Or vice-versa!

Just like people from different parts of the world fundamentally think, eat, talk, and act differently - so go people from the same part of the world, but from different generations. In today’s workplace, we have The Silent Generation dubbed The Greatest Generation (born before 1946); the Baby-Boomers followed; then, Gen-X and now Gen-Y, called the Millennials. The picture depicts why they’re called Generation-Y.

Even though the 50+ aged worker is more in demand than ever in our lives, if the interview-ee is boomer or greatest – likely the interviewer is Gen X or Y. To succeed in this type of landscape, we must understand basic differences. Here are some…

1. Gen-X and Gen-Y are digital natives; we are digital immigrants. We must communicate in the way that millennials do. Even in a professional environment a text message or an email may be just as effective as an in-person conversation. Indeed, they don’t write personal thank you notes, but they SHOULD get one from you.

2. For us…work-life balance is imperative. For millennials, this is an obsolete term…it’s more like work-life integration. So, don’t be put off by their midnight emails. Allow them their freedom and agree upon clear expectations for desired results…and don’t mention how you would do it.

3. “Because I said so” does not sit well with millennials. They NEED to understand WHY. Explaining the impact generates buy-in and motivation. Appreicate and channel a millennial’s (whether interviewer or interview-ee) energy, focus their creativity, and use their desire to gain experience to reach YOUR goals.

4. Show that you understand technology. Beyond illustrating how you understand the Microsoft Office Suite, you want to make sure to understand and talk about technology and its importance in the workplace. Show that you have an open mind, i.e. social networking, etc. Really do it, don’t try to sound ‘hip’ – they probably don’t even know what that means.

 5. Ask for their opinions; be genuinely interested. In the presence of an older and more experienced person, X and Y are looking for any opportunity to show their value and communicate that they bring as much value to the table as someone who is as experienced as you. Tell them, you are a great follower when needed and a good leader when called upon. Tell them, “if you’re a good leader…I’ll follow you anywhere.”

6. Be flexible and comfortable with change. If you’re not; stop it, adapt. The ability to be flexible and change quickly is much more important to a millennial than being strong and staying the course. We change when the pain of the present exceeds the fear of the future; they change in a heartbeat, so answer questions by referencing examples from multiple positions on an issue. In today’s world, only the agile (not the strong) will survive.

7. In interview, discuss corporate cultures. Make references to the variety of things you like and talk about passions you have and who you are outside of work, i.e. if you tell them about mountain climbing, river rafting, or traveling to 10 countries, it will help brand you in a more positive way.

So, remember that no matter what your age or amount of professional experience, you can always show that you are flexible, intelligent, and young at heart while still communicationg that you have the solid experience and resulting judgement that will make you successful. And, don’t complain about 10 pm telephone calls and midnight emails. Most importanly, remember that today’s 50+ aged worker is more in demand than ever in our lives.

Inundated with résumés both paper and electronic, recruiters and hiring managers have for a long time resorted to scanning  machines that try to cut through the clutter. Fifty percent of job hunters don’t possess the basic qualifications for the jobs they pursue and a majority of the rest don’t know how to tell the scanner, “I’m a viable candidate!”

NASA defines “Black Hole” as a place in space where gravity pulls so strongly that even light cannot get out. You don’t want your résumé in there!

Some of how to NOT be swallowed in a ‘black hole:’

Forget about being creative. Instead, mimic the keywords in the pursued job-description as closely as possible. You determine if you are qualified for the job and, if so, write the specific title of the job you want as your objective. Important: Use their “title” vocabulary. This also conquers another hiring manager nuisance…time to help you figure out what you can do for us; you should know what you can do for us before you get here.

More than visiting the prospective employer’s website, visit the employer’s facility and find people to talk to who work there. You need a sense of their corporate culture. What words do they use to describe their values, their mission, and their vision? For example, if a firm has professed an interest in environmental sustainability, include relevant volunteer work or memberships on your résumé. The company may have programmed related keywords into its résumé screening software.

KISS: Keep the formatting and wordsmithing on your résumé simple and streamlined – you don’t want to perplex the software. Don’t get cute with graphics and layout. Sometimes the system can’t tell the difference between a previous position, a previous employer, and which dates you worked where, etc. Submit a cover letter every chance possible and address it to a live person in the firm…even if it’s the wrong person. Provide two résumé versions at every opportunity…a Word version for reading and a text only version for scanning.

Education: Some screening systems assign higher scores to elite schools. You may not have gotten a degree from a top-tier university, but if you attended a continuing-education class at one, include it on your résumé.

Liar, liar pants on fire: Don’t! Exaggerations to get through the screening process end poorly…for you. Savvy hiring managers know the tricks jobseekers use such as typing false qualifications in white font. Everyone knows that jobs evolve, but job titles don’t. Don’t make up a title to fit the work you did. Use the title as it appears in your personnel file. Believe me, you do not want to go through the stress of inteviews only to find out that a clerk checked a previous employer and found out you lied about your position title on your résumé.

Résumé overload isn’t just a big-company problem. According to HR Digest, only 19% of small company hiring managers even look at a majority of the résumés they receive and 47% admit that they review “just a few.”

A targeted pursuit, simplicity, and some professional-swagger should be the anti-gravity you need to avoid a “black hole.”

Winning occurs in efficient professional relationships...

 A company’s most important asset? Plant and equipment? Patents? Products? What about the organization’s people and their relationships?

When I was about 5 years old, I loved my grandparent’s flat brown wooden wagon with bright orange wooden wheels and a rope pull. In the wagon were fascinating arrays of wooden building blocks. How high could I stack them one on top the other before the tower crumbled?  I was unable to build a single block-on-block tower as tall as me – frustrating; but, if I built a foundation of three blocks, then three more, than two on two, then one on one my tower was taller than me.

I also learned when the one-on-one crumbled, all the blocks scattered across the floor; but, when my tower had the supporting relationships of other blocks and I barreled into it…much of the foundation remained intact.

In our careers, like my blocks – relationships are imperative in developing a successful career (structure). The Birkman Method® materially contributes to career infrastructure – developing professional relationships.

Successes in our careers and in the organizations in which we work largely depend on how well we understand ourselves and co-workers with whom we interact. In business today, we spend much of our time working with and through people to accomplish organizational objectives. Thus, people skills and professional relationships are the most critical “building blocks” we can develop.

 The alternative is intuition or “gut feeling.” Most people who rely on intuition are limited in their ability to predict and deal with human behavior with the level of skill and accuracy required in the modern workplace.

Secure your professional relationships...

 Human behavior and attempting to interpret it at work is constantly contradicting. Why? We see someone act a certain way and expect they will always act that way and

 Replacing Intuition in the workplace with The Birkman Method® minimizes trial and error guesswork. The Birkman Method® includes multi-dimensional integration of behavioral, motivational and occupational data. Scientifically developed, it enhances and predicts interpersonal and occupational success…individually and in teams. Without being an expert on all the intricacies of human behavior, The Birkman Method® provides the edge you need to improve your people skills and the skills of those with whom you work.

 Building our careers are identical to my tower of blocks no matter whether you’re starting out, at mid-life, or about to put the spire on your Chrysler Building. With this knowledge, you fulfill your underlying needs, manage stress, and work performance soars.

I've got all the tips you need...

Some obscure tips:

~Second-Place Blues? If you were runner-up for a position that was exactly in your sweet spot, you have nothing to lose by calling the hiring manager 90 days later and asking how that new hotshot is working out. You may be surprised to learn that she wishes she had gone with you after all. Far stranger things have happened.

~When asked anything about your work or management style, tell them you start with a short “to-do” list, I “(1) Let people underestimate my abilities; (2) Vastly exceed their expectations; (3) Get more responsibility and more fulfillment.”

~Insecurities? Defensive? Worried about how you look to others? Cut that crap out! Chill! Don’t take yourself so seriously. If you find it hard t laugh at yourself, it may be that others will wind up doing it for you.

~Let your prospective employer know that, “I learned that co-workers don’t value my input nearly so much as my cooperation. It’s all about how I make the other person feel about him- or herself.”

~Put Real Effort into Cover Letters:  Don’t address letters to “Dear Hiring Manager.” Acknowledge the recipient by name, and he or she might actually remember yours. Generic cover letters are a monster no-no. They demonstrate that you didn’t even have enough interest to research the job or hiring firm.

~Present yourself as if you were a Boy Scout: A Scout Is Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, and Reverent. Period!

~Remember It’s Not Over Till It’s Over: Write a follow-up note when you don’t get the job. This is so unusual that you’ll stand out, and perhaps the interviewer will know of other opportunities and recommend you. Don’t be afraid to ask that question in the note. This is NOT the “thank you” note following an interview.

~Don’t Toady in the Presence of the Hiring Manager: The key to dealing with people who rule your destiny is this: Never suck up, but remember the conversation is always about their issues, not yours.

~Avoid the ‘Department of Redundancy Department:’ Keep track of your career networking efforts so you never send out duplicate e-mails or notes, as this will be perceived as disorganization or worse, sloppiness.

PUT YOURSELF IN THIS SITUATION:  How YOU will respond to an important hiring manager who tells you, “I don’t care what your last employer told you to do…if you kept  your job, I know you did that much. I want to know what you did for your previous employers that were standout, made things better for their company, department, customers, and co-workers?”

Well, hello!! That is exactly what they think when they get a résumé based on your job-description.

As a job-searcher, your “RESPONSIBILITY” is communication: writing (résumé) and talking (interview) that demonstrates how you made things better in your previous assignments. That creates images in essential minds of how you will perform in the future.

You can promise that you will do such-and-such, but the only reliable way for the hiring manager to know how you will perform in the future is for you to create images of how you performed in the past. Promises are phooey; accomplishments are real.

"Show'm the sign..."

Your résumé and interview strategy based on ACCOMPLISHMENTS gets you labeled a professional in your occupation.

You have hundreds of accomplishments throughout your life (all students included) that demonstrate your performance. Many, if not most, are not on a job. Identifying those accomplishments are the hard part.

Email me and ask for a list of thought-provokers that will help you identify your accomplishments.   peter@peterweil.com

 References:

~Distribute references only if someone asks, listed in a separate document –not on your résumé, and only after securing permission from your reference.

~Like to have a written reference letter? Seldom there is time for your reference to write anything, but if you offer to write it and simply ask the reference to edit it…you’re more likely to get cooperation. This is particularly true in school where a teacher or professor reference can help you take a step up.

~Predominetly, company policy does not allow employees at any level to give written or verbal references. That, however, only applies to current employees. References no longer employed there can be excellent.

~Most people want references from a manager and that’s all fine and dandy, but references from peers/colleagues can be powerful. Most influential are references from the people you trained or reported to you.

Most Importanly:

~ Don’t simply ask a former colleague, boss, or subordinate to provide a reference. Know precisely—not approximately—what that person will say about you.

~ Thank-you notes are a must. E-mail is fine for this, but not for all thank you notes. Be specific to what the reference said about you.

Employers are in business to produce $$dinero$$. As YOU navigate the web-of-work, your efforts should be directed to the company’s sensitivity…its bottom line and how you can influence it. Are you an expense, or an investment? 

Unfortunately, many employers don’t comprehend how their employee’s individual and collective actions impact their bottom line on a daily basis. Department heads probably do little analysis on the profit contribution of each person they employ. Some have said, “It’s like herding cats.” Worse still, many employees themselves have no concept of the money their actions and reactions cost the company. People in sales have an idea, but among everyone else, many have said, “I wish I’d known….”

As you transition through your work career, package yourself and script both your interviews and daily interactions to let  employers know how YOU can and will impact their bottom lines and don’t exaggerate and don’t make them guess at it…many interviewers and hiring managers are not very good at that!

 “When considering even the most distant Facebook user in the Siberian tundra or the Peruvian rain forest, a friend of your friend knows a friend of their friend.”

 I’ve blogged, pleaded, begged, and implored the virtues of word-of-mouth job-search. Here are the new stats from The New York Times:

•  Six Degrees of Separation Exists No MORE!
•  It’s 4.37 degrees of separation in the U. S. More than half of the people in the U.S. older than 13 ARE on Facebook.
•  It’s 4.74 degrees of separation internationally.

 Even when it was six degrees, in job-search, important hiring manager contact consistently happened in two-three degrees of separation.

The bottom line- Why?

• For employers, word-of-mouth job-search is a financial windfall, i.e. no headhunter fees, advertising, handling floods of résumés, etc.
• For candidates, word-of-mouth job-search gets your foot in the door quietly and professionally even when there is no apparent vacancy. You can create a job or, at least, be there when the vacancy occurs.

Only eight job-search techniques exist, word-of-mouth job-search exponentially produces more of the work you want than the other seven techniques combined.

Onboarding. The word is reminiscent of the golden days of train travel and is mindful of a PC naughty word. But it’s also the current shorthand for new employee orientation.

In Job-Search: Will YOUR prospective employer ‘onboard’ new hires for success? (From Maxwell, Locke, and Ritter – see below and read for objectives of effective programs and best practices.)

The Society for Human Resource Management defines onboarding as “the process by which new hires get adjusted to the social and performance aspects of their jobs quickly and smoothly, and learn the attitudes, knowledge, skills and behaviors required to function effectively within an organization.”

Onboarding practices range from highly structured and thorough to haphazard and perfunctory. Research shows that a comprehensive, structured approach is more effective. The faster new employees feel comfortable with their new roles and relationships, the sooner they begin contributing and the more productive they become.

Studies also show that employees’ engagement, loyalty and commitment are influenced by how they are treated during their first 30 days, which is to say, during their onboarding process.

It makes no sense to do a careful job of recruitment and selection, and then drop the ball on the next step, onboarding those new hires.

Objectives of an effective program

To be successful, an onboarding program has to accomplish many things, from the intangible and philosophical to the mundane. Here are some of those objectives.

• Teach employees the mission, vision and values of the company. To contribute appropriately, employees must know the company’s mission, vision and values, and how their job aligns with those.
• Socialize new employees to the workplace. Help them feel comfortable as quickly as possible. Make them feel good about their job and the people they work with. You want them to go home each night feeling like they made a good choice of where to work.
• Teach employees the company culture. Each workplace has its own norms for etiquette, those often-unspoken rules about acceptable and unacceptable behaviors. Is it okay to eat during meetings, to order a glass of wine at business dinners, to tell jokes at the water cooler? Your tactful clarification will mean employees don’t have to learn the hard way.
• Inform employees about performance standards and the expectations of their role. People need to know exactly what is expected of them, what they need to do to succeed, and how performance will be measured and managed.
• Teach employees about work processes. Show them how the work is done. Where do they go to get necessary materials? Who do they go to with various questions or problems? Who needs to give their approval before they can proceed with a project? (Weak onboarding programs often start with this step, omitting everything before it.)

This is the mundane-but-necessary part of the onboarding process. It includes filling out tax forms, selecting healthcare coverage, making other benefit choices, signing contractual documents such as noncompete agreements, and affirming that they have read and accept the terms in the employee handbook.

Best practices to improve onboarding

Following are some points that distinguish the most effective onboarding programs from the rest:

• Create formal, written onboarding plans that are tailored to each position, not one-size-fits-all.
• Get input from key stakeholders as to what needs to be covered in onboarding for a given position.
• Take care of new-hire mechanics before the first day – that is, have the employee’s work station set up and running, the computer configured, security badge on hand, and so forth.
• The most important day on the job is the first day. Make it special.
• Make onboarding an active process for employees, not an information dump. Give them a tour of the facility.
• Involve them in discussions and work processes when appropriate. Introduce them to key people.
• When you need to give employees reading material, do it in small chunks, broken up with other activities.
• Schedule one-on-one meetings for the employee with key people, both to share information and to begin to forge important relationships.
• Continue your onboarding program over several months. People can absorb only so much information at one time. The program will, of course, be more intensive at first and intermittent later.
• Consider assigning a mentor.
• Follow up with new employees at regular intervals to assess their progress and provide any help they need.

If all of this sounds like it requires a lot of time and work, consider the time and effort that goes into managing or replacing an unsuccessful or marginally successful employee.

(Maxwell Locke & Ritter is an accounting, tax and consulting firm that helps dynamic companies and people achieve their dreams. With roots extending back to the 1960′s, Maxwell Locke & Ritter has become part of the fabric of Central Texas. Locally owned and managed, we are the largest accounting firm in the Greater Austin Area with offices in downtown Austin and Round Rock.)

Are you noticing the changes? Or, are you Freddie the Frog on the stove in cold water? You don’t notice the heat rising until too late; but, if you suddenly get placed in the new enviroment, the boiling water smarts…big time.

Today’s workplace demands are shaping up like this:

• *2011 is the year starting Baby Boomer retirement. Employers perceive a significant Talent Gap between Baby Boomers and Generations X, Y, and M. PLUS,  baby-boomers are living longer and seeing their nest eggs diminish. Result: many Baby Boomers are simply starting new careers.
• Key Finding: 76% of today’s employers perceive a moderate (48%) to significant (28%) Talent Gap between boomers and the younger generations. Boomers have a signifcant edge for new jobs. Employers say that the younger generations lack “results-focus, vision, strategy, integrity, and ethics.”
• An essential worker must have one-to-one relationships with both external and internal customers that keep customers coming back.
• An essential worker must look at EVERY workplace interaction as an opportunity to add value and solve problems.
• Many work remotely so work hours and schedules depend on the geography of the team with whom you are collaborating.
• Technolgy exists to track what you’re workinng on and when, i.e. no boss looking over your shoulder. You must be consistently productive.
• If your job can be done by someone cheaper in a less-expensive locale, your job will be outsourced (dissappear).
• If your job can be put into a manual, it will.
• Be prepared for more changes that move at the speed of the Internet.
• The traditional office environment is disappearing quickly and will largely be gone by 2025.
• Gatekeeper and paper pusher jobs will no longer exist.
• IMPORTANT: Protect your identity while looking for work. Criminal hackers set up “corporate” job-sites and fake job-boards to steal your information. Vet all “out of the blue” calls from Recruiters.
• Career Fairs are going digital and real jobs are coming out of these virtual job-fairs.

 What should you do?

• Younger generations can look for leadership-development courses because the boomers that are retiring are leaving holes in management/executive ranks fueling opportunities for the younger to take on greater responsibility.
• Mature generations…you’ve never been in more demand than you are today.
• Both young and mature must develop and nourish competencies in strategic planning, career management, electronic application skill and design. All of you will contribute creative thinking and operational excellence to projects. Networking? Don’t forget to work the Trade Shows.