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  • Haggle Over Salary? It’s Not Allowed

    Career Corner is a program produced by the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network, part of State Services for the Blind and it is recorded for people who are blind or have reading disabilities. You can find complete programming of the Radio Talking Book at www.mnssb.org/rtb and the password is rtb. Your host for Career Corner is Anne Obst.

    (music)
    The next article is entitled, “Haggle Over Salary? It’s Not Allowed
    Startups say they make take-it-or-leave-it job offers to foster transparency, fairness” by Rachel Feintzeig and Rachel Emma Silverman, from the May 27 issue of The Wall Street Journal
    Some startup companies are making take it-or-leave it salary offers to prospective employees to foster transparency and fairness.
    The social-news site Reddit.com has a tip for new hires expecting to negotiate their pay: Don’t even try it.
    The San Francisco-based Web company, which has about 169 million unique monthly visitors and is known as the launchpad for viral Web phenomena, has a take-it-or-leave-it policy for starting salaries. Other firms, including e-commerce startup Jet.com Inc. and test-preparation firm MagooshInc., have similar rules in place.
    Some candidates walk away when they hear that salary offers are final, but other new hires say they like not having to bargain. Bosses say that taking haggling out of the equation fosters transparency and fair pay.
    Reddit Inc.’s interim chief executive, Ellen Pao, says that pay negotiations put women at a disadvantage because men negotiate harder than women. Ms. Pao pursued and ultimately lost a high-profile suit alleging that her former employer, the venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, passed over women for promotions and plum roles.
    Recent disclosures by technology firms of largely male and white or Asian workforces have sparked discussions about diversity and women’s experience in the industry. Many bosses are trying to come up with ways to attract and retain heterogeneous workforces, and they see pay and benefits as a crucial lever.
    “People who perform the same should be paid the same,” Ms. Pao says. “We want to make sure we maintain this level playing field.”
    Prospective Reddit employees can choose between two offers—one weighted more toward equity, the other toward cash. With just about 50 employees, Ms. Pao says that it’s hard to know whether the company has a gender pay gap but she wants to ensure one doesn’t develop as the company grows.
    Not everyone agrees. Users on Reddit’s own discussion boards took issue with the policy, with one sniping that “meritocracy is playing second fiddle to gender politics.” Kenan Abosch, who leads Aon Hewitt’s compensation consulting practice, cautions that A-players might not want to work for a company where pay is preset. Others question whether such policies actually help advance women.
    Amy Ala, a recruiter at Microsoft Corp., wrote on a recruiting blog that she wants “candidates to feel like they’ve won” and says that Ms. Pao is “taking that away from them.”
    Ms. Pao says she isn’t opposed to women honing their negotiation skills but doesn’t believe in penalizing poor negotiators with low pay. She adds that she’ll make adjustments if Reddit has trouble attracting top talent.
    Linda Babcock, an economics professor at Carnegie Mellon University who researches women and pay negotiation, says that standardizing starting salaries might go far in fixing pay imbalances—provided that companies stick to the plan. If they allow exceptions, “women will follow the rules, men will still try to negotiate, and if they are successful, that will further the gap. It could make things worse.”
    Research by both Dr. Babcock and Hannah Riley Bowles, a Harvard University lecturer who studies women and negotiation, has shown that men are about four times more likely than women to negotiate pay but that women are viewed more unfavorably when they do so.
    As a result, “women’s reticence to negotiate is very real,” says Dr. Bowles.
    Set pay levels have long been the norm in industries like management consulting, law and government. Often at these organizations there is a large pool of similarly qualified applicants entering at the same point, as with newly minted law-school graduates entering as law-firm associates. Elsewhere, workers usually expect to negotiate.
    Kristin Keating says she was taken aback upon learning there was no wiggle room in the job offer she received from online test-prep service Magoosh Inc. in December. Before long, she says, she felt some relief about not having to haggle.
    After the company explained the rationale behind the no-negotiation policy, she says, she accepted the job developing test-prep materials, even taking a 15% pay cut from her previous role because the company offered good benefits, a manageable workload and other “intangible rewards.” But she adds that “I can’t honestly say I wouldn’t have liked a higher salary, because who wouldn’t?”
    Ms. Keating’s boss at the Berkeley, Calif., company, CEO Bhavin Parikh, says that of the more than 30 job offers he has made, more than 90% were accepted.
    The company reviews salaries quarterly, comparing its pay to market rates at similarly sized firms using salary surveys or listings on the AngelList website. Magoosh raises employees’ pay when the company hits certain revenue milestones or when market rates increase; promotions also result in raises for individual workers. Full-time workers currently earn around $40,000 to $150,000.
    At Jet, managers offer candidates one of 10 set levels of compensation, ranging from about $37,500 in base salary to the upper $100,000s, according to Nate Faust, the chief operating officer. (A few senior executives make more than that, he says, and all employees get stock-option grants too.) If candidates say their offers are low, managers encourage them to look up the LinkedIn profiles of other hires who were slated in the same level so they can see they have similar experience.
    The approach ensures the company isn’t biased toward loud or aggressive workers even once they’re in the company, says Marc Lore, the company’s chief executive. Workers who try to force a raise by presenting a rival offer are generally bid good riddance.
    If “someone gets another job offer, I would be like, ‘OK, sorry, good luck,’” says Mr. Lore, a co-founder of Quidsi Inc., the parent company of Diapers.com. “There’s no matching of things.”
    Fewer than five candidates have turned him down so far, Mr. Lore says. The company currently has around 250 employees.
    Joe Maliekel, who joined as the company’s associate director of supply chain last December, says he found the no-negotiation rule “refreshing.”
    At the time, he had been interviewing elsewhere, spending weeks hashing out the financial details of other offers. With Jet’s pay proposition set in stone, he says he could focus his decision on the company and his role in it.
    “In some sense, it felt liberating,” he says.
    Again, that was “Haggle Over Salary? It’s Not Allowed.”

    9 min
  • Breaking the grief circle of job loss resentment

    Career Corner is a program produced by the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network, part of State Services for the Blind and it is recorded for people who are blind or have reading disabilities. You can find complete programming of the Radio Talking Book at www.mnssb.org/rtb and the password is rtb. Your host for Career Corner is Anne Obst.

    (music)

    We turn now to the Working Strategies column in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, from August 30, written by Amy Lindren: Breaking the grief circle of job loss resentment

    I appreciate my readers and clients as the source of so many of my column ideas. Not long ago, I connected with a young woman who had received a layoff notice two weeks earlier, and was negotiating a severance package when we spoke.
    By all external standards, this process has gone as smoothly as could be expected, with no hard feelings on either side. As she reported, "The day after I left, I honestly felt as if I had moved through the grief cycle pretty well. I really felt ready to move forward."
    And then? About a week after her last day on the job, she says, she woke up angry, which shocked her. After holding it together so well, she was not expecting such a raw emotion before even starting her day. Where did that come from?
    I couldn't help but laugh. As I told her, the same thing had happened to me, after one of my many involuntary departures from a job.
    In my case, the work I had been doing for almost three years was no longer necessary, leading to the inevitable layoff. After having had multiple jobs over a few short years, I was ready to try something different, so I headed out the door with my box of memories and promptly went into self-employment.
    So busy was I with my startup and the myriad part-time positions needed to support it, I didn't even consider the concept of an emotional fallout from losing a job I loved. As my business grew, I was able to stop waitressing, unloading trucks, delivering phone books and all the other things I'd been doing to look more prosperous than I was.
    I felt like I had made it.
    And then it happened. About seven years after the layoff -- seven years! -- I was leaving a downtown parking ramp when I saw a familiar silhouette on the sunlit sidewalk 20 feet in front of my vehicle. It was the unmistakable profile of a very nasty manager from my old job.
    I wasn't surprised that he would be walking along in front of my car. Rather, I was surprised by the momentary flash of anger I felt. It actually occurred to me that I could punch the pedal and flatten the fellow who had tormented me nearly every week of my otherwise happy years at the job I had lost.
    The moment passed, he crossed safely in front of me, and I drove away shaken by the realization that I had not fully recovered from my layoff after all. As I told my client in our recent conversation, the emotions from a job loss are not necessarily logical, nor do they appear in a timely way.
    In the nearly three decades that I've been serving laid-off workers in my business, I've done my share of reading and thinking about the famous job-loss grief cycle based on psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross' work on death, dying and grief. Frequently depicted as a U-shape, with the hapless worker descending down a line of negative emotions (disbelief, bargaining, anger, etc.) before bottoming out and climbing back up a line of positive emotions (acceptance, hope, etc.), this concept has been foundational for professionals in my field.
    And yet, ever since my parking ramp epiphany, I've felt the need to reshape that line from a U to a vertical spiral. Now I think we're not likely to "recover" from deeply challenging circumstances so much as we are to incorporate them into our lives moving forward.
    My new visual starts with a circle. If you picture someone walking along a closed circle which features several emotions stationed along the circumference -- anger, hope, acceptance, etc. -- you have the image of someone who is moving through different stages but not really progressing: The circle just keeps repeating. But if you break open the circle and stretch it upwards like a coil standing on end, now you have constant upward movement, even while the individual circles around periodically to revisit emotions you would expect him or her to have left behind.
    I don't know if that image helps or confuses things but I do know this: After all these years, I no longer expect workers to "get over" their job losses, any more than they would any other grief they've experienced. I just want them to keep moving, keep growing and keep returning to hope and acceptance as they layer in positive work experiences over the painful ones. 

    6 min
  • Baffled by Office Buzzwords

    Career Corner is a program produced by the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network, part of State Services for the Blind and it is recorded for people who are blind or have reading disabilities. You can find complete programming of the Radio Talking Book at www.mnssb.org/rtb and the password is rtb. Your host for Career Corner is Anne Obst.

    (music)
    We turn now to an article from the New York Times, July 4, by Marilyn Katzman, Baffled by Office Buzzwords
    When my new supervisor passed by my desk and said, “I’ll have to schedule your ‘bilateral,’ ” I nodded and assumed a look that suggested I knew what he was talking about. It took some time before I was able to deduce that this would be a one-on-one meeting with my boss.
    Why didn’t he just say that? Wait, do we still say “boss?” In my new position, I was soon to realize that a knowing look, when cryptic corporate speak was heard, would be needed more often.
    It wouldn’t be the last time I would feel the need for translation assistance in a series of temporary assignments after I was “let go,” or should I say “reorganized,” from my position at a nonprofit organization in 2011. As a senior communications professional, I had not expected to encounter a language barrier working at major national corporations.
    So just why is there a need for using a word like “bilateral” in a new way? Why not say what you mean? I felt it was going to take extra effort on my part to keep a straight face so that I would look like I was part of this corporate language in-crowd.
    Within a short time, one of my colleagues asked me if I had “bandwidth.” Thank goodness I didn’t respond with stats from my PC, or offer other technical frequency metrics. Soon enough, I was able to figure out that he was asking if I had time to help with a project. How about, “Do you have time to help?” Bandwidth is a big word around these companies. Have these words been added to the dictionary while I was out?
    New words are, in fact, added to dictionaries every year. Last year, for example, selfie and hashtag became part of Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary in recognition of their popular usage. And new words and slang reflecting the increasing use of technology are also added annually to the Oxford Dictionary. So I checked, and no, bandwidth is still listed as “the range of frequencies with a given band, in particular that used for transmitting a signal.”
    It can’t be just me who’s confused. Perhaps, to help me keep things in perspective, I should have looked up “jargon.” While generally defined as the language of a particular profession or group, secondary definitions refer to it as being obscure and pretentious. Perhaps that is too harsh. Though often frustrated, I do believe my colleagues thought their messages were clear and effective.
    My efforts to look intelligent — O.K., my bluffs — were only to continue. I learned fairly quickly that if I used the word “strategy” often enough, I’d be viewed favorably. Would I appear to be more intelligent and in the know if I threw “transparency” into the conversation? I am certainly willing to make every effort to foster transparency, while hoping all the time that no one sees through me in any way.
    It took only one week in another assignment to ascertain, without looking too dumb, that “decks” are not floors in a parking garage, but PowerPoint presentations. At least I knew immediately that “channels” were not options on my television, but various vehicles for communicating.
    It was quite a mental strain to jot down reminders of words and phrases in the margins of my notes to look up after meetings — lingo like “deliverables” and “air cover.” Some I could guess at. Some weren’t so easy.
    The last I heard, “deep dives” required snorkeling equipment and a boat, and weren’t part of coming sessions. I won’t even mention the acronyms flying around the room, and the assumption that we all knew what they referred to.
    When I repeated some of these terms to friends, I was amused to learn that an actual bingo game had been created for secret use in business meetings. Some clever or bored souls came up with the idea of creating a series of cards with grids containing frequently mentioned corporate terms. Every time someone says one of these corporate-speak words in a meeting, you are supposed to mark your box. If you actually complete a line, you are to stand up and call out “Bingo!” I dare you. Here are some of the terms found on the cards: quality vector, knowledge management, drill down, strategic fit, smartsize and right shoring.
    I always thought sharing a common language, even if it included industry-specific jargon, would foster collaboration and teamwork. But let’s discuss this off-line — I mean, later.

    6 min
  • Acknowledge the 'elephant in the room,' before it crowds you out

    Career Corner is a program produced by the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network, part of State Services for the Blind and it is recorded for people who are blind or have reading disabilities. You can find complete programming of the Radio Talking Book at www.mnssb.org/rtb and the password is rtb. Your host for Career Corner is Anne Obst.

    (music)
    We turn now to the Working Strategies column in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, by Amy Lindgren, from August 16: Acknowledge the 'elephant in the room,' before it crowds you out
    I frequently hear from job seekers that they fear they were -- or will be -- turned down because of something that couldn't easily be discussed, such as being too old or too young compared with others on the team, or being very large in stature, or for having a personality that was notable in some way (very outgoing or taciturn, for example).
    These job seekers know going in they're different from the candidate the employer was anticipating. And yet they made it to the interview, so something on the resume, cover letter or in the early contact must have clicked.
    In last week's column, I provided a strategy for anticipating and even welcoming difficult interview questions. This week I want to look at the difficult questions that aren't asked, perhaps because they're too awkward or even illegal.
    These proverbial "elephants in the room" are the things that can't be ignored, yet can't be acknowledged.
    As a starting point, it helps to empathize with interviewers caught in a bind between maintaining ethical -- and legal -- interviewing practices and needing to ensure a worker can do the job.
    While it's never appropriate to discriminate against a worker based on age, for example, neither should one be surprised when the employer forms an initial impression that the younger candidate who arrives late to the interview might have a problem with work habits, or that the older candidate who sends an attachment in a nonstandard file format might not work well with technology.
    These age-based stereotypes are culturally embedded and candidates whose mistakes or physical appearance play into the stereotypes face harsher consequences.
    If you feel something unspoken is working against you, your first step is identify what you think that might be. Then analyze why and how much that would matter to an employer. As noted in last week's column, you can sometimes broach the topic by adjusting the answer to a spoken question to include information for an unasked question. But other times you'll need to raise the subject more directly so you can put your own spin on it.
    Here's an example of how something awkward might be approached by the candidate:
    "There's one thing we haven't talked about that I can imagine might be on your mind. I'd like to tell you a little about my experience in intergenerational workplaces. You know from my resume that I'm past the mid-point in my career and I know from my research that many of your folks are recent college graduates.
    "I know I wouldn't be here if I didn't have the skills you need. But one thing my resume doesn't really show is that each of my last three roles involved teams that skewed much younger than me. In some cases I was the leader and other times I was the one learning from a younger colleague. I'm very comfortable and effective regardless of the age differences on a team.
    "You shouldn't have to take my word for it, though. The references I've brought include two people who are younger than me; one was my manager and one was a co-worker. I know you can't easily ask questions related to age, but I just wanted you to have the information so you can feel comfortable with how I'd fit your team."
    Age issues can be tricky to discuss but this short soliloquy demonstrates that you can frame an issue without sounding either defensive or aggressive. It's just a respectful statement that acknowledges the employer's position while raising an awkward subject.
    If you want to play with the model, try rewording the example above for a 20-something worker who is being considered for a consulting role where the clients will expect someone older. Or for a plus-sized person whose job will have physical demands.
    Another tactic, especially for personality-based issues, is to use a light touch. For example, a candidate who tends to talk too much might slip something into the conversation early on: "I hope you'll stop me if I'm providing too much information. I'm very enthusiastic about this opportunity and I don't want to talk your ear off."
    Likewise, a somewhat reserved person could end the interview with: "I should tell you just how excited I am about this opportunity. I have a reputation for being a bit quiet and I don't want you to think that reflects my level of interest. I've really enjoyed our conversation and I'd very much like to move forward in the process."
    One last word: Job candidates dealing with unspoken issues usually fare better outside of competitive posting processes. Instead of responding to ads, push harder on your networking efforts and you'll more frequently be the only candidate being considered. That's when your strengths have a chance to shine, while everything else fades into the background.

    7 min
  • How to Rebuild Your Credibility After Messing Up at Work, follow these seven steps #RadioTalkingBook Channel

    Career Corner is a program produced by the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network, part of State Services for the Blind, and it is recorded for people are blind or have reading disabilities. You can listen to the stream of the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network at www.mnssb.org/rtb, and the password is RTB. Your host, for Career Corner is Anne Obst.

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    How to Rebuild Your Credibility After Messing Up at Work

    Keep your head up, and follow these seven steps of damage control.

    Rather than shutting down after making a major mistake, communicate with your boss, work hard and figure out how to prevent the error in the future.

    By Alison Green June 1, 2015 |
    When you really mess up at work, you can harm your reputation and relationships with managers and co-workers. We're not taking about small mistakes here. You're human, and hopefully you have a fairly reasonable manager who understands that. We're talking about major screwups – the ones that affect your manager's trust in you, impact your salary and even make you worry about your job.
    When you really step in it, you might feel like you'll never recover. However, you can often rebuild your credibility if you make a concerted effort to repair the damage. Here's how:
    1. Acknowledge what happened. When you mess up, talking about it might be the last thing you feel like doing. But how you take responsibility for what happened will be one of the biggest elements in the impression it leaves on people. Immediately admit what happened, and don't make excuses or get defensive. Use words such as, "I really screwed this up" and "I get what a big deal this it." In fact, the more concerned you seem, the less your boss is likely to feel that she needs to impress the severity of the mistake on you.
    2. Talk about why it happened. Sometimes people worry that if they address the "why" of a mistake, it will sound like they're making excuses. But this isn't about making excuses; it's about figuring out how you can make sure the mistake doesn't happen again. Was it an isolated incident? Does it point to a larger problem with your systems or approach to the work? Are there safeguards you can put in place so it doesn't happen again? Are there any other changes that will help?
    3. Work hard – really hard. If you've been cutting corners, stop. Stay late. Do the extra work. Over time, this will become people's more recent impression of you, not your mistake. Plus, your manager will see that you're working hard and will assume it's an attempt to get past the mistake, which she'll appreciate.
    4. Communicate. You might be tempted to just keep your head down and avoid your boss, because you might be nervous about talking with her or getting feedback on your work. That's the worst instinct you can have in this situation.
    If your boss does have serious concerns about you, going underground will exacerbate them. Keeping open lines of communication and talking to her about the good work you're doing will help mitigate the concerns that were raised earlier.
    5. Think about what worries the mistake may have raised for your boss or others, and find ways to counteract them. For example, if your boss is now worried you're careless or prone to poor judgment when dealing with clients, make a particular point of demonstrating attention to detail and great client judgment.
    6. Be willing to accept increased scrutiny for a while (but not forever). It's going to be natural for your manager to pay closer attention to your work for a while. You might have to deal with more intensive questioning than you've had in the past. This is a normal part of the process of moving on from a serious mistake. Rather than seeing it as something annoying, you should see it as something that will help you rebuild trust.
    That said, you shouldn't be in the hot seat forever. If you demonstrate reliable, high quality work over a sustained period of time – we're talking months here, not days – and the increased scrutiny never lets up, that might be a sign that it's going to be hard to overcome that mistake with this manager.
    7. Don't panic. When you know you've really screwed up, you might naturally panic or obsess about how you're now seen. But to the extent you can, it's important to put this behind you mentally, because dwelling on it will often keep you in a tense mental space where you're more likely to mess up again – the opposite of what you want. Try not to obsess over the mistake too much, and remember that most people who make mistakes at work – even big ones – aren't fired for them.

    6 min
  • These 5 Résumé Mistakes Are Hurting Your Job Search #RadioTalkingBook Channel

    Career Corner is a program produced by the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network, part of State Services for the Blind, and it is recorded for people are blind or have reading disabilities. You can listen to the stream of the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network at www.mnssb.org/rtb, and the password is RTB. Your host, for Career Corner is Anne Obst.

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    From

    These 5 Résumé Mistakes Are Hurting Your Job Search

    You'll stand out from the pack if you avoid these common errors.

    Including a long list of core competencies on your résumé is sure to make employers' eyes glaze over.

    By Alison Green June 15, 2015
    As a former hiring manager who now helps clients with their own hiring, I look at a lot of résumés. Day after day, I see job candidates severely harming their own chances by submitting résumés that do a terrible job of highlighting their qualifications and making it easy for employers to spot why they might be the right person for the job.
    Frustratingly, most people are making the same small number of easily fixable mistakes. I can't write back to these candidates to tell them to clean up their résumés if they want a better shot at a job – but I can tell you! These are the five most frequent mistakes I see and what you should be doing instead:
    1. Writing a résumé that reads like a series of job descriptions. This is by far the most common mistake job applicants make. In the bullet points candidates use to describe what they did at each job, they only list activities, such as "edit documents," "collect data" or "manage website." As a result, these bullets read like a job descriptions.
    While this method describes your jobs, it doesn't convey what kind of employee you were, which is what employers care most about. After all, someone could engage in those activities and do a mediocre job, so your résumé should convey that you excelled. That means you should be talking about your achievements: what you accomplished, what the outcomes of your work were and what made you shine in the role. It's the difference between "managed billing" and "completely revamped client billing system to ensure bills are now sent out on schedule" or "resolved an inherited four-month backlog of invoices in three weeks."
    2. Leading with your education, even though it's been years since you graduated from college. Once you have some work experience, employers care most about what your work history has been and what you've accomplished. Your education is a distant second, so lead with your work history and save your education for the end. In fact, even if you're a new grad, if you have relevant work experience, you should lead with that. (Some fields are an exception to this, but if you're in one of them, you probably know it.)
    3. Giving a long list of "core competencies." It's fine to have a section that lists your skills, but too often people throw everything they can think of into this section, resulting in laughably long lists of skills that most hiring managers end up ignoring. If you choose to list skills on your résumé, they should be hard skills that are truly distinguishing, like software programs – not subjective self-assessments, such as "strong communication skills" or "works well in groups and independently."
    Instead of listing your skills, demonstrate how you've used them, via the bullet points describing what you've done at each job. That way, you can frame it in terms of what you accomplished with the skill, instead of just noting the skill itself.
    Also, if you do decide to retain this section, please call it something other than "core competencies," which is jargon that tends to makes hiring managers' eyes glaze over. Calling the section "skills" is fine.
    4. Including so much info before your work experience that it doesn't start until the bottom of the page. Sometimes job seekers load their résumés with so much extra information that their work history doesn't start until the bottom of the page or, worse, a second page. The thing that employers care most about when reviewing your résumé is your work experience. You want it to be the first thing they see, so don't bury it deep into the document.
    5. Mentioning every job you've ever had, no matter how long ago or irrelevant to what you do now. A résumé isn't supposed to be a comprehensive accounting of every job you've ever had. Rather, it's a marketing document that you should edit to present yourself in the strongest possible light. That means that you may not need to include every job you've ever had or jobs from two decades ago. Focus on more recent work (the last 10 to 15 years) and the work that most closely relates to the job you're applying for.
    Alison Green writes the popular Ask a Manager blog, where she dispenses advice on career, job search and management issues. She's the author of “How to Get a Job: Secrets of a Hiring Manager,” co-author of “Managing to Change the World: The Nonprofit Manager's Guide to Getting Results” and the former chief of staff of a successful nonprofit organization, where she oversaw day-to-day staff management.


    6 min
  • Working Strategies: No degree? How to use skills to get that job #RadioTalkingBook Channel

    Working Strategies: No degree? How to use skills to get that job

    By Amy Lindgren

    05/03/2015
    For career-changers, new graduates without job experience and any individual with limited resources, the pathway to good jobs can seem impossible to traverse. College has been frequently touted as the key to rewarding employment, but even that solution is coming under fire: It's been one of the more publicized disappointments of the recent recession that degrees don't protect against joblessness.
    So what does? In a word, skills. Skills are the building blocks of every job, and they're the currency of search, from both sides of the desk.
    The employer requests certain skills but will compromise the wish list to get the ones that matter. Meanwhile, the worker finds that skills are his or her main bargaining chip, more than specific training or education.
    Except for licensed positions, the academic credential is not the make-or-break criteria so many have come to believe. It's simply the most convenient way for employers to quantify a package they hope will include the skills they need. But you won't find many managers who would choose a degreed person with no skills over a skilled person with no degree.
    Simply put, companies hire people to do something, not to be something. That's why candidates who promote their degrees or even titles ("I am a graduate of / I am an xyz professional)..." are not as eye-catching as candidates who promote their abilities and the results they achieve ("I can do x and y for you, resulting in z").
    When I make this case to job seekers, I'm usually met with nods of agreement, grudging or otherwise.
    Some tell me that's the way they've made hiring decisions themselves; others describe times they were blinded by the credential only to encounter a lack of skills in the winning candidate.
    Probably the most disbelieving are the new graduates, fresh from four or more years of classroom rigor. But when I ask them whom they would hire if the tables were turned, they also state a preference for skilled workers over those with only the credential.
    Recognizing this reality of the market is not the same as saying that credentials are a waste of time. Not even close. But it isn't hard to conclude that credentials alone won't often swing an offer. Nor should we continue to press the mythology that skills alone are not enough for employment, or that degrees are the only pathway to a rewarding career.
    As the economy continues its recovery we'll likely see doors opening wider for both sets of "have-not" candidates -- those with skills but no credentials and those with credentials but limited skills. Even so, I'd always put my money on the candidate who can demonstrate ability to do the job, regardless of credentials, over one who can't.
    For the job seeker, being the winning candidate comes down to a few basic steps: Know what skills are needed (not simply the wish list from the ad); know which skills you have and how to present them convincingly; make a plan to get the skills you don't have.
    And finally, understand that most jobs are not filled through online processes, but through direct conversations with department managers, usually before an ad ever appears. Which means networking and learning to describe your skills are much more important than worrying about key word optimization for an online application process.
    Frankly put, if you're one of the "have nots" in the view of the computerized system, you will not make the cut no matter how many key words you use. But if you meet managers before things advance to the online ad, you will have the opportunity to tell them precisely what you can do for them.
    In next week's column I'll provide tips for filling gaps in skills you may have. Some of the ideas will involve formal training but most will not. To make the best use of this information and the process overall, you have some homework to do:
    1. Decide what kind of work you want, including the industry and the job level or title.
    2. Conduct whatever research you can in the next week to narrow down the five or 10 core tasks you would perform in this position.
    3. Review those tasks and take your best guess at the skills needed to perform the tasks well: Use specific software? Operate specific machines? Communicate the company's product information to customers?
    4. Assuming a list of 10 to 20 core skills needed for the position, rank them in three categories: A, for "I can do this;" B, for "I'm familiar enough to learn this quickly;" and C, for "Huh?"
    Stay tuned -- we'll pick up the trail again in next week's column.
    Amy Lindgren owns a career consulting firm in St. Paul. She can be reached at [email protected].

    7 min
  • Job Tip: Take the lead in that interview #RadioTalkingBook Channel

    Career Corner is a program produced by the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network, part of State Services for the Blind, and it is recorded for people are blind or have reading disabilities. You can listen to the stream of the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network at www.mnssb.org/rtb, and the password is RTB. Your host, for Career Corner is Anne Obst.

    Music
    From The Star Tribune
    Job Tip: Take the lead in that interview
    By Mark Jaffe
    Start Tribune, 16 March 2015
    We have a pretty terrific system in America: Careers are open to talent. I’m not saying it’s a pure meritocracy but compared with other countries and cultures, we completely rock.
    Who your parents were, how you grew up, even where you went to school (unless it was Yale, of course)… these factors are secondary to whether or not you can deliver the goods.
    Getting through the interview, though, is another story.
    At last count, there were just over 4 million books published on the subject of interviewing for jobs. They tell you how to dress for success, how to sell yourself and how to answer all the tricky questions. Most important, they give you the confidence that only comes with having read a book or two. There’s nothing like it.
    My grandmother, bless her soul, used to say, “Never raise a child by the book until your child is old enough to read the same book.”
    And therein lies the rub. Assuming you and whoever conducts the interview are using the same script, it’s akin to Hollywood magic. But what if the interviewer didn’t study his or her lines? What if that person read – gulp – a different book?
    Let’s skip the obvious rules of engagement for a minute. I’m sure you don’t need me to warn you about discussing money, politics, or your personal history with alien abductions on the first date. Where people have the most difficulty is with the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers thing, the dynamic that defines whether you’re dancing forward or backward.
    Starting with basics, who is the buyer and who the seller in your scenario? If you’re out of work, you may very well be stuck in the seller role. Put on your tap shoes. If you’ve been recruited to this interview, then maybe you’re the buyer. And, then again, maybe not.
    Here’s how it usually goes: On one side of the desk sits the candidate – you – arms folded across your chest, waiting to hear from the interviewer why you should drop everything and consider moving your family a zillion miles to take this job out of all the possible jobs in the world.
    On the other side of the desk sits the CEO or CFO or HR chief or whomever, arms also folded in judgment. She wants you to be clear that this role is mission critical, essential to the success of the organization, the most important job in the company. So why, of all the possible candidates in the world, should she consider you the best qualified? It’s a standoff. If you think about it, this really is a flawed model, awkward at best, adversarial at worst. There’ simply no agreement about who’s Fred Astaire and who’s Ginger Rogers. Each of you knows intuitively that there must be some blend of selling and buying in your exchange, but in what sequence or proportions? How much self-promotion vs. how much scrutiny? What’s the routine? Who’s on first?
    My solution is ridiculously simple. Forget about being a candidate – totally. Imagine instead that you’re a consultant, and that you’ve already been paid a nonrefundable $20,000 consulting fee to attend this meeting. How does that change things?
    For one, you don’t have to worry about selling yourself. No posing, no posturing, no tap dancing of any kind. You’re there to be helpful, to identify your “client’s” needs. You simply want to add value, to give them their $20,000 worth of empathy and understanding. If you deliver, they’re likely to come back for more of your time and expertise.
    Now you can sit on the same side of the table, metaphorically speaking, and ask the hard questions. Not as a skeptic, but as a doctor or analyst might do while conducting a thorough exam. You’ll want to hear where this organization has been, where it is today and what type of goals its executives would like to achieve. What’s the history of this particular role? How did the company come to define it as such? How will its executives recognize top performance and by what method will they calibrate results? The very questions you ask will tell your interviewers volumes about who you are and how you think.
    Listen to how they self-diagnose while you make your own private diagnosis. Consider whether your assessment matches theirs. Never mind whether you’re the right person for this role. You can think about that later, in the car on the way home.
    What will stick with them is that you asked the right questions, paid close attention to the answers, and really fathomed what their organization is all about. Now they’re hooked.
    Just remember: It’s not about you; it’s all about them. The more you want to be taken seriously as a candidate, the more you should forget that you are one.

    7 min
  • Top 5 Mistakes People Make When Looking for a New Job #RadioTalkingBook Channel

    Career Corner is a program produced by the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network, part of State Services for the Blind, and it is recorded for people are blind or have reading disabilities. You can listen to the stream of the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network at www.mnssb.org/rtb, and the password is RTB. Your host, for Career Corner is Anne Obst.

    Music
    From Pioneer Press, March 12, 2015
    Top 5 Mistakes People Make When Looking for a New Job
    By Catherine Conlan
    There are many ways to give yourself the best odds when you’re looking for a job -- and just as many ways to ruin them. Here are five common mistakes that people make that keep them from getting the job of their dreams. 

Apply Without a Plan
If you don’t have a job now, you might feel like applying to every possible job can help maximize your chances of finding something that can work for you. In fact, this doesn’t help at all and can distract you from going hard after the jobs you really have a chance with. “People who say ‘I need to consider anything and everything’ are really doing themselves a disservice,” says Lisa Arnold, director of recruiting at Versique in Minneapolis. “A person who is general in looking for a job or in talking about what you have done is really going to be left behind in this market.” Instead, identify the job you really want and what you need to do to get it.

Ignore Your Online Presence
A strong, professional online presence can be a big plus when you’re looking for a job. “I see a lot more [hiring] clients really using those tools to do more due diligence on a candidate,” Arnold says. “One of the first thing clients ask is, ‘How many connections do you have on LinkedIn?’ That’s starting to matter.” Sharing information through your social networks about issues in your field can show hiring managers that you are plugged-in and keeping up with changes in your industry. “It will display your brand,” Arnold says.

Make a Laundry-List Resume
Many people put together resumes that are simply a travelogue of where they’ve been over their working years. This step-by-step plodding through your jobs is neither compelling nor useful to people making hiring decisions. Instead of highlighting the position and dates you worked at, talk about skills you gained, problems you solved, and any recognition or promotions you got because of them. Make your resume less about descriptions and more about actions. “You have to have a really clear message,” Arnold says.

Don’t Research the Company
This sounds like a no-brainer, but you would be surprised at how often it happens. Take the time to research the company you’re applying at -- its core mission, its strengths and its challenges. Has it been in the news lately? Why? If it hasn’t, why not? Whether you know anything about the business will come through in your cover letter and interview, so do your homework and find out what you can.

Underestimate Your Value
Once you’ve identified the job you want, spiffed up your resume and online presence, and done your homework on the company, don’t settle for less than you deserve. Find out what similar positions pay and your opportunities for advancement. “Go out there and know what your value is in the market and don’t deviate from that,” Arnold says. Too many times, she says, people tend to settle for something less. That affects the entire profession, lowering the value for the skill set.

    5 min
  • The Power of Starting With ‘Yes" Jobs/Career #RadioTalkingBook Channel

    Career Corner is a program produced by the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network, part of State Services for the Blind, and it is recorded for people are blind or have reading disabilities. You can listen to the stream of the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network at www.mnssb.org/rtb, and the password is RTB. Your host, for Career Corner is Anne Obst.

    Music
    From the New York Times
    The Power of Starting With ‘Yes’
    APRIL 17, 2015
    Life@Work
    By TONY SCHWARTZ
    I once served on a committee led by a powerful woman. She had strong views, but what I remember most is that whenever I spoke, she nodded her head vigorously and affirmatively. Over time, I learned that her nodding didn’t mean she necessarily agreed with me. Even so, I always sensed that she was listening closely and carefully considering what I had to say.
    Today I make my living in part by speaking to large groups. Instinctively, I find myself scanning the audience for beacons of affirmation — people whose positive body language makes me feel valued and energized. If I happen to alight on someone shaking his head negatively or looking distracted or bored, I feel a lurch in my stomach and a surge of defensiveness.
    As I write this column, my two dogs have been lying quietly near my desk. I just conducted a little experiment with them. First, I said a single word – “Yes” – with unbridled enthusiasm. The dogs leapt to their feet, their tails wagging, and raced over to me. Next I said “No,” firmly. Both dogs looked down and slunk away. I felt as bad as they did.
    “No” is first and foremost a fear response, most useful in situations of genuine danger. It’s something you say instinctively and protectively to a 3-year-old when he’s about to pull a lamp off a table and onto himself or to a 15-year-old who announces she’s planning to take up cliff jumping.
    In situations like those, the instinct to say “no” serves us well. The psychologist Roy Baumeister refers to this phenomenon as “bad is stronger than good.” In a paper with the same title, he writes, “Organisms that were better attuned to bad things would have been more likely to survive threats. Survival requires urgent attention to possible bad outcomes, but it is less urgent with regard to good ones.”
    There is a difference, however, between surviving and thriving. Because our survival is no longer under constant threat, many more of us have the opportunity to focus on thriving. The problem with “no” as a starting place is that it polarizes, prompts defensiveness and shuts down innovation, collaboration and connection.
    The psychologist and researcher John Gottman has famously found that when the ratio of positive to negative interactions in a marriage falls below five to one, divorce is far more likely. Negativity, in short, can be potent poison, and its effects are long lasting and often pernicious.
    By contrast, starting with “yes” energizes, creates safety and trust and fuels creativity. I learned this viscerally during an improvisation workshop, run by the Magnet Theater, at a recent company offsite meeting. One of the basic tenets of improvisational comedy, it turns out, is to start with “yes” — and even more specifically with “yes and.” When you work with someone in a scene, your challenge is to resist disputing, challenging, or negating whatever your fellow actor says, and instead embrace, work with and build on it.
    What I realized quickly was how good it felt to say “Yes and,” and how much more smoothly it made the scene move forward. So why does “no” so frequently remain the default response in the workplace?
    Partly, it’s a primitive survival-of-the-fittest instinct. If someone else suggests an idea and your response is an affirming “Yes,” or even “Yes and,” then she may get credit and you may not. But defending our own value by diminishing the value of others eventually ends up costing us — and not just because it antagonizes others.
    Not long ago, while working with a team of senior executives, I introduced an exercise that fell outside their expertise and comfort zone. I knew from experience that all of them were fully capable of mastering the task if they were simply willing to look at the problem in front of them in a fresh way.
    Many of them did exactly that, but several fell short. When they finished, I suggested to one of those who struggled that I could help him complete the exercise successfully. His answer was a flat “no.” I’m pretty persuasive, but I could not convince him to give my approach a try.
    “I just can’t do that,” he told me. “Never could, never will.”
    When “no” becomes a dominant voice in our heads, it acts like an autoimmune disease, shutting down our own possibilities.
    When a leader starts with “no,” he shuts down others. At an emotional level, the word “no” translates as “I don’t value what you’re saying,” and “I don’t trust you.” Fear, anger or resignation set in, all of which kill creativity, increase distrust and discourage engagement.
    Like any strengths, receptivity and positivity — the expressions of “starting with yes” — eventually become liabilities if they are overused. They can turn into indulgence and lack of standards. But starting with yes doesn’t necessarily mean ending with yes, as I learned in that committee many years ago.
    Starting with yes signals interest and respect. Ever since our company offsite meeting, I’ve made it a regular practice in meetings to seek opportunities to say yes. I don’t always agree with everything I’m hearing, but I can almost always embrace some aspect of an idea being presented and build on that.
    The unmistakable and welcome consequence is that it feels as if we’re all in it together. The intelligence of the group invariably exceeds the sum of its parts.
    Tony Schwartz is the chief executive of The Energy Project and the author, most recently, of “The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working.” Twitter: @tonyschwartz

    8 min

About Radio Talking Book

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The Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network was the world's first radio reading service for people with blindness and visual impairment. It began January 2, 1969. The signal is also heard via the internet and across the country via satellite..