It’s hard to find anyone in the business world whose company hasn’t been subjected to the need for change management recently due to one or more of the following factors: intensified competition (often of a global nature), new technology or systems, changes in customer needs and their technology, the emergence of substitutes for a company’s product or service, mergers and acquisitions, new leadership, or changes in the law or regulations or a host of others.

Years ago, a professor and author, and one of the experts in managing corporate change, John Kotter, wrote a book called, The Heart of Change, and he laid out seven key elements of change management for companies that still hold up:

• Increase Urgency
• Build the Guiding Team
• Get the Vision Right
• Communicate for Buy-In
• Create Short Term Wins
• Don’t Let Up
• Make Change Stick

Coincidentally, an article I recently read, written by an executive recruiter, talked about the need for some older executives (and non-executive employees) who need to play technology “catch-up” if they expect to stay in the career game. This is consistent with what we hear from some of our senior career management clients who may have had 20 to 30 years of management and leadership experience, but find themselves now struggling to be relevant in a digital world. This dilemma seems to be especially acute for marketing and information technology executives whose companies have not kept pace with the leading competitors in their industries.

I would, therefore, suggest that many experienced and heretofore successful executives need to seriously consider and execute a Personal Change Management plan (we could also call it a “learning and growth plan”) well in advance of finding themselves being considered for internal promotion or wanting or needing to look outside of their companies in order to make a career change. At that time, in the absence of updating or upgrading their skills, they may be confronted with a real handicap in an internal competition or during an outside search process.

I would define the seven key steps of Personal Change Management as follows:

Decide you need to update or upgrade your skills.

While this sounds obvious, my point is that people need to consciously face this tough reality, and admit to themselves that they haven’t kept up with technology developments in their field and, if they want to stay relevant, they need to do so and start immediately.

Consult with experts (especially those younger than you) on what’s hot and in high demand.

For some people it may be clear where their technology gaps are, but not for others. In either case, as with most situations in life, it pays to focus on what’s most important. Speaking with others in your field, including tech savvy millennials, can be invaluable in surveying the contemporary technology landscape.

Determine where to concentrate.

The adage, “every journey starts with a first step”, applies here. There may be several areas that need to be addressed. But don’t let that paralyze you. Rather, pick an area, a skill, a device, a technology, or an algorithm and get started. Take a step at a time. Being able to talk about your initial personal development steps to an executive recruiter or a hiring executive may be enough to get you in the door despite your having more to learn. The fact that you’re doing something and are committed to personal development is impressive in itself.

Find and utilize the right training resources.

Can you get the training or instruction you need at your company… perhaps from a younger employee? Is there an online course or program you can take? Is there a community college, local university, or graduate school offering that provides all or part of what you need? Can you hire an expert to train you? Can you use a supplier, vendor, or professional service provider? Any of these or some combination may be right for you.

Get the training.

Sign-up and be disciplined and diligent. Clearly, this is tough work, especially if you have to do it at night or on weekends. But, if it’s really critical and has genuine implications for your suitability for your current role or elsewhere in your industry, you can’t afford to be complacent nor procrastinate.

Start to use your new skills and competencies and acquire supplemental training, if needed.

Like everything else in life, to improve you need to use new skills and abilities. You may find that the training you just received is exactly what was needed or, as in many instances, you need to augment what you learned with some additional development. The best attitude is to build on what you’ve just learned, not to be discouraged by not knowing it all at the outset. Most of us, even the experts, rarely do. Applying new knowledge can be hard. Be patient with yourself. Remember, it wasn’t easy to learn to ride a bike.

Apply the new training repeatedly and, if necessary, execute the process again to acquire new skills or capacity.

As has been noted by a variety of writers and academics, the key to achieving expertise in any skill is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing the correct way to do it. Similarly, to refine and hone your newfound technology capability, you need to execute and practice, and execute and practice, until you start to develop some genuine expertise.

Once you’ve finished with the first technology area, depending on your technology gaps, you may need to start the cycle again.

In summary, just as companies repeatedly engage in change management, many executives and technical employees may need to engage in their own personal development to keep abreast of the technology curve. To avoid personal obsolescence and the potential threat to you before someone in your firm or a recruiter says, “Sorry, you’re Old School and you don’t qualify”, develop and act on your “Personal Change Management” plan.

The post The Need for Personal Change Management appeared first on SoftOneIT Associates.

I’ve been reading a fascinating book recently titled “The Maisky Diaries: The Red Ambassador to the Court of St. James, 1932-43”. Ivan Maisky was the Soviet Union’s ambassador to Great Britain during the tumultuous 1930s and early 1940s as the clouds of war were forming and, then, the storm of battles raged. A particularly gripping part of the book occurs in the weeks leading up to June 22, 1941 when Nazi Germany attacked and invaded the Soviet Union. Illustrative of one of the many foibles of the human condition was Stalin’s refusal to accept that Hitler would attack his country despite incontrovertible evidence of a vast military build-up on his nation’s Western border coupled with the receipt of confirmatory top secret information from British intelligence. Said another way, Stalin was in complete denial that Germany would abrogate a non-aggression treaty signed two years earlier, despite repeated and overwhelming evidence that Hitler could not be trusted to keep his word.

Similarly, though not on such a grand scale, executives often face situations where it is easier to deny reality about their work situation and continue to do what they have always done, despite growing evidence to the contrary. Often the most salient situation is one where they have to seriously consider leaving their current employer and make a job change. I’ve listed below 10 common reasons and conditions which, individually or in combination, should be telltale signs that seeking a new position should be very high on an executive’s career agenda:

1. You are not getting along with your immediate boss or supervisor (or, if you’re the CEO, you are constantly clashing with your board of directors or investors).
2. Your immediate boss or supervisor has just changed and he (or she) seems to have his own team in the wings to take key positions, one of which may be yours.
3. You have little or no opportunity for learning and development or personal growth.
4. You have little faith in the company or business unit strategy.
5. The company is a takeover target or rumored to be one. Also, as a corollary, an activist investor has just announced a big ownership stake in your company.
6. The industry is troubled or is expected to be.
7. You are underpaid or underappreciated.
8. Your peers are moving faster up the ladder and being given more responsibility than you are.
9. You are working crazy hours, commuting long distances, or on the road most of the time.
10. People you respect are dissatisfied and leaving the company.

So rather than setting the stage for disaster, as befell the Soviet Union in 1941-43, by being in denial, I would encourage you to proactively seek another, more gratifying, position in a new organization.

The post The Need to Find a New Position–The Telltale Signs appeared first on SoftOneIT Associates.

• I want to work for a company with a global foot print, or
• I want to work for a company that consistently invests in R&D, or
• I want work with a company that believes in strong brands, or
• I want to work for an organization that is mission driven, or
• I want to work for a firm that’s 15 minutes from my home (as I have childcare issues), or
• I want to work for a company that takes people training and development seriously.

Doing this seemingly simple exercise becomes invaluable later in the process as many find themselves with more than one offer on relatively close timing. Among other factors, what is important to them in their new roles can be the deciding variable in a complex decision process and often more influential than the offer package itself.

Other factors influencing the decision are the role itself and individual’s fit for it, the condition of the company and the industry, the geographic location and the daily commute, opportunity for growth and advancement, the culture of the company, the relationship with and assessment of the supervisor and colleagues, the level of innovation and differentiation at the company, the nature of the competition, and, of course, the specific elements of the offer package.

Often the potential employer will put the candidate through a search process of three to four months involving multiple interviews, psychological assessments, questionnaires, and presentations before an offer is made, and then ask the candidate to absorb, evaluate and respond to an offer in just a few days.

Very often the candidate will receive their initial offer via a phone call. It is critical to make detailed notes, ask clarifying questions, request the offer in writing, and not make any commitment. It’s possible that a second, or sometimes a third offer, can come in within a week or so of the first offer, and we’re highly alert to the opportunity of using one offer to precipitate or accelerate another, a fairly common situation.

We dissect the offer, or the term sheet, element by element, looking at title, salary, bonus, equity, severance (including career transition services), relocation package or housing allowance when relevant, healthcare coverage, other cash subsidies (company car, club membership, etc.), and the non-compete/non-solicitation provisions. If a candidate has more than one offer, we obviously compare one to the other, and each offer to the client’s prior compensation package, and what we know of offer levels in the marketplace.

On occasion, we will encourage a client to accept an offer that is complete and at or above market without any negotiation. Much more often, however, there is a need to negotiate key elements of an offer package and seek clarification and information on others (organizations, for example, rarely share the specifics of severance policies unless asked directly). We construct a template to be used as a negotiating tool that captures key offer elements, matching counteroffer elements, and an appropriate rationale for each requested change. We then rehearse the suggested approach with the key negotiator from the hiring company – a human resource executive, the hiring executive, or even the recruiter who, although never the final decision maker, may be acting as the intermediary or buffer for the company.

Additionally, if there are detailed employment and equity agreements packed with legalese, we encourage our client to engage an employment attorney.

After one or more successful rounds of negotiation, sometimes with more than one company, our client is well-positioned to accept a much improved offer relative to what was on the table initially. In a very recent situation, for example, we were able to help a client secure over $300,000 more than the company initially offered. An improved end result is very common when our SoftOneIT coaches work closely with clients during the negotiation process.

In summary, we employ a series of practices and tools that consistently prove to be crucial in helping clients define the role they are seeking, and develop a strategy and plan to secure the role. We then stand shoulder to shoulder with them to assess the opportunity and optimize the offer.

The post Focusing On Your Best Offer appeared first on SoftOneIT Associates.

There have been many articles written on mentorship and the selection of mentees by mentors and coaches by clients in business and other areas of professional life. Mentees are often expected to have a strong work ethic, discipline, persistence, a desire to achieve, and an ability to synthesize information and arrive at original conclusions. These are all praiseworthy attributes and are very sensible.

The flip side of the question, of course, is what are the key characteristics of mentors and coaches that make them attractive to people who want to be mentored or coached by them?

I would suggest seven attributes that should be considered by someone seeking a mentor or a coach – successful, patient, articulate, candid, focused, caring, and accountable.

While it may seem obvious, someone who is known for delivering strong results, getting things done, or exhibiting a mastery in some field or skill, is someone that the mentee, often less skilled and polished, can learn from in ways that are shaping and enduring. In some ways it’s like the classic relationship between the apprentice and the craftsman where the latter passes his art along to the former.

By definition, mentors and coaches know a lot more and have done much more than their mentees. And it has almost always taken the mentor or coach years to acquire the wisdom, skill, polish and knowledge to do what they do so well. It would be unfair and demotivating to expect a novice to absorb what a mentor has to offer in a period of time defined by weeks or even months. Rather, good mentors take the long view and often use years as the yardstick of their horizon.

The ability to communicate clearly orally and in writing (electronic or otherwise) is a valuable skill to have in the absolute and, of course, makes it easier for the mentee to understand and consider what is being conveyed. It can be frustrating to be offered a deep insight or lesson and have little idea what is being said or communicated. Confusing, unclear, and ambiguous messages are often not actionable. Simple, easy to understand, conversational language always wins the day.

Straight talk delivered in a constructive way is an inescapable element of understanding and improvement. In a world of ever increasing political correctness, coded language, and intentional mislabeling and distortion, it’s refreshing to have someone who is direct but thoughtful, authentic and considerate, and who is willing to explain the essence of a situation or a problem.

The potential mentor will be expected to take the role seriously and see it as important as other things they do. Mentors have a well-developed capacity to make the mentee seem like he or she is the only thing on their mind when they meet or talk, not an easy task in a world with urgent demands, challenges and surprises communicated in multiple ways and often near instantaneously.

How many of us have had to visit a medical specialist who seems distracted, distant, and abrupt. Here you are dealing with a critical physical issue and the doctor can seemingly convey an attitude of indifference just when you most need a caring and empathetic approach. Similarly, I would suggest that language and gestures that communicate “you matter” or “ I want to see you succeed” or “I am pleased to be a guide and resource to you” portrays the type of caring that really cements the mentor-mentee or coach-client relationship, and is essential to making the relationship truly worthwhile.

Finally, both mentor-mentee (or coach-client) need to be accountable for the success of the relationship. The old adage “I do what I say I will do” is integral to the relationship. Nothing builds trust more over time than timely follow-through in a quality way. When we think about how often it doesn’t happen in our day-to-day world, making it a core ingredient of this relationship serves to put the finishing touch on what should already be a beneficial and positive interaction.

So, like picking a career and then an employer, careful consideration and selection within a framework of these seven criteria can often make the difference between developing a mentoring relationship that offers enduring benefits, or one that is less satisfying and fulfilling.

The post Selecting a Professional Career Mentor appeared first on SoftOneIT Associates.

Sometimes concern about the cost is a mental stumbling block for individuals considering career transition services. They hesitate to engage us because they are concerned about the expenditure when they have just lost or anticipate losing their position. Even if they are paid a severance by their former employer, and perhaps a third do receive such a payment, they are nevertheless reluctant to pay out of pocket as they are no longer receiving a regular paycheck and they are concerned about conserving cash during a challenging time.

While a great deal of stress can be experienced as a result of job loss, reluctance to invest in a SoftOneIT program may lead to the further stress as well as of a longer time to land, greater loss of income, and a sub-optimized compensation and benefits package when made an offer.  The hesitation to choose a SoftOneIT program at this critical time is short-sighted and a serious mistake.

Electing to have a highly-qualified career coach and choosing SoftOneIT as a partner during this important career inflection point is a very sound decision for a number of reasons:

First of all, putting your savings or severance to work to purchase our services can enhance and accelerate the job search process. This parallels the classic and timely principle that ‘you have to spend money to make money’. Of course, once a new job is secured, the savings can be replenished out of income immediately or over time.

Second, SoftOneIT ’s process can typically accelerate a client’s landing by at least a month, and often by even more time, because we focus on discovery/positioning, tool development, networking (including introducing our clients to our deep contact network) and interviewing, and negotiating and preparing to onboard our client into his or her new role at the new company.  A simple calculation indicates that in most cases our clients will ‘pay back’ the cost of our program by improving time to landing by only one month. For example, a client who is earning $150,000 in base salary and lands one month sooner more than pays for a six month SoftOneIT program.

Additionally, at SoftOneIT we are often able to assist our clients in negotiating better final compensation packages than they would on their own, as most have never, or only rarely, negotiated their compensation in the past (and a large proportion of these clients haven’t done so in years).  Again, in many instances, the difference we help bring about between initial offers and what is finally negotiated more than pays for a SoftOneIT program.

Third, if an individual is seeking a position that is substantially similar to their prior position, their job search costs are tax deductible in the year they are incurred. For most of our clients that means that 28% – 33% of the cost of their SoftOneIT program can be written off their federal return — see http://www.irs.gov/uac/Job-Search-Expenses-Can-be-Tax-Deductible (2012) and further reference IRS Publication 529.

Fourth, and similar to the point above, most clients may be eligible to receive unemployment benefits. They and their companies have paid for these benefits and there should be no hesitancy in filing for them when needed. These benefits, while certainly not of a level to completely replace an executive salary, can bring real cash into the household. In Pennsylvania, for example, the Department of Labor website says “Unemployment Compensation is for people who lost a job because of something that wasn’t their fault. If you’re out of work because your employer had to make cutbacks, close an office, went out of business or something you couldn’t control, it’s possible that you will be eligible to collect unemployment compensation.”

Finally, a candidate for our services can consider a low cost bank loan.  Currently, a good credit score can qualify an individual for an unsecured $10,000 personal loan for a 9% -10% APR, and perhaps an even better interest rate depending on one’s credit score.  The loan can be paid back over 60 months or once a new position is secured, without penalty. There are a large number of online loan resources as well as conventional brick and mortar banks that offer these loans. And if the client has a good personal banking relationship, the terms negotiated might be even more favorable. Moreover, any interest paid while the loan is outstanding is also tax deductible. So, again, the cost of the loan can be reduced by 28% – 33% depending on the individual’s tax bracket.

A rational business analysis, rather than an emotional reaction to an untimely and often unexpected job loss situation, strongly favors the purchase of a SoftOneIT Executive Career Transition Program from which a client derives substantial professional expertise, a proven methodology, key connections, and crucial negotiation support during a very challenging time in an executive’s career.

Beyond the clear financial benefits, the ROI for investing in a customized career transition program from SoftOneIT Associates is a directed, successful and efficient executive job search campaign with the process knowledge providing significant and lasting benefit over the course of an executive career.

The post A Significant Return on Investment: Cost of a Career Transition Program appeared first on SoftOneIT Associates.

Have you recently been displaced from your job or are you looking for a career change—the kind that speaks to your talents, skills and passions?  But are you unsure of how to go about this transition?

Career transition coaching often guides you through the key phases of your career transition months faster than it would normally take without such experienced and expert support.

The seven phases of a career transition strategy punctuated by a specific example provides a useful illustration:

Six years ago, Paul—an attorney by training and general counsel of a Philadelphia-based U.S. division of a Danish manufacturer—was forced to take a serious look at his future.  His company announced a consolidation of all U.S. divisions in Chicago.  To keep his job, he had to relocate.  Being 54 at the time, and having worked at the Philadelphia division for more than 5 years with deep roots in the city, he didn’t want to move.

This was the perfect time for Paul to consider a career transition.  As he thought about the options, Paul knew he always had a passion for non-profit work and environmental issues, but was unsure about how to make the career shift.

Through executive career transition coaching Paul went through the ‘seven phases of refocusing, repositioning and renewing his career’ to achieve his career goals:

Phase 1: Refocusing by Inventorying

Before you do anything else with your career transition, it’s important to take an introspective, deep dive into inventorying your skills and abilities, and understanding your passions and interests.

Ask yourself: What do you do with excellence?  What are your core professional strengths?

In our real life example, through career transition coaching, Paul did assessment work and identified his strongest professional assets.  After his career coach reviewed articles, position papers and internal communications Paul had written, it was clear that he was an outstanding writer, significantly better than a typical attorney.  Also, being a member of his division’s leadership team, he was quite strategic in his business interactions.

Phase 2: Refocusing for Finding Direction

As you define your skills, talents and experience, to what do they lend themselves?  It’s in this phase that you begin to narrow how and where your core strengths fit best, pointing you to the directions your career transition might take.

Look at the types of positions that fit best with your skills, passion and experience.  A professional coach who knows you well can be invaluable in helping you work through this.

In Paul’s case he took his talent and skills and combined them with his passion for public policy, which requires a real knack for great written and verbal communication along with strategic thinking.

Phase 3: The Move from Refocusing to Repositioning

Once your career transition direction has been established, it’s time to begin identifying possible resources (networking groups, personal connections, professional associations, industry contacts, consultants, vendors and professional service providers, etc.).  This is when you start talking with people who are knowledgeable about your chosen role within a particular industry.

Find someone who will act as a sounding board to help you better understand the needs of organizations of interest to you and ways to refine your positioning to meet those needs.

Paul began to network with an array of non-profit leaders to get a feel for what type of position for which someone with his background and capabilities would fit.  Through his research, he discovered that a select number of larger organizations had created strategy and/or policy roles.

Phase 4: Pre-Repositioning

After in-depth investigation and time spent researching industries and organizations, it’s important to revisit “Phase 2” and refine your target list and role objective.

This is where you define what you can bring to a company based on your exploration and discovery, polishing your message on what you can contribute to the company or organization you’re pursuing.

Now that Paul had in-depth knowledge of the role he wanted to pursue in public policy and strategy, he began the work of reshaping his resume and fine-tuning his objective to speak directly to the needs of this role.

Phase 5: Repositioning through Targeting

You’ve determined the ins and outs of the position, and you know the sector or industry you plan to target for your job search.  This is where you begin to speak to organizations and the people within (or connected to those within) who are willing to help advance your candidacy.

Two months into Paul’s search, he learned that the United Way in Philadelphia was looking to create and fill a strategic public policy role within their organization.  Paul began networking with the key decision makers conducting the hiring for United Way for that specific role.  As a result of his determined networking, he got an interview.

Phase 6: Repositioning to Ace the Interview

Once you’ve landed that interview (or, more likely, multiple interviews within the organization) you’ve been working towards through all these phases, it’s time to prepare yourself for the interviews (as well as any additional evaluation or testing).

For the interviews, you can never be too prepared:

Refine your value proposition Conduct a mock interview Prepare answers to questions you will likely be asked Prepare incisive and elevating questions (that is, elevating your status in the eyes of the hiring executives and relative to competition) in order to learn about the role, business situation, culture, and organizational personalities.

When you are able to present yourself powerfully and positively, this often get you through to the offer stage.

Paul prepared for the interviews, nailed it, and received an offer for the role.

Phase 7: Renewing

When you cross the threshold to a new career, you are re-energized because something new and different and more suitable to your core strengths is far more fulfilling than being bored and unproductive, and often unhappy, at your previous job.

Renewal also occurs for the company or organization, as you become a key ingredient of revitalization.

For Paul, the process took between 6-7 months.  He was well-positioned for the role when it emerged, well-prepared for the interview process, and became the first person in that role for United Way.  And, of course, he was able to stay in Philadelphia and maintain the important elements of his personal life.

Substantial career transitions, the ones that have a positive life impact, happen when you take advantage of your inherent skills and abilities.  There’s no magic bullet in doing this.  It’s a process of personal discovery and then learning and taking action.  But through this process, you will identify and hone your true passions and skills, marrying them to the needs of the marketplace.  In the end, both you and your new employer will benefit greatly from this strong fit.

The post The Seven Phases of Refocusing, Repositioning and Renewing Your Career appeared first on SoftOneIT Associates.

The Corporate America that existed in the 1980s through mid-2000s exists no more. Through the processes of rightsizing, downsizing, offshoring and adjusting to relentless economic pressures or outdated business models, corporations have terminated thousands of their former employees.

As a logical reaction to this phenomenon, people who once worked for corporations are starting businesses, buying businesses, or buying franchised businesses. Additionally, a thriving entrepreneurial community has sprung up, anchored in part by local universities, state government and a sophisticated venture capital infrastructure, and is available to help new businesses, too.

Compared to, say, 30 years ago, executives interested in a new career are better prepared to be their own bosses. Social media and online resources are part of this change, but people today have also worked in flattened organizations without the old hierarchies, support systems, and top-down management. They often had accountability in their corporate jobs and were frequently measured against performance goals. At SoftOneIT , we help our clients catalog and assess these accomplishments to determine what they are good at and what they are interested in as they consider pursuing a new entrepreneurial career.

Here are some questions to ask as you consider becoming an entrepreneur:

1. Have you built or helped grow a division or business either in a corporate setting or another environment? Did that work energize you? If you have a successful track record, investors are more likely to consider funding your new business.

2. Are you passionate about your idea? Do you think it solves a real problem or substantially improves upon an existing product or service? Creating a better product or service than what’s already out there helps you sell your idea to others. Investing your own money in the business will help even more.

3. Are you able to clearly summarize your idea and your business model in one or two pages? You must be able to describe it in what’s known as an elevator pitch, stating in simple, persuasive terms your business strategy and why it’s necessary and different from what already exists.

4. Are you able to take the time to objectively test the product with a range of people to get an early read on it? A key to long-term success is to find a way — through market research or crowdsourcing, perhaps — to test, secure feedback and refine the product or service.

5. Are you a hands-on type of person who is able to handle multiple jobs while the business goes through growing pains its initial years? Having multi tasking skills is the price of entry to the entrepreneurial life.

6. Are you resilient? When setbacks and disappointments inevitably occur, are you able to learn and snap back from them? Entrepreneurship is not for the timid. It requires persistence and flexibility. It means adjusting to new conditions, changing course if necessary, and sometimes starting all over with a new idea.

7. Can you carefully manage cash? Specifically, you need to collect early, pay late, secure and manage a bank line of credit and loan covenants, negotiate customer and supplier payment terms as well as space and equipment leases.  The terms DSO and DPO will become as familiar to you as your initials.

If you decide to take the entrepreneurial leap, talk to others who have successfully done so. Find yourself a set of advisers or business coaches. These might be people who know something about the particular marketplace or about a key challenge you will be facing. Read articles (Innovation Online is a good source) and books (The Hard Thing about Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz is a good start).

As we have frequently seen through our clients at SoftOneIT Associates, the most successful entrepreneurs identify mentors at all stages of startup and company growth, regularly tapping these experts for outside advice to help them get better and better at developing their new business

The post Taking the Entrepreneurial Leap appeared first on SoftOneIT Associates.

There is no one clear path to achieving a successful and lucrative career. There are, however, a number of avenues and roads you may take to get there. Each road is a passageway to opportunities that result in growth and well-metered progress, or diversions and detours that risk derailing your career.

Illuminating your future and paving the way to success through a career transition is well within your grasp. But, it requires a lot of hard work on your part. When it comes to career management, you have to be proactive in today’s volatile economy.  It’s especially important to be disciplined and systematic and leave nothing to chance.

Whether you’ve reached a career fork in the road, or are looking for your next opportunity, the best way to steer your career is to set clear targets and objectives. Consider these 5 Tips for Mapping Your Career Path to Make the Best Career Choices as part of your roadmap:

1. Work for an Academy Company

Early in your career, an excellent career choice is to work for what we call an “academy” company. Companies like Google, P&G, American Express, GE and IBM are known as distinguished places to start a business career as they provide extensive training and people development. You get to learn the business basics from a widely respected, leading organization. When a future employer sees an academy company on your resume, it often gets you in the door and one step closer to your destination.

2. Find Your Mr. Miyagi (of “Karate Kid” fame)

Of all the colleagues with whom you come in contact, invest the time to partner with an executive mentor who is committed to your success. Look for someone with a lot of experience, an executive that is well regarded, selfless and wise. Drawing from their own knowledge base and career experiences, they are able to provide you with solid advice, feedback, and direction.

3. Secure a Variety of Roles

Especially in the first decade of your career, seize opportunities that come your way to experience different roles, responsibilities, and challenges. This diversity of assignments enables you to learn from mistakes and better understand your strengths, what you do well, and what you are passionate about. Once you understand these things about yourself, making thoughtful career choices and mapping out a promising career path becomes clear and crisp.

4. Dare to be Different

Once you’ve built credibility with your supervisor and other senior management, it’s time to proactively seek out career opportunities that differentiate you from your peers. When you have a set of unique, progressive leadership experiences, your value increases exponentially in the eyes of those people positioned to enable your career advancement.

5. Network like a Pro – Early and Often

You want to apply your skills, experience and passion towards a position that affords genuine professional satisfaction and financial reward. Connecting is key. You must proactively work your networks, including executives with whom you’ve worked, professional service providers, customers and vendors, board members, investors and executive recruiters to help you target the role and company that is going to provide you with your best all-around opportunity.

As with any successful journey, you must keep looking ahead, be clear about the direction you’re taking, and stay alert to oncoming opportunities and challenges. Preparedness, along with the ability to quickly adapt to changing conditions, ensures that you stay on the path of successful career choices that ultimately get you to your goal of job satisfaction and financial success.

The post 5 Tips for Mapping Your Path to Make the Best Career Choices appeared first on SoftOneIT Associates.

At SoftOneIT Associates, we view client networking meetings and interviews as the most critical interactions of the entire search process. Doing well at a hard earned networking meeting with an influential person can open doors and create connections that you would have never thought possible. Strong interview performances will likely lead to being in the small select set of favored candidates and, ultimately, the candidate of choice.

We believe it’s as important to prepare well for a networking meeting as it is for an interview.  Before having that meeting, you need to be able to answer the following questions:

• How are you connected to the person with whom you’re meeting, how is your contact connected to this new contact, and how strong is that connection?
• What are your objectives for the meeting? Do you want an introduction to someone; are you seeking industry or company information; do you want information from a subject matter expert; do you want to use your new contact as a sounding board or some combination of these and other objectives?
• Where will you be meeting and how long will the meeting likely run?
• How will you open the discussion to establish some chemistry and likeability?
• How will you position yourself? What do you say to establish credibility?
• What will you ask to elicit the information or connection you’re seeking?
• What are you prepared to offer in return?
• What are your next steps? What has your contact committed to doing?
• How will you diplomatically follow-up?

When hiring decisions are made, the most critical part of the search process, is the interview. Interviews for recruiter led searches normally come in two flavors – recruiter interviews themselves and interviews with executives of the hiring firm. Both types of interviews need to be taken seriously.

These days recruiter interviews are of two types. The first interview type, often done by a “screener”, is typically designed to have the candidate for the role (our client) walk through their background and sometimes, though not always, review their compensation history. Search firms do this to try to ensure that potential candidates fit a range of criteria they’ve worked out with their client (the hiring organization) so as not to waste anyone’s time in the interview process if the candidate is “out of spec”.  The screener may seem to be using a script of questions when conducting this type of interview.

The second type of interview is usually much more substantive and gets into the range of experience, personal characteristics, and key accomplishments demonstrated by the candidate. The questions asked by the recruiter in this interview round are often similar to what a hiring company would normally ask, and are really designed to assess the degree of fit with the position description. It also helps the recruiter (who clearly wants to do well for his client) determine whether the candidate will be brought in for face-to-face interviews at the hiring company, an often time consuming and expensive proposition and a genuine reflection on the recruiter’s professional prowess.

We follow a series of steps in preparing clients for interviews. In real interview conditions, we complete a video-captured “mock” interview with clients who, depending on timing, is centered on one of their preferred current opportunities. We carefully evaluate what I like to call the “cosmetics” and the content of the client’s answers and questions. The “cosmetics” include making eye contact, smiling at appropriate junctures, nodding to show understanding, not staring at the ceiling, not waving hands in a way that’s distracting, keeping answers crisp and delivered with confidence, and being very mindful of the progress and pace of the interview in the time allotted to be sure there is an opportunity for clients to ask questions, as well.

Content of course has everything to do with our client’s ability to readily invoke critical skills, experience, talents and passions through well placed verbal stories which highlight key accomplishments that have substance, drama, and humor and are relevant to the challenges of the new position. At the same time, we want to be sure our clients are prepared to ask what we like to call “elevating” questions to which the client wants real answers, but also reveal deep preparation, penetrating insight, and a synthesis of the problems, opportunities and challenges faced by the organization and its executive team. It’s virtually axiomatic that a senior level candidate will be evaluated as much by what they ask as well as how they answer.

One of the tools we use with clients at SoftOneIT Associates to develop those verbal stories is what we call a SARs (Situation-Action-Result) exercise. The exercise consists of the client looking back at the last 10-12 years of his career and summarizing in writing the most significant 10 or more achievements that they either drove or with which they were associated. Invariably, we review these stories with clients. They are real stories with a beginning, middle, and end and they become essential ingredients for a successful interview. The act of writing the stories, analyzing them, and then sorting them by type gives our clients a powerful platform from which to talk about themselves in a persuasive and polished manner that genuinely differentiates them from other candidates.

We also strongly encourage our clients to do their homework on the people with whom they will be interviewing. What are their roles, what accomplishments are they known for, what are their reputations, how long have they been with the company, what do their career trajectories look like, where were they previously, are they quoted in the public domain, do they have LinkedIn profiles, are they active in professional or industry associations, and do they have a common acquaintance or an intersecting background with our client? Certainly, the more our clients know about each of their interviewers in advance of the interview, and the more commonality we can uncover, the better chance they have of putting this “intelligence” to work on their behalf.

We also ensure that our clients have done their homework on the company and its industry. We want our clients to be well versed in the following: What are the challenges, opportunities and problems facing the company, or the division, or the department? What forces are acting on the industry and what changes are they causing or likely to cause? What are themes of the company’s press releases over the last 12-18 months? What information is on the company’s website, and is the site well done and informative? What is being said on the internet about the company and the people with whom our client is interviewing?  If the company is public, what is being published in the annual report, what key pieces of information are in the company’s SEC filings (and filings with other regulatory agencies such as the FDA, FCC, or EPA), what are analysts writing about the company, are their presentations or analyses about the company or the industry on the internet?

If the client has a consumer facing or retail presence, we encourage the client to visit the store, or call the 800 number, or enroll as a customer, etc. to get a first-hand feel for what it’s like to interact with the company or one of its major functions.

Beyond “prebriefing” clients for their interviews, and customizing their preparation for each interview, we also invest a great deal of time debriefing clients after the interview. We want to know the following about each interview: what was asked and what was answered, was there apparent chemistry between our client and the interviewer, what questions may have caused  our clients to stumble, were there difficult or sticky questions for which  we didn’t prepare, what was the nature and substance of the responses to our client’s questions (and did our clients get a chance to ask them), what are the next steps in the process, and does our client have any obligation or commitment in coming out of the interview? We are also looking for any feedback our client receives from the executive recruiter if one is involved as well as references later in the process.

We always encourage our clients to send thank you notes on a timely basis (within a day or two of the interview), either by email or in hard copy, to everyone that has interviewed them. We generally want the thank you notes to be customized to each interviewer and include a “thank you” to the interviewer for taking the time, a reinforcement of the client’s interest and excitement in the position, a recap of the top 3-4 reasons why the client is a strong fit for the position, and, in some cases, an amplification on or a completely new answer to a tough question that arose during the interview.

In summary, at SoftOneIT Associates we clearly devote the time and attention to ensuring that our clients are prepared for key networking meetings and interviews and review in-depth their results from these encounters.

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Without thinking much about it, all of us are exposed to product or service choices that are positioned to appeal to one type of audience or another. Automobiles are luxurious or practical, gas powered or electric, SUVs or sedans. Soaps are fragrant or creamy, soft on the skin or effective on hard to remove soils. Hotels are simple, self-serve and inexpensive or elegant, exclusive and self-contained.

In looking for a new role, job seekers also need to carefully position themselves in terms of what they emphasize about their experience, skills, talents, abilities and passions, and what sort of role in what type of business situation are they seeking to secure.

Let me illustrate with an example – Steve Jobs as CEO of Apple and Jack Welch as CEO of GE are two former executives most people of a certain age recognize by name. Both executives were very successful (Jobs twice at Apple). Each of the companies under their leadership reached the top of the S&P 500 in terms of market capitalization (stock price multiplied by the number of shares outstanding).

Yet nobody would classify them as being clones of each other in terms of leadership style and on-the-job attributes. Jobs was described as an industry visionary and a marketing genius, but also a mean spirited micro-manager who threw tantrums and often harshly criticized rather than motivated the employees closest to him.

Welch has often been described as strategic, process driven, hyper-competitive and capable of managing enormous complexity and scale. At the same time, he was seen as ruthless (“Neutron Jack”), impersonal, and provocative.

While they were both highly successful at what they did, and had some similarities in personality, nobody would confuse one with the other. I would assert that Jobs would not have fared very well as the CEO of GE, an industrial and financial services colossus, and Welch would have struggled to lead an inventive, groundbreaking technology company. The point of this comparison is to reinforce the idea that to do a successful search, you need to appropriately position yourself to networking contacts, executive recruiters, and hiring company executives.

At SoftOneIT Associates we employ what we call a SARs (Situation-Action-Result) exercise to help clients shape their positioning. The exercise consists of the client looking back at the last ten to twelve years of his career and summarizing, in writing, the most significant ten or more achievements that they either drove or with which they were associated. Invariably, when we review these stories with clients (and they are real stories with a beginning, middle, and end which become essential ingredients for a successful interview), we can pick out what a client likes to do on the job because she’s good at it. And she’s good at it because she has identifiable skills, experience, talents, and passions that we can capture and help her package into an accurate self-description which, applied repeatedly in the right circumstances, becomes a powerful positioning.

So, as one example, we might determine that a client with a financial background can and should be positioned as a CFO whose best fit is one where accounting, receivables management, and cost control are paramount rather than a position where M&A experience and analyst and investor presentations are especially prized.

We also help clients think through, based on their strengths and backgrounds, what type of situation is the best match for them. Are they better at working in startups or early stage companies; do they thrive in high pressure, turnaround situations where the risks of failure are high but the potential rewards for success are outsized; do they do best in large companies with a global footprint where change is more incremental and less sudden; or are they best suited for situations where technical expertise is essential and a generalist background is less essential.

We may also have an even more extreme situation where a client wants to completely reinvent himself in terms of his next position. This requires going through all of the steps noted above along with an intense discovery and exploration process that entails conceptualizing, examining and assessing a variety of possible career paths and seeking outside validation from professionals who are already working in those types of positions and may have made the same career journey themselves.

There are rarely “right” answers to any of these questions at the outset of a client engagement, but we do know that at SoftOneIT Associates, following these steps and engaging deeply and interactively with our clients, we can develop a clear positioning that strongly matches our client’s interests, skills, and experience and resonates well in the marketplace.

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