We at Franklin Paterson Company Inc. are thankful for so much this Thanksgiving.
We are incredibly grateful for your support, good counsel, excellent comments on our posts, and continued friendship. We appreciate you. Here’s wishing you and yours a wonderful Thanksgiving day, and all the best for the upcoming holidays.
Tag: Worklife
Franklin Paterson Company Inc., Your One-stop Career Boutique.™ for Professional Resume Writing, Cover Letters, Interview Preparation, and Career Strategy Consulting.
The Stay Where You Are, Job Search.
So things are not going well at your current job. You have outgrown your current role. And besides, every day, a new happenstance threatens to add to your six grey hairs (yes, you counted them last weekend, and you are now up from five). Should you indulge yourself and just quit or continue to work at this dreadful place as your job search?
No easy remedy exists for hapless employees who quit their current company before they have lined up a superior replacement job. When it comes to job leaving, you had better have a plan and an exit strategy, or there will be no meaningful sympathy for the rash move job-quitter. So, before handing in your notice, consider if there is any unexplored potential in your current job; that could make it worth your while to stay. Well, at least until you have formulated a proper leaving plan!
Here are a few other things to consider. Start with arranging a career status chat with your boss. Hiring is costly in terms of energy, time, and money, so companies are keen to keep their existing teams intact. Your manager will likely be receptive to meeting with you to work out remedies to help re-fashion your job in a new way that reflects your career interests. Talk to your boss about the possibilities for enriching your role and adding to your experience.
Very few people use all of their skills in their current job. Consider what under-utilized skills or potential you have that could be of benefit to your current employer. Talk to your boss about the possibilities for augmenting your current role, and remember to ask a lot of diagnostic questions to ascertain whether your manager is in support of your goal.
The company will benefit from using more of your talents. You can build experience in the specialty areas that interest you, which you can use as leverage when applying for a new role later. Consider a lateral move to a different department. An internal move will enable you to leverage your existing knowledge of the business, its processes, and its culture. Besides a new learning opportunity, an internal move can create another vertical advancement ladder.
Try to ensure a smooth transition and minimize the disruption to your current team. You can do a range of things to accommodate the handover professionally. That includes completing ongoing projects, working out the project priorities with your manager, leaving clear documentation, or training your successor in processes or software.
If your only avenue for career advancement option appears to be the exit door, after considerable thought. I would recommend that you seek the help of a Career Strategy Coach. To be clear, Career Strategy is not the same as Interview Preparation or Interview Coaching, job search coaching processes that focus on answering fact-based interview questions precisely. The downside is that these performance-directed coaching processes often turn anxious, goal-oriented candidates into boring talking heads and often obfuscate the candidate’s personality.
A Career Strategy Coach can advise you on your relevant referential and replicable skills that will enhance the possibility of success in your job search. And help you fine-tune your interviewing tactics to ensure that you convey the complexity of your experience and your determined long-term goals to interviewers. Your coach can also help you to clarify and adjust your career decision-making criteria so you do not give answers at the interview that may succeed in getting you the job but do not convey your career goals.
Your Career Strategy Consultant can help you help change your interviewing approach from a spirited tennis match to a thoughtful, strategic, and goal-oriented chess match!
Dealing with Irascible Managers or Co-Workers
I have worked with and for quite a few problematic characters throughout my long career. Some are still friends and confidants, and a few continue to be valued as mentors.
Many of these irascible managers or co-workers lack social grace and a sense of control, so they cannot communicate well under stress. They also appear to forget that a timely apology can be a fallback position.
You see them coming from a mile, so the choice becomes whether you rise to and meet the verbal challenge or obfuscate. But, since nobody wins in these confrontations, you seldom try to deal with it.
They are unaware of how their behavior impacts others because they need to elevate themselves above others in a group situation. They do not hesitate to exploit their leadership role by insulting others because they are often insecure and quick to attack to assert their leadership.
So they seek to maintain their position in the hierarchy through criticism, humiliation, and camouflaged insults, in a kind of unconscious narcissistic way.
The second group of tough characters are those with narrow interests and vapid sympathies. These folks say and do the same cruel things regularly as if on cue. I worked for one manager who lobbed the same petty insults at every group meeting but never in one-to-one meetings.
The worse part is that you feel bad for the manager. And deliberately avoid connecting with the “Oh No, Not Again” apologetic looks directed your way by the other team members. You think, “well, somebody has got to pull up the weeds.” Feeling all the while like the embarrassed parent of a preschooler misbehaving in public!
There is a stunning lack of creativity when someone overuses the same petty insult. If you must be regularly petty, try to be creative and offer variety. Unable to rise to the occasion, then stop it, the exercise of watching a manager or colleague try to diminish a coworker publicly is tiresome and embarrassing for everybody!
So, you believe that you are job-search ready.
But, have you considered the financial cost of this job change to you and your family?
How prepared are you to discuss compensation or the cost of benefits for the new position or a promotion at your current company?
As you job search or interview for a new position, this thorny but not unexpected question interview question arises. A question that not everyone knows how to answer or has prepared for properly.
Answer it incorrectly, and you may receive an offer that you may be unable to accept. Or you may later recognize that you may have sabotaged an actual pay rise by compromising in the wrong area.
And, you may be left with the new reality of having to pay for items, tools, or transportation that your current company is paying for or subsidizing. At one interview during my powerlifting days, one manager gushed about the free gym in the building and excitedly took me to show off. The gym was well turned out and extra clean, but I was left to wonder inwardly:
1) Where were the real weights?
2) Would the two guys at the front desk be willing to dangle on either side of the straight bar so I could do my four-hundred-pound plus squats for reps?
3) And who was going to spot me, maybe the guy doing bicep curls with the ten-pound dumbbells?
4) It was clear that this free gym could not be my gym, so there were no savings. But I digress….
Among the key areas to do comparative costs comparisons are the Bonus and Commission structure, and when they are paid, Profit-sharing distributions, paid time off (vacation days, sick days, and holidays), Insurance (medical, dental, disability, and life), Tuition Assistance, Childcare Assistance, Employee assistance programs that offer legal advice, gym memberships, retirement plans or career or health-related counseling and other services.
Many candidates make the mistake of accepting an offer because it is a pay rise, a perceived gym benefit, or the simple fact that the request exceeds their current base salary when the benefit-cost details a slightly smaller base from a company with excellent benefits may mean a larger take-home salary.
Do you truly know if your total compensation from the new position would satisfy, match, or exceed expectations before starting your job search? And, do you know what the benefit-cost details are before you accept an offer at the new company or a promotion at your current company?
Why Franklin Paterson Company Inc. uses a Resume Questionnaire
In response to your inquiries, regarding creating a resume appropriate to your skills, capabilities and potential, here is some useful information, about using the Frank Paterson Company Inc.Resume Questionnaire as the first step, towards creating a powerful keyword rich resume.
The Resume Questionnaire will have significant input into the data; you need to collect in drafting your new resume, identifying your skills, and accomplishments. It will help you to highlight your employment achievements; including relevant skills and achievements.
The Franklin Paterson Company Resume Questionnaire©™ will help you gather information about your work history, skills, education, specialized training, awards, and accomplishments; in a format that will allow you to describe the most essential information about your skills, or experience in an easy free flow fashion.
We recommend that you complete it in your own time, then put it away for a day or two, re-read, make corrections or additions then sent it back. Use the Resume Questionnaire later for interview prep
1.) Review and fill out the Questionnaire in your own way using your own words; do not worry about tone, style, grammar etc. Take as much time as you need, leave out areas that do not apply.
2.) The filled out questionnaire will give a feel for how you would answer questions in an interview or business proposal meeting. The final resume has to reflect a bit of your style so it looks like YOU wrote it. It is also an excellent tool for prepping for an interview or meeting with a client!
3.) Once the questionnaire is completed, please return the complete document for review, update, and recommendations from your career Counsellor at Franklin Paterson Resumes.
4.) Set aside time to go over the Questionnaire via the phone to tease out skills, accomplishments etc., please set aside at least 30 minutes or more for this review.
5.) Your writer will craft your the questionnaire, and notes from the review review. Generally your writer will start writing the resume immediately, (within a day) of the review while all info is immediate and fresh.
6.) You will receive a draft of the resume for your review and comment. Once you send it back, your writer will make corrections and updates, and send your completed resume.
7.) Once invited to meet with someone to discuss a particular job or project, please let your writer know, and your writer will tweak the completed resume here and there to highlight areas of skill in your resume related the job or project.
About the Franklin Paterson Company Resume Questionnaire©™
We recommend that you complete it in your own time, then put it away for a day or two, re-read, make corrections or additions then sent it back. Use the Resume Questionnaire later for interview prepping.
Thanks,
Jpransom
Principal Resume Writer, Interview Coach, LinkedIn Profile and Career Strategy Consultant.
Franklin Paterson Company Inc. – https://franklinpaterson.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/janis-ransom/
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