Career Tips & Trends with Tom McDonough & Deborah Burkholder

Our guest today, Katie Donovan, believes that “If you did not negotiate your salary you are under paid.”

She reminds us, “The one thing a job does differently then everything else we do is gives us money.”

Katie is a salary negotiation teacher, coach, blogger, and speaker on equal pay and women’s salary negotiations. She has been quoted in articles on theglasshammer.com, Forbes.com, and Salary.com.

She brings her negotiating experience in the staffing industry and sales to our conversation today.

We’d love to hear from you in terms of your actionable takeaways from this episode.

Leave a comment or send us an email.

Listen to the full interview by clicking player above.

Here are some exurps from today’s interview…

The actual most powerful moment financially in any employer employee relationship, is from the moment you’re offered the job to the moment you except it.  You will never have that kind of power again about your own pay, until you quite that job.

Every single time you get a new job, without doubt, you should negotiate.  The absolute worse that could happen is you will have the same job offer at the same salary .  That’s not going to happen most of the time.

Play hiring manager for the moment.  If I have a job opening budgeted to pay $50,000.  All I need to do to be a good hiring manager is make sure I get the best talent and pay them less than $50,000.  That can be $49,500.  But I am not going to offer that.  I am going to start most likely with around 40,000 maybe $42, 000 because I expect negotiating. I have to be ready for the percentage that will negotiate.  I don’t know which you are.  It’s a much bigger percentage that won’t.  But I just don’t know which you are.  So I am assuming you are going to negotiate.  Then whatever you don’t negotiate for I can use for other resources.  If it happens often enough I have a whole other body I can hire.

The world of the internet has tons of resources.  Salary.com, payscale.com, glassdoor.com, are three popular salary research websites.

You can go to any nonprofit trade association.  Every industry and every job has a trade association.  If you’re an accountant in high tech, you can belong to a accountant nonprofit trade association or a high tech trade association.  They do research about salary.  They have that available.  You can either find them online or call them, they are more than happy to share that, because they will hope that eventually you will become a member.  If you’re not sure who your trade association is just do a website search. Put trade association into whatever your job is.  You will find it.  I am always amazed how minute a grouping can be that has a trade association that is very active.

Other really good resources are recruiters.  Go to any staffing firm, call them and say hey  I am an administrative assistant, in whatever industry and I am making this, and I maybe am ready for a change.  Can I make more?  Are there jobs available?  It doesn’t mean you have to open your job search.  But you will find out if you’re actually in line or you will actually get more resources by going through the recruiter as well.

Once you get one poor salary your never going to get out of that cycle unless you just stop giving your salary history.

So if you don’t understand how your job actually costs the company or helps the revenue of the company and how you in  particular have either done above or beyond in saving more money or creating more money, you’re not ready for the  conversation about a raise.

My website again equalpaynegotiations.com or you can follow me on twitter @kdb2b that is because I believe when we are doing our salary negotiations we actually are our own business.  We have to think that way.  So it’s me as an employee as a b to my employer the other b.

Listen to the full interview by clicking player above.

We’d love to hear from you in terms of your actionable takeaways from this episode.

Leave a comment or send us an email.

Website: equalpaynegotiations.com

Twitter: @kdb2b

Recommended Resources:

Katie’s new app for iPhone and iPad App: Earn More Girl

What do you want?

80% of finding work you love, work that fits you is knowing what you want. If you don’t know or aren’t quite sure –  just start with what you think you might want. Take small smart steps and follow your gut. Talk to people who are already doing the work you’re interested in. Connect with them on LinkedIn.

To learn more about the Just Start Program check out our Just Start Page.

New: Appia’s Just Start Acadamy

Tom & Deborah help creative engaged professionals turn their dream job into a reality.

We’ll be launching our Job Search the Smart Way, online training program in November.

Contact: Deborah Burkholder – Tom McDonough

We’ve found these books very helpful and recommend them to our coaching clients.

*You can support the show by using our Amazon affiliate links above. Thanks.

Listen to the full interview by clicking player above.

Our guest, career coach Martin Pierce, believes that “15 minutes a day on LinkedIn can revitalize your career”.  He joins us to talk about how.

For the vast majority not having a LinkedIn presence is not an option if you want to be taken as a serious professional. At this time LinkedIn is the “goto” platform for building business relationships, research and access to professionals.

And having a profile is just the beginning, how do you take advantage of LinkedIn’s vast resources, and also become part of those resources.

Martin has worked in corporate and private outplacement, corporate recruiting, and job placement programs for nonprofits.  He has delivered scores of seminars on Resume Writing, LinkedIn, Job Search Networking, Interviewing and Salary Negotiation.

Recent LinkedIn presentations include Boston Medical Center, Suffolk University, and WIND Professional Networking.  Known for his networking expertise, he currently maintains a private career coaching practice in Arlington, MA, where he specializes in LinkedIn consultations and profile writing, career changes and resume writing. Martin also does coaching and training at Career Source Career Center in Cambridge.

We’d love to hear from you in terms of your actionable takeaways from this episode.

Leave a comment or send us an email.

Listen to the full interview by clicking player above.

Here are some exurps from today’s interview…

LinkedIn is the world’s largest business networking  site.

It’s the number one social media site used by recruiters. In fact 95% or more of recruiters and hiring managers use LinkedIn to get candidates.

People how are hiring expect people to be on LinkedIn if they are serious about their careers.

People are realizing that it’s very important to have a professional presence on LinkedIn.

Common mistakes… One of the biggest is not posting a photo.

Networking is all about putting the other person first and how you can help them with their needs and let your needs come later.

Optimize your headline…

In fact along with the photo and the headline, the summary is one of the most important part of the profile .  It can have up to 2,000 characters and it is important to optimize that summary…So similarly in a LinkedIn profile it is very important to show that your clear about what you want to be doing and why and how you can offer value to an organization.

As far as the number of connections, I recommend getting to 100-150 first degree connections on LinkedIn.

Networking is about relationship building and it’s a two way street and these relationship theoretically are relationships we plan to have a long time in the future.

Well I think part of what you are saying is how to have people stand out from the crowd.  One way is to have a well branded summary section, where they really talk about their passions and includes success stories about achievements they have had.  A lot of people either don’t have a summary or have a very boring kind of summary.  It can really come alive and to make it stand out and make people want to get to know you better.  But if you take that opportunity to make it compelling.  Another way is to actively participate in LinkedIn groups.

Don’t get overwhelmed by it.  It can be overwhelming.  Take it one day at a time.  Take a work shop , read a book.  I have a couple good ones in the resource lists.  Budget your time.  Plan a few hours to get a good profile going and then set up a strategy for fifteen minutes a day, and how are you going to use that time.  Stick to it and honor it.  Don’t get so distracted.

Listen to the full interview by clicking player above.

We’d love to hear from you in terms of your actionable takeaways from this episode.

Leave a comment or send us an email.

Email: [email protected]

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/martinpierce

On the web:

http://www.linkedintelligence.com/smart-ways-to-use-linkedin/

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/linkedin-for-dummies-cheat-sheet.html

http://imonlinkedinnowwhat.com/ (Jason Alba blog)

http://linkedinforjobseekers.com/  (Jason Alba DVD for purchase)

http://www.job-hunt.org/executive-job-search/linkedin-for-executives.shtml

(Deb Dib article that includes links to 8 sample well-branded profiles)

“How to Find Your Job With LinkedIn” http://www.careerrocketeer.com/2009/05/how-to-find-your-job-with-linkedin.html  (blog)

http://www.cio.com/article/print/474135

Top 25 LinkedIn Groups All Job Seekers Must Join (Career Rocketeer)

http://www.careerrocketeer.com/2010/08/top-25-linkedin-groups-all-job-seekers.html

http://www.careersolvers.com/blog/2010/01/11/linkedin-job-search-tips-from-the-pros/

You might also enjoy our interview with Joshua Waldman on job search and social media in episode 020. Joshua is the author of Job Searching with Social Media For Dummies.

80% of finding work you love, work that fits you is knowing what you want. If you don’t know or aren’t quite sure –  just start with what you think you might want. Take small smart steps and follow your gut. Talk to people who are already doing the work you’re interested in. Connect with them on LinkedIn.

To learn more about the Just Start Program check out our Just Start Page.

Tom & Deborah help creative engaged professionals turn their dream job into a reality.

We’ll be launching our Job Search the Smart Way, online training program in November.

Contact: Deborah Burkholder – Tom McDonough

We’ve found these books very helpful and recommend them to our coaching clients.

*You can support the show by using our Amazon affiliate links above. Thanks.

Listen to the full interview by clicking player above.

Our guest today is Margaret Moore, MBA (“Coach Meg”), an executive wellness coach and co-author of Organize Your Mind, Organize Your Life: Train Your Brain to Get More Done in Less Time.

Coach Meg is the co-director of the Institute of Coaching at McLean Hospital (a teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School) and the founder and CEO of Wellcoaches Corporation, a leading coach training school.

We asked Coach Meg to discuss how we can apply some of the latest research in neuroscience in our everyday lives to be more resilient and on top of things.

We’d love to hear from you in terms of your actionable takeaways from this episode.

Leave a comment or send us an email.

Listen to the full interview by clicking player above.

Here are some exurps from today’s interview…

Exercise is the break through medicine…In the last decade there has been more research on exercise than what we have done in human history. When you combine that with the explosion around how the brain works, we have a lot more tools.

Moving the body is vital for the brain’s ability to learn, adapt, to regulate emotion and, of course, the slowing of aging…so moving the body is what calms the heart rate, it calms the frenzy so just about every day you read about its power in improving how the brain functions and improving our  health.

The higher your cardiovascular fitness the lower your heart rate, the more the activation of the recovery branch of our nervous system, your parasympathetic nervous system, which leads to a calmer heart.  That directly calms the brain and it improve the attention.  It improves  the ability to deal with impulses and distractions.  It improves the ability to be creative.  So the more fit you are generally, the more benefits you will get to the brain and in the moment.

We can now lay out the conditions, the optimal conditions, for the brain to learn to change and to be resilient.  Some of those are in the Organize Your Mind, Organize Your Life book and I am starting work on the next book so it is a combination of a number of things that all work together and it turns out when you look at today’s way of life we are living in a way that works against the fundamental design of the brain.

The real deal is using your brain’s power which means reserving its peak performance for the most important things and giving them your undivided attention.

…where we put our full attention, neuroscientists call that the learning process, when you are really focused and motivated and, you know, you’ve got lots of juice and you are really in full flight, that is where your brain is laying down new connections.  So neurons are making connections with other neurons which have never existed before.  Over time, as you connect more and more neurons you build a new network so whether mastering a new project or mastering a new skill or overcoming a challenge, whatever it happens to be wherever you are giving something your undivided attention that is where your brain is learning. So you want to treat those times during the day…those brain learning times…as precious moments for learning and you want to make sure you are using them for the most important topics in life where you really do need to learn and improve.

If you know Csikszentmihalyi’s work, the more of those moments you have in a day, the more flow experience that you have the higher your  well-being and the better your health too.  So these flow episodes in our day are the peak moments of life where we are completely engaged in something even better that you are good at and have a higher purpose and you feel like a million bucks after those periods in a day.

It is a good thing to note that overwhelmed is a potent part of stress and negative emotions.  Negative emotions dim the light in your pre-frontal cortex so they actually impair your ability to feel better and to get on top of it.  So how you relate to overwhelmed is actually not a bad place to start…

Listen to the full interview by clicking player above.

We’d love to hear from you in terms of your actionable takeaways from this episode.

Leave a comment or send us an email.

Email: [email protected]

Websites: Coachmeg.com  Wellcoaches.com

Twitter: coachmeg

80% of finding work you love, work that fits you is knowing what you want. If you don’t know or aren’t quite sure –  just start with what you think you might want. Take small smart steps and follow your gut. Talk to people who are already doing the work you’re interested in. Connect with them on LinkedIn.

To learn more about the Just Start Program check out our Just Start Page.

Tom & Deborah help creative engaged professionals turn their dream job into a reality.

We’ll be launching our Job Search the Smart Way, online training program in November.

Contact: Deborah Burkholder – Tom McDonough

We’ve found these books very helpful and recommend them to our coaching clients.

*You can support the show by using our Amazon affiliate links above. Thanks.

Listen to the full interview by clicking player above.

Bertrand Russell, the 20th century British philosopher, said, “What is distinctively human at the most fundamental level is the capacity to persuade and be persuaded.”

The ability to influence or persuade is an important competency that affects all areas of our life. Our guest Tim Vaill is here today to share key concepts of persuasion and tips on how we can improve our ability to influence others.

He had an illustrious career in the private sectors of banking and finance before shifting his focus to the public sector. He currently serves as a Special Advisor to Cabinet Secretary for Housing and Economic Development for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Tim has always been interested in the interplay of language, communications and persuasion. After taking a course at the Harvard Kennedy School with Gary Orren on “Persuasion: The Science and Art of Effective Influence” he has been hooked and assisting in the course ever since.

We’d love to hear from you in terms of your actionable takeaways from this episode.

Leave a comment or send us an email.

Listen to the full interview by clicking player above.

Here are some exurps from today’s interview…

All of us, I think, try to be persuasive  but it wasn’t until I decided to study the science that I  discovered there are specific principles of persuasion that can  make you even better at that…

I think all of our life we are trying to persuade our parents to stay up late at night or to walk home from school or whatever  but we didn’t employ, at least logically, the key principles involved.

Persuasion can be   simply defined as symbolic process where communicators try to convince other people to change their attitudes or behaviors…

It is just that simple.  The key here is to be sure to think about the framework in which you want that person to move to your view or your thought.  Since I became a student of this subject I now think about the principles of persuasion and the principles, therefore, at almost every opportunity.

Let me talk about some of the principles that come to mind but before I do that I need to underscore the fact that we are all in a persuasive situations all the time.

There are many frameworks that people use but the main one that I think about has the following five framework components:  ethos, pathos, logos, agora, syzygy.

I mentioned earlier there are several elements to persuasion and these were developed over the years by writers and others who consider themselves experts in this.  There are 15 or 20 key elements of persuasion such as know your audience; things like scarcity…

Very important is your ability to listen and listen very carefully.  You might think you know your audience when you walk in the door  but you have to, in fact, listen very carefully and if you have done your research ahead of time you are ready to listen and create perhaps the most important work ever.  Here again you have to make your audience realize you are on their side of the line in terms of dealing with a particular topic and understand where they are coming from.

The other principle that I wanted to talk about syzygy.  It is making sure that what you are talking about is relevant to the other person.  It may be relevant to you but if it is not to the other person, you can employ all the other principles you want to and you aren’t going to make any headway here.

I think you have to go back to some other principles that you can put into place. We have all been using persuasion throughout our lives even though we don’t think of it as such.  What I have learned is there is a real science to it so you have to stop and think.  Using metaphors and analogies are very important because you can really relate to the other side by putting salient information in the context that they can understand.

If you go back to the framework and the whole logos business.  The logos is the message and if the message isn’t convincing and you aren’t logically moving through an argument that makes sense then you have a problem.  You have to stop and think before you walk into the room “what is my story?  What is my logos?”   What is the logical framework that I am going to use to convince them that I am the right person?

Another quote I will give you is from Elliot Richardson who was originally a Massachusetts native and who served as Secretary of Defense…  This is a very well known, persuasive guy but he said that in running the government only 2% of the problem is making the decision.  98% is persuading others to accept the decision.

Dwight Eisenhower back a few years ago didn’t use the word persuasion but it really comes through in one of his quotes and that is “Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to.”  I will leave you with that because if you can do that then you are very very persuasive.

Listen to the full interview by clicking player above.

We’d love to hear from you in terms of your actionable takeaways from this episode.

Leave a comment or send us an email.

80% of finding work you love, work that fits you is knowing what you want. If you don’t know or aren’t quite sure –  just start with what you think you might want. Take small smart steps and follow your gut. Talk to people who are already doing the work you’re interested in. Connect with them on LinkedIn.

To learn more about the Just Start Program check out our Just Start Page.

Tom & Deborah help creative engaged professionals turn their dream job into a reality.

We’ll be launching our Job Search the Smart Way, online training program in November.

Contact: Deborah Burkholder – Tom McDonough

We’ve found these books very helpful and recommend them to our coaching clients.

*You can support the show by using our Amazon affiliate links above. Thanks.

Listen to the full interview by clicking player above.

In today’s uncertain business environment, now more than ever, the best way to succeed is through partnerships—with colleagues, with vendors, with competitors, with anyone who might share a common goal and can help build mutual success.

Such partnerships require strong, meaningful relationships. In other words, these relationships require that you become well connected.

We asked Gordon Curtis, author of Well Connected to join us today to discuss his Right Person/Right Approach to social networking.

We’d love to hear from you in terms of your actionable takeaways from this episode.

Leave a comment or send us an email.

Listen to the full interview by clicking player above.

Here are some exurps from today’s interview…

As an executive transition coach for maybe more years than I care to share; over 18; I’ve helped hundreds, upwards to a thousand, clients advance their careers and businesses through the traditional teaching workings of inner work of assessment and integration of skills and interest values and experience but my focus has always been to then shift to the outer market facing actualization and work of identifying and approaching decision makers and what I refer to as critical enablers who are instrumental in accelerating client career business objectives to reality.

I’ve facilitated and witnessed thousands of key introductions and always been fascinated with the networking patters of success and true mutual value creation and I’ve also been amazed at the amount of on and offline social networking time and energy people expend with little or nothing to show for it.  I always felt the vast majority of people walked away from networking exchanges on or off line leaving so much value off the table. 

Over time in this analysis, a very distinct pattern clearly emerged of the seven elements or variables that I felt could easily be replicated for predictable exponential mutual benefit and exchange.  I found the most successful networking exchanges all contained these elements and the less productive ones one or all of the elements of the seven were missing.

…a lot of reasons why this book is referred to; Well Connected and the sub title is A Genuinely Unconventional Approach to Building Genuine and Effective Business Relationships; the unconventional part about it is that I found that whoever dies with the most connections doesn’t necessarily win.

What I found is so much of the value that I received in my business came from a very select group of people.

To elaborate a little bit on that value, that sense that so much was left on the table came from countless comments from clients.  How’d it go?  They’d say well, we hit it off and promised to stay in touch but there was nothing to show for it.  So I’m really interested in having measurable results that are true advances in my client’s objectives.

One of the biggest disconnects is someone might be lined up in all of these seven elements but if we’re not articulating exactly what it is that we’re looking for in language that they truly get, we’re often going to walk away with both parties frustrated because there’s not enough value to exchange so that gets right in to chapter one which is Articulating One’s Objectives.

If someone says I’m looking for a job, if you have any ideas let me know.  Obviously I don’t know. I can’t help you.  If you know of any funders, let me know.  That could be a zillion different funders.  Or I’m looking for a really good java programmer.  That still narrows the field down to a million and on and on for every business objective.

Exactly. And that’s one of the key things that I try to accomplish in Well Connected; take the abstract and turn it in to the truly practical and relevant to each individual in to an application that one could confidently say I can do this.

If you do what I call a diagnosis of their needs and analyzing all of the different drivers to their situation, their business success, where do they get their clients, how is their performance measured, what do they like and generally if you look at it through that lens, you will find something.  It may not be business related.  If you then inventory your own reciprocity constantly we are all sitting on a treasure trove of knowledge, contacts, resources that we don’t really think to exercise or share unless we start to sync it up to another person’s needs.  The approach would be to say “I know you can help me but humor me and help me figure out how I can help you first so I will feel better about asking for help.  Based on my understanding of what you do I see that you are involved with this non-profit and I know someone who is in a similar non-profit and they just recently received some funding.  Would that be something that you would be interested in helping?”

Yes, and that is a real confidence builder when we bypass our needs and we are taking risks and adopting the mind set of “I can actually add as much value as I am going to consume or at least I am going to try  and I am going to feel a lot better about approaching someone even if it is just a gesture but if it changes the whole dynamic and the mental block and the resistance that most people experience when most people are asking for help because most people have a problem, myself included, in asking for help.

…in terms of resources, we could spend the rest of our lives going down these tentacles  and I think it is more important to think about how we weave it all together and so not to point everything back to Well Connected but the last chapter I am pulling it all together on how to gain confidence, quality and control  is to apply each and every one of these seven elements to our own cases so that we go from the abstract of looking at so many resources but the personal disconnect of the application. Anyone can research any one of the networking reciprocity.  I get into how to ask for referrals. There is a hole body of  information out there and I must say there is no one resource.

Listen to the full interview by clicking player above.

We’d love to hear from you in terms of your actionable takeaways from this episode.

Leave a comment or send us an email.

Website: WellConnected.me

Website: CurtisConsulting.net

Twitter

LinkedIn

80% of finding work you love, work that fits you is knowing what you want. If you don’t know or aren’t quite sure –  just start with what you think you might want. Take small smart steps and follow your gut. Talk to people who are already doing the work you’re interested in. Connect with them on LinkedIn.

To learn more about the Just Start Program check out our Just Start Page.

Tom & Deborah help creative engaged professionals turn their dream job into a reality.

We’ll be launching our Job Search the Smart Way, online training program in November.

Contact: Deborah Burkholder – Tom McDonough

We’ve found these books very helpful and recommend them to our coaching clients.

*You can support the show by using our Amazon affiliate links above. Thanks.

Listen to the full interview by clicking player above.

To help us sort through what time means to us and how we can better manage our use of time, we asked Kathryn McKinnon, Time Management Expert, and Author of Triple Your Time Today to join us.

As you’ll hear from her story, her life and relationship with time has evolved over time, and as she took charge of her life and time now focuses on Executive Development & Coaching for Success with Your Life, Career and Your Time!

We’d love to hear from you in terms of your actionable takeaways from this episode.

Leave a comment or send us an email.

Listen to the full interview by clicking player above.

Here are some exurps from today’s interview…

I think we take it for granted.  Time is a state of mind.

The fact of the matter is with time there’s no future and no past. There’s only the present moment.  If you live your life present moment to present moment to present moment, you realize you have a choice in how you spend your time.  There is such a thing as time management and yes you can. You can really manage your time.

When you start to really live in the moment; it’s hard to do at first; but when you really focus in and live in the moment you realize that you have an abundance of choices about how you spend your time.

I’ve been an executive for 32 years and a coach for the past 20 years.  I primarily help women executives, professionals and entrepreneurs and some open minded men learn how to choose more success with their life and their career and their time.  I’ve founded businesses.  I’m a busy mom. I have two active teenage boys, a husband of 23 years who travels a lot so I’m a single mom when he’s gone.  He is really gone for weeks at a time. I’m also a paid professional singer on weekends and I volunteer. I’m the one responsible for keeping everything going.  I want you to know, I don’t have a full time assistant. I don’t work 14 hour days. I keep weekends open for my family. I have a home office that I work from.  I chose this career and I chose this topic and I chose this way of developing my career so that I could have a family.  I think it’s important for people to know that.

How do you make all those choices?  I think the answer is over the years I’ve developed a mind set as well as systems that really help me create more time for the things I need and want to accomplish.

I never saw the truck.  In an instant this two ton flat bed truck ran through a stop sign and it violently crashed in to me.

After a break at the hospital I went back to work.  After months of physical therapy and a year of visits to a chiropractor, I still had that back pain. I also had the stress at work. I didn’t know at the time that there was a connection between stress and physical pain.

At that point I kind of had an epiphany.  As I began to really embrace the process of focusing my thoughts, I started to appreciate my time in a new way.  I realized that all my attempts to be productive and successful had almost succeeded in helping me lose my life.

It was a real wake up call for me.  Since then, which was many years ago, I’ve had a continual awakening to try to stay within my grounded personal energy while consistently moving towards my goals and getting things done.  I made a decision to reclaim my personal power.  I made a choice. I found my purpose.  I embraced how I spend my time in a whole new way.  Life opened up for me as a result of that with grace and certainty and it continues each and every day as I continue using these practices and these systems.

You ask why did I write the book. Well, a few years ago I was seeing a lot of success in the transformation my clients were having as a coach and I wanted to help more people.  I began to shift my business on line.  While looking for ways to build my business, I was told that giving away a free report was a great way to build a contact list.  So I reviewed all my client issues and stories and started looking at what they all had in common.

Interestingly, I notice they all had difficulty managing their time in one way or another. Then I realize that managing time was something that I had become really good at; over time.

The first strategy that I think might be the most important in managing your time is develop the right mind set.  That’s the foundation for everything that I do and teach. We all have the same amount of time every day but do you know how you spend your time?  More importantly, do you know what you think about while you’re spending your time?  If you’re not getting the results you want with your time, maybe it’s because you’re not focused on the right things. When you create the right mind set, you become really far more efficient with your time because you’re consciously aware of what you’re thinking about each moment. That helps you reach your goals…

Listen to the full interview by clicking player above.

We’d love to hear from you in terms of your actionable takeaways from this episode.

Leave a comment or send us an email.

Website: kathryn-mckinnon.com

Twitter:  @KathrynMcKinnon

Special Offer to Career Tips & Trends listeners.

80% of finding work you love, work that fits you is knowing what you want. If you don’t know or aren’t quite sure –  just start with what you think you might want. Take small smart steps and follow your gut. Talk to people who are already doing the work you’re interested in. Connect with them on LinkedIn.

To learn more about the Just Start Program check out our Just Start Page.

Tom & Deborah help creative engaged professionals turn their dream job into a reality.

We’ll be launching our Job Search the Smart Way, online training program in November.

Contact: Deborah Burkholder – Tom McDonough

We’ve found these books very helpful and recommend them to our coaching clients.

*You can support the show by using our Amazon affiliate links above. Thanks.

Listen to the full interview by clicking player above.

Our guest today is Brian Kurth CEO of PivotPlanet, a service providing one-on-one mentorship conversations with successful people doing work they love. Would such a conversation be a way for you to take that next step forward in your career.

PivotPlanet is the next iteration of Kurth’s VocationVacations model which offers face-to-face career mentorships. The model has been referenced in books like Daniel Pink’s DRIVE, and in The Start-up of YOU, by LinkedIn’s co-founder and chairman, Reid Hoffman.

We’d love to hear from you in terms of your actionable takeaways from this episode.

Leave a comment or send us an email.

Listen to the full interview by clicking player above.

Here are some exurps from today’s interview…

I moved to Portland Oregon from Chicago and stared VocationVacations  as a hobby business in 2004 and it took off like wild fire, very quickly.  We launched with 10 mentors in Oregon and we rapidly moved into 100’s across the United States.  That was over the course of about 6 years or so and then something happened  called the recession.

The demand for VocationVacations was higher than ever  but the ability and willingness to pay was a problem for  people.  At the same time we were beginning to realize people were asking if they could have a video session  with a mentor first. So we said why not – that is where we should be heading.

Hence that is where PivotPlanet came from.

Vocation Vacation morphed into PivotPlanet and we renamed it because an hour video is not really a VocationVacation.  The word vacation became a misnomer.

We just launched on October 4 and we are thrilled to have 100s of advisers across 100s of professions.  We are already truly global.  We have several advisers coming on board in a few countries.  So we now provide the in person mentorship that VocationVacations used to provide but now the majority of our sessions are live one on one video sessions so people can test the waters remotely then decide  if they want to go live with this and do they want to pursue this career.

You get a lot out of an hour… it is a weather vane that provides you a level of knowledge if this career is something  that you want to pursue further.  Do you want to go back to school?  Do you  want to set up an in person mentorship?

Listen to the full interview by clicking player above.

We’d love to hear from you in terms of your actionable takeaways from this episode.

Leave a comment or send us an email.

Website: Pivotplanet.com

Twitter: @pivotplanet

Facebook: facebook.com/PivotPlanet

80% of finding work you love, work that fits you is knowing what you want. If you don’t know or aren’t quite sure –  just start with what you think you might want. Take small smart steps and follow your gut. Talk to people who are already doing the work you’re interested in. Connect with them on LinkedIn.

To learn more about the Just Start Program check out our Just Start Page.

Tom & Deborah help creative engaged professionals turn their dream job into a reality.

We’ll be launching our Job Search the Smart Way, online training program in November.

Contact: Deborah Burkholder – Tom McDonough

We’ve found these books very helpful and recommend them to our coaching clients.

*You can support the show by using our Amazon affiliate links above. Thanks.

Listen to the full interview by clicking player above.

Our guest is Dianne Shaddock Austin. Today we’re talking with an insider about the impact of new trends on recruitment practices and suggestions for getting seen by a large complex organization that by their reputation already attract a high number of applicants.

Dianne is the President of Easy Small Business HR, an online employee management resource, and the host of the iTunes podcast “Employee Hiring and Management Tips”.

She has over 20 years of experience as an HR professional and has successfully helped managers at all levels recruit, hire, and manage staff. She has done extensive work in diversity and inclusion as well as in counseling employees and job seekers alike on how to best position themselves during their job search and manage their career development.

Dianne is the author of several books. Her newest guide “Strategies For Finding and Keeping Your Job: Secrets From an HR Insider” will be published later this year.

We’d love to hear from you in terms of your actionable takeaways from this episode.

Leave a comment or send us an email.

Listen to the full interview by clicking player above.

Here are some exurps from today’s interview…

Having the best people and the right people is so critical for any organization.  We certainly, as an organization, could not have attained the status of #1 Hospital in the Nation if it wasn’t for our employees; and that’s everyone from our nutrition and food services staff on up to the physicians and administrators.  We do a great job at Mass General– recruiters understanding what talent works well in the hospital based on our business goals and our culture.

We try to make sure our hiring managers are up to speed on the best interviewing practices…

Applicants are competing with hundreds of other applicants.

I talk to people a lot about educating them about the process because I do sense a frustration from so many people who just feel like they have the qualifications and no one is calling them.  Is it a waste of my time to even apply?  Well, it’s not a waste of your time and I don’t want anyone to misunderstand what I’m saying in terms of you want to take different approaches towards finding a job.  What I want to emphasize is you don’t want to just rely on submitting a resume and waiting for someone to call you.  When you do go through the process of submitting a resume to an organization like Mass General, you want to make sure you dot all of your I’s and cross all of your T’s.  Just a tip for listeners out there, if you should apply for a job at Mass General, we look very closely at the qualifications that are listed in the posting against the resume.

Just to give listeners another perspective on that, I think first of all; as I mentioned earlier; there are some core requirements that an applicant would need to have in order to be considered for the job.  Now, once that person has those core requirements, there’s always going to be things that, no matter how much expertise you bring to the table that you’ll have to learn in a new organization.  I do understand the frustration of having 80% of the experience. The key is really that you have those core qualifications; the core requirements that are needed.  If you don’t, managers just don’t have the luxury of training or sending someone to training for the core competencies.

I think the first baby step is to do some self assessment.  Thinking about where you are now in terms of your career and what path would you like to take?  You may find through that self assessment process that there is a path you want to take.

Listen to the full interview by clicking player above.

We’d love to hear from you in terms of your actionable takeaways from this episode.

Leave a comment or send us an email.

Contact Dianne Shaddock

Website: http://easysmallbusinesshr.com

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: @diane_esbhr

80% of finding work you love, work that fits you is knowing what you want. If you don’t know or aren’t quite sure –  just start with what you think you might want. Take small smart steps and follow your gut. Talk to people who are already doing the work you’re interested in. Connect with them on LinkedIn.

To learn more about the Just Start Program check out our Just Start Page.

Tom & Deborah help creative engaged professionals turn their dream job into a reality.

We’ll be launching our pilot 12 Week Job Search the Smart Way online training course mid October.

Contact: Deborah Burkholder – Tom McDonough

We’ve found these books very helpful and recommend them to our coaching clients.

*You can support the show by using our Amazon affiliate links above. Thanks.

Listen to the full interview by clicking player above.

Our guest today is Jim Faber. We asked Jim to talk about what a mentor is, and not only how to find one but how to be one.

Jim has developed an appreciation for the value of effective mentoring in his senior management roles at companies such as Thermo Electron, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Fisons Instruments and earlier in his career at Bausch & Lomb where he has been responsible for effective employee development and mentoring, management of customer loyalty improvement, and complaint management creating growth, and organizational excellence to capitalize on market opportunities.

We’d love to hear from you in terms of your actionable takeaways from this episode.

Leave a comment or send us an email.

Listen to the full interview by clicking player above.

Here are some exurps from todays interview…

A mentor is a person with knowledge of a particular topic and is willing to share it and willing to help others learn the same topic or learn how to do something or learn how to interact with people not necessarily telling them how to do it but convincing them that there are ways to do it and help them do it.

Teaching is part of it but a mentor is a much more close personal relationship.  I used to call it free advice.  When you are mentoring someone you can say “look this is the way you are doing it but there is another way and this is the way you might consider doing it and this would be the outcome,” and if the mentoree likes that, then that is fine but if they don’t then they can discuss it back and forth.  A portion of it is teaching, yes, it is a two way dialog in mentoring.

If there isn’t a bond between the mentor and mentoree,  then it just will not work.  There has to be a trust there.

My mentors have always been people whom I have had good chemistry with, and in some cases they would have been my superiors and in other cases they have been peers and in other cases they were levels above me who saw potential in me.  There has to be a chemistry.

In today’s business world and environment to build that relationship and stay connected is imperative.

Absolutely, as a matter of fact the most ideal job for me would be to enter an organization that has a lot of great people that want to be successful, and helping them be successful.  I am a very big fan of Good to Great.  Good to Great is really mentoring.  You get a bus and put the people on the bus but getting them in the right seats if they aren’t in the right ones is very important and mentoring is the key to moving people successfully to another seat or getting them off the bus.  If you mentor someone to try to do their job better and make the most of the position they are in and they can’t do it right, this is found out very quickly.

Most of my superiors, with one exception, have been my mentors.

Mentoring is the cheapest, easiest and most socially acceptable way of getting people in the right jobs.  It is certainly less stressful on people to get them to fulfill a job requirement that is much easier and much more rewarding.

Listen to the full interview by clicking player above.

We’d love to hear from you in terms of your actionable takeaways from this episode.

Leave a comment or send us an email.

Contact Jim Faber

[email protected]

80% of finding work you love, work that fits you is knowing what you want. If you don’t know or aren’t quite sure –  just start with what you think you might want. Take small smart steps and follow your gut. Talk to people who are already doing the work you’re interested in. Connect with them on LinkedIn.

To learn more about the Just Start Program check out our Just Start Page.

Tom & Deborah help creative engaged professionals turn their dream job into a reality.

We’ll be launching our pilot 12 Week Job Search the Smart Way online training course mid October.

Contact: Deborah Burkholder – Tom McDonough

We’ve found these books very helpful and recommend them to our coaching clients.

*You can support the show by using our Amazon affiliate links above. Thanks.

Listen to the full interview by clicking player above.

Personal branding author and entrepreneur, Joshua Waldman, joins us today. Joshua is the author of Job Searching with Social Media For Dummies, and writes the careerenlightenment.com blog.

We met Joshua at the Career Thought Leaders conference earlier this year. And we’re delighted to be able to continue our conversation with Joshua so our listeners can hear what his latest thoughts are directly from him.

His teaching (and use) of technology and marketing skills helping businesses grow and job seekers get noticed is quite impressive. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to go to the Career Enlightenment site and sign up for his blog.

We’d love to hear from you in terms of your actionable takeaways from this episode.

Leave a comment or send us an email.

Listen to the full interview by clicking player above.

Here are some exurps from todays interview…

I think that we passed the time of choice  with social media in the job search and there is a lot of statistic to back up the fact that recruiters, in particular, and hiring managers, more generally, are using social  media, whether they admit it or not.

I think everybody is googling everybody and I think more specifically that recruiters are finding candidates as well as engaging with candidates via social media, sort of part and parcel of the process these days.  Ten million Americans found their jobs with www.linkedin.com and eighteen million with www.facebook.com so there is a lot of evidence to show that if you aren’t on social media your competition most certainly is.

… baby boomers have an incredible advantage over new people in the workforce and that is that they have many, many years of experience being professional and that professionalism, that skill in networking, translates remarkably well when applied to social media.

One of the biggest changes we are seeing is the adoption of talent pools or talent communities because at the end of the day a candidate is going to be passionate about a brand or a company but that company might, or might now, have an active job requisition.

So the problem is as they are writing their profiles, some job seekers are not thinking about how they are messaging themselves, how their image is coming across, how they are going to be consistent across many different channels and they end up looking flaky.

One more time in summary, the three most important steps in doing a job search online are…

What I see most is, well nobody likes pain, and for most people networking is painful.  Raise your hand if you are an introvert and you will know what I am talking about.  Let’s say you are a job seeker and you have a choice.  You can go out and network locally or you can go on LinkedIn and start sending e-mails out to people, but that is kind of painful or uncomfortable, so I think I am going to reword  my headline and rewrite that bio and do a new picture, etc.  A lot of people tend to shy away from that face to face interaction to a more solitary type of fill out the profile type of activity and we just have to be careful that we aren’t choosing one painful stimulus over a worse painful stimulus.

The most expensive mistake that a hiring manager can make is hiring the wrong person and so are you who you say you are?

Listen to the full interview by clicking player above.

We’d love to hear from you in terms of your actionable takeaways from this episode.

Leave a comment or send us an email.

Contact Joshua Waldman

Website: CareerEnlightenment.com

Twitter: @JoshuaWaldman

80% of finding work you love, work that fits you is knowing what you want. If you don’t know or aren’t quite sure –  just start with what you think you might want. Take small smart steps and follow your gut. Talk to people who are already doing the work you’re interested in. Connect with them on LinkedIn.

To learn more about the Just Start Program check out our Just Start Page.

Tom & Deborah help creative engaged professionals turn their dream job into a reality.

We’ll be launching our pilot 12 Week Job Search the Smart Way online training course mid October.

Contact: Deborah Burkholder – Tom McDonough

We’ve found these books very helpful and recommend them to our coaching clients.

*You can support the show by using our Amazon affiliate links above. Thanks.

Listen to the full interview by clicking player above.