. It is a one page document that is easier for the recipient to keep on hand. If you go to job search meetings, you will probably be expected to pass out your Networking Brief.

When you are networking or just out and about, you want to tell people what you are looking for in your next step. Don’t expect them to take out a piece of paper and jot down salient points. It is your job to let them know with your personal commercial and with your Networking Brief. This leaves the guess work out of the game.

A Networking Brief is a one page document. It includes:

your contact information,
short summary (similar to your resume),
several bullet points about why you are good,
types of positions and industries you are interested in,
contacts that would be helpful,
and names of target companies if relevant.

It does not include names of companies you have worked for or the names of your schools. I would like you to use a filter when writing it. That filter is: does the recipient need this information to connect me with the people who can be most helpful to me?

Please use the links to see the two samples. network_brief_bank network brief Technical

QUOTE

“You cannot get to the top by sitting on your bottom.” Proverb

PLEASE COMMENT

Once again, I would appreciate any experiences, comments or questions that will help other readers. I would particularly enjoy some humorous experiences and success stories. Once a month, I will choose one commenter to contact for a free one half hour coaching session.

HOW TO REACH ME

jill@careercoachjill.com

www.careercoachjill.com for career coaching

www.limitlesshorizon.com for personal life coaching

www.leadercoaching.org for leadership coaching

OTHER NETWORKING TOOLS

Sunday 31 Jan 2010 by Jill | 1 Comment
Filed under: Career Resources Tags: career, Dealing with job loss, fired, in transition, job, job loss, job search, networking, out of work, transition

Here are two useful tools for networking and job search.

Get a business card. Early in my career search, I found myself in the embarrassing position of writing my name and contact information on a yellow sticky note to hand to a potential contact. Your business card can be a simple one with your name and contact information on it. You do not have to include your address. Instead of a title, you put your function under your name. For example, Human Resources Professional, CPA, Engineer, IT Professional, Administrative Professional, Electrician. This correlates to the function you used in the summary of your resume and in your personal commercial. You can get them professionally printed relatively inexpensively or even do them on your home printer.
If you haven’t joined LinkedIn, do so. LinkedIn is free, and I have seen it be very helpful to clients. It helps you develop and manage your network of professional connections—people you know or should know in your field of interest. Just as important, LinkedIn lets you create a profile for yourself that communicates your value to those contacts. Your profile is one more way to let the world know what you do uniquely well. It is worth spending some time writing it. Then, when you start to build your network, you can ask friends and co-workers to write a recommendation for you. You might also then do the same for them.

I will write about the Networking Brief next week and include a sample.

QUOTE

“More business decisions occur over lunch and dinner than at any other time, yet no MBA courses are given on the subject.” Peter Drucker

PLEASE COMMENT

HOW TO REACH ME

jill@careercoachjill.com

www.careercoachjill.com for career coaching

www.limitlesshorizon.com for personal life coaching

www.leadercoaching.org for leadership coaching

HOW TO WRITE YOUR PERSONAL COMMERCIAL OR ELEVATOR SPEECH

Sunday 24 Jan 2010 by Jill | No Comments
Filed under: Career Resources Tags: career, Dealing with job loss, Elevator Speech, fired, in transition, interviewing, job loss, job search, job unhappiness, Jobs, laid off, lay off, layoff, leaving statement, networking, out of work, Personal Commercial, stress reduction, terminated, termination, transition

The format is simple. I suggest you write out your personal commercial, using the following points:

You introduce yourself. Hello, my name is….
Tell the person who you are by function, not by title. Perhaps use an adjective to describe yourself in this function. For example, “I am a trend-setting web designer…” So begin by using the words, I am….
If relevant, say why you are no longer working for your prior firm or why you are thinking of leaving your current firm. (You will be asked this at some point by friends or during an interview, so get comfortable with stating this.) Make it brief and non-judgmental. You might refer to my earlier blog on the Leaving Statement to see how this works
Say something interesting about your experience or successes that will hook the listener.
Say what you are looking for in a new job and how the listener can help. This can include where you want to work.

Once you have written the words, it’s time to practice the commercial. Call your voice mail to record it and then play it back to see how it sounds to you. Try it out on family members and friends and ask for feedback. When you are happy with your personal commercial, practice it until you can give it gracefully whenever needed. Practice in front of a mirror. Record it without your notes and listen to how it sounds. Re-record until you can deliver it smoothly.

As a side note, you might find that you will also use portions of the personal commercial in e-mails to contacts to let them know how they can help you.

SOME NOTES:

Express your value.
Speak with confidence. If you are sure of your value, your listener will believe in that value.
Make it short. This is not a history of your life.
Do not improvise. If you do, you will talk too much.
Be professional and upbeat. Don’t let this be about the sadness of what you may have lost.
Once again: practice, practice, practice.

AN OFFER

I will help polish, at no charge, the personal commercials of the first three readers who contact me at jill@careercoachjill.com. This would be for a session of no longer than 55 minutes. To be considered, you must include in your e-mail a copy of your rough draft and your contact information.

MY PERSONAL COMMERCIAL

My personal commercial follows and I would be remiss if I didn’t ask you for help in achieving my goals:

Hello, my name is Jill MacFadyen. I am a certified life coach who specializes in helping my clients find satisfying careers, jobs and lives. My clients are given support in all aspects of career search from “what do I want to do when I grow up” to how to be successful in their next position. One client even reported an improved golf game, a surprise. I would appreciate your referring to me those who might be less than satisfied with their job, work or life.

PLEASE COMMENT

HOW TO REACH ME

jill@careercoachjill.com

www.careercoachjill.com for career coaching

www.limitlesshorizon.com for personal life coaching

www.leadercoaching.org for leadership coaching

QUOTE

“Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.” Martha Graham

Are You Sure I Have to Network?

Monday 18 Jan 2010 by Jill | No Comments
Filed under: Career Resources Tags: career, Dealing with job loss, Elevator Speech, fired, in transition, interviewing, job, job loss, job search, job unhappiness, Jobs, laid off, lay off, layoff, leaving statement, networking, out of work, Personal Commecial, resume, stress reduction, terminated, termination, transition

“…the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.”

–Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I am reusing last week’s quote because it is so powerful and because it is also apt for this week’s topic about networking. If one is committed to something—like finding a job—one tells others about it.

To put it simply, networking works. It doesn’t have to be complicated. It can be conversational. It doesn’t have to be scary. It can run the gamut from telling the local butcher that you are looking for a job to conducting informational interviews and everything in between. I think it is especially important after you have applied for a position you would really like. Then certainly ask contacts if they know anyone at that firm who can help you.

The days when people were embarrassed about looking for work are long over. I had one wonderful client who used as a tag line after her signature line on e-mails, “Looking for a Project Manager Position.” That certainly is networking and you will have to decide if it works for you or not.

In next week’s post, I will outline the steps to writing a 30 second personal commercial—also referred to as an elevator speech—which is the first step. For right now, I would like to give you two examples:

Friend A told me of her dream job. Shortly thereafter, I called Friend B about a different topic and Friend B mentioned that her firm had a need for skills that fit Friend A’s dream job and for help in finding a project management employee. I called Friend C to see if his wife might be interested in the project management position and he said that he was having trouble filling positions for his firm and he needed someone who would fit Friend A’s dream job skills. So in two serendipitous phone calls, I had two possible leads for Friend A.
A client in another state had been a bookkeeper for an automotive credit company for decades. She is a quiet woman who didn’t think she would like to network. However, we prepared her 30 second personal commercial and had her practice it until it just flowed. She went to the local grocery store where the deli manager while slicing ham asked why she was there in the middle of the day. She replied with her personal commercial which ended with the words, “at this point, my ideal job would be as a bookkeeper for a local car dealer within five miles of my home.” He responded, “You want I should have the VP of Sales from the Caddie dealer down the street call you?”

You never know who knows the right contact. So you help yourself by spreading the word. However, “the word” has to be sincere, positive and upbeat. It cannot ramble. If you are still feeling negative or down about your situation, go back and read some of the earlier posts.

PLEASE COMMENT

HOW TO REACH ME

jill@careercoachjill.com

www.careercoachjill.com for career coaching

www.limitlesshorizon.com for personal life coaching

www.leadercoaching.org for leadership coaching

QUOTE

"... the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too."  Goethe

THE NEW YEAR HAS ARRIVED

Saturday 9 Jan 2010 by Jill | No Comments
Filed under: Career Resources Tags: career, Dealing with job loss, fired, goals, in transition, interviewing, job, job loss, job search, job unhappiness, Jobs, laid off, lay off, layoff, leaving statement, networking, New Year's Goals, out of work, resume, stress reduction, terminated, termination, Text Version of Resume, transition

“…the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.” –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

This is a powerful quote. We’ve all had the experience that when we truly set our minds to do something, to make a commitment to an achievement, that things suddenly seem to fall into place for us, to help us along the way—what Goethe calls “Providence.”

In looking back on my many years and many friends, and all my reading, I am not sure that any of us really commits to New Year’s goals. We only say “I am going to be kinder to my kids,” or “I am going to quit smoking, or do better at work.” But have we made a commitment to these goals? Until we do, Providence will not help us, and our goals will go by the wayside.

So how do you commit to a goal, to something in the future, yet-to-happen? I think our usual methods are inside-out: we want the behavior to happen, but we have not readied ourselves. That means that it is more likely we will fail to achieve our goals, which sets us up for disappointment in ourselves and puts more stress on an already pressurized cauldron. But there is a way to prepare for pressure-free success. And it starts by striving to appreciate ourselves. The first step is stopping the “monkey chatter” of self-negative talk. That means looking out for it even in the way we set our goals.

We tend to frame our goals in ways that presuppose we are imperfect and need to change. What if, instead, we liked ourselves so much that we wanted to responsibly take care of ourselves? That’s the meaning of “appreciate ourselves.” If we can make that commitment to ourselves, then “I am going to lose weight” becomes “I’m choosing now to eat nutritiously,” and “I am going to quite smoking” is now “Smoking hurts me and my family, and it’s time to stop doing that.” With our commitment in place, we may just find that Providence is at hand to supply the help we need to reach our goals.

PLEASE COMMENT

HOW TO REACH ME

jill@careercoachjill.com

www.careercoachjill.com for career coaching

www.limitlesshorizon.com for personal life coaching

www.leadercoaching.org for leadership coaching

QUOTE

"... the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too."  Goethe

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THE NETWORKING BRIEF OR HANDBILL

RECENT POSTS

OTHER NETWORKING TOOLS

RECENT POSTS

HOW TO WRITE YOUR PERSONAL COMMERCIAL OR ELEVATOR SPEECH

SOME NOTES:

RECENT POSTS

Are You Sure I Have to Network?

QUOTE

RECENT POSTS

THE NEW YEAR HAS ARRIVED

QUOTE

RECENT POSTS