Community Blog: WEDDLE's

The utility of social media sites as recruiting resources has been challenged by a recent Workforce magazine article on the compliance issues and potential adverse impact of over-relying on them.  The social aspects of our profession remain important, however, even in what have traditionally been unsocial sourcing methods.  Indeed, the Internet has actually created a social side to online recruitment advertising.

There are five dimensions to the social side of posting a job ad on the Web:

·         The sites you select;

·         The title of your posting;

·         The content of your posting;

·         The follow up communication with applicants; and

·         The candidate experience that follows your advertising interaction.

What’s social about these advertising activities?  Let me explain.

The Sites You Select

The key to effective online recruitment advertising is to initiate a social interaction with the right candidate population.  And to do that, you have to advertise on the right sites.  Unfortunately, there is no one site that will connect you with 100% of your target demographic.  Shotgunning your ad out over the Web simply makes your organization look as if it doesn’t know what it’s doing.  A better strategy, I would suggest, is to select 7 specific sites using the formula 2GP + 3N +2D:

·         2GP or general purpose posting sites where you can probe the full range of prospects online;

·         3N or niche sites where you can plumb the full depth of the candidate population—use one site that targets the occupational field for which you’re recruiting, one that covers your employer’s industry, and one that specializes in the geographic location of your opening; and

·         2D or diversity sites so that you ensure (and prove) that you’re making a good faith effort to tap all of the talent in the candidate population.

The Title of Your Posting

The title of your posting is your greeting to candidates.  It’s how you introduce your organization and its brand as an employer.  The surest way to get the interaction off on the wrong foot is to use bureaucratic position titles—Research Scientist VI—or unintelligible abbreviations and in-house jargon.  On the other hand, you can effectively convey a “candidate friendly” message by providing a title which enables the reader to decide quickly and accurately if the opening is for them.  Such a title has three elements that form the acronym LSS:

·         L or the location of the job—generally people want to work where they live;

·         S or the skill and skill level required to perform the job—Senior Pharmaceutical Research Scientist; and

·         S or sizzle—some aspect of your culture, compensation system or community that will set your ad apart and make it especially intriguing or appealing.

The Content of Your Posting

The surest way to be viewed as an anti-social advertiser is to create a posting that is uninformative, incomplete, boring, filled with misspellings and grammatical errors, or all of the above.  You’re trying to establish a relationship with the best candidates, so show them the same courtesy and respect that you would like to be shown if you were in their shoes.  What does such an ad look like?  It has five sections that form the acronym S-ABC-S:

·         S, the Summary or first four lines of your ad are your invitation to top talent to read on—if you create an interesting and compelling message, they likely will (even if they’re employed), while the opposite message will ensure they won’t (and all you’ll get are the most desperate of applicants);

·         ABC or the body of the ad—it presents the position’s requirements and responsibilities but does so from the candidate’s perspective, and what they want to know about are its Advantages (for them), its Benefits (tailored to them) and the Capabilities they must have to be successful in the role;

·         S or the Sign-off is best viewed as a call to action—encourage the reader to take one or more of three steps: apply for the position, refer it to others (because top talent knows other top talent) and/or opt-in to an ongoing dialogue that you maintain with potential applicants.

The past five years have seen advertising, in general, become much more interactive and engaging, especially online.  Those of us who are trying to sell the best prospects on our organization’s value proposition as an employer would do well to follow that trend and focus on the social side of our recruitment advertising.  I’ll finish the last two of the five dimensions of that strategy in my next column.

Thanks for reading,

Peter

Visit me at Weddles.com

Peter Weddle is the author of over two dozen employment-related books, including Recognizing Richard Rabbit, a fable of self-discovery for working adults, and Work Strong, Your Personal Career Fitness System.

© Copyright 2009 WEDDLE’s LLC.  All Rights Reserved.

Most of us go into a job search thinking we may be a little rusty, but confident that, basically, we know what to do.  Then you do it, and the galling indifference and humiliating rejection begin.  Employers don’t acknowledge your resume submissions, executive search and staffing firms don’t return your calls, and recruiters act as if you are damaged goods.  It’s hard not to feel as if you’re a failure.

And yet, you’re not.  Let me say that again: You are not a failure.  You are not a loser or a deadbeat or a flop.  Your belief that you are (or your concern that may be) is based on two misconceptions.  You think your career should unfold in a straight line.  And, you believe that today’s job market is just like those of the past, only tougher.

Those views are widely held, and they are completely wrong.  They may have been correct in the 20 th Century, but today, they’re as accurate as a stock broker’s predictions.  So when you buy into them, you throw yourself into a well of defeat that leaves you believing that you’ve done something wrong.  Or, that you haven’t done something right.  Whichever it is, the conclusion you draw is the same: you’ve let yourself and your family down.

It’s a terrible self-indictment, and you don’t deserve it.  Let me say that again: You are not a failure.  Only you can get rid of that felling, however, and there’s only one way to do it.  You have to clear up those misperceptions.  You have to view the job market and the workplace as they actually are.  Not as they used to be or you wished they were.  Do that, see today’s world of work for what it really is, and you will turn what used to be called failure into what is now genuine success.

Correcting the Misperception of a Straight Line Career

You have probably never thought about it much, but if you’re like most of us in the workforce, you assume that a career will unfold today just as it did in the last century.  Your progress in the workplace will trace a straight line.  You’ll begin at point A and if you do well, you will move up to point B and from there, you will advance to point C and so on.  Ever onward and ever upward.

The image of this traditional kind of movement, of course, was the career ladder.  It prescribed one way up and you either kept moving along the rungs or you fell off, got pushed off or retired.  The dynamic was Darwinian, but at least you always knew where you stood.

Well, that career ladder is now gone.  It’s been tossed out by employers that can no longer support the human resource management infrastructure to manage your career for you (and everyone else).  The straight line approach has, as a result, been replaced by the zigzag career.  Ever forward, but not necessarily always up.

The image of this new kind of movement is the career jungle gym.  As you may recall from your schoolyard days, the jungle gym had two alluring qualities.  First, you got to pick your own way forward—there was no teacher and today there is no employer telling you where to go.  And second, sometimes you might move straight up, but occasionally you would move from side-to-side and even down and around to get where you were going.  There was no discredit, disgrace or dishonor in the path you picked, because (a) everyone got to pick their own way and (b) if you kept your eye on your goal, you would eventually get there.  The same is true with your career.

Correcting the Misperception of a Normal Job Market

It would be reassuring, I guess, to believe that today’s job market is just like the ones of yore, only tougher.  If that were true, we would at least know the rules of the game.  Unfortunately, however, it’s not.  The rules have changed, and we must adapt if we want to succeed.
Historically, we had a “come as you are” job market.  In other words, the skill set you had in your last job was sufficient to find a new job.  All you had to do, therefore, was update your resume, send it out to a bunch of employers, do a little networking around the edges and bitta-bang, bitta-boom, you would land a job that was as good as or better than the one you had before.

Today, the opposite is true.  If you are in transition, the skills you had to be effective in your last job are not sufficient to find a new one.  If you have any doubt about that, consider this: given a choice between two equally qualified candidates, one who is employed and the other who is in transition, recruiters will select the employed candidate 99.9 percent of the time.  Why?  Because, whether it’s true or not, they believe the employed person is more capable and therefore more likely to make a valuable contribution to their organization.

How can you overcome such a disadvantage?  You have to reinvent yourself even as you are looking for a job.  Update your skill set or add a new skill that will enable you to apply what you can already do in a broader set of circumstances.  Enroll in an academic or training program or take a course from your professional association, and then, add that fact to your resume.  Such a notation demonstrates that (a) you understand the importance of always getting better in today’s workplace and (b) you take personal responsibility for doing so.  Those two attributes will help to set you apart in the job market and restart your career.

Looking for a job in the current environment is definitely frustrating and often discouraging.  It does not, however, make you a failure.  Let me say that again: You are not a failure.  What’s happening today is simply proof positive that the rules of the game have changed.  If you change with them—if you correct the way you look at the job market—you’ll have what it takes to turn what used to be called failure into the modern definition of success.

Thanks for reading,

Peter

Visit me at Weddles.com

Peter Weddle is the author of over two dozen employment-related books, including Recognizing Richard Rabbit, a fable of self-discovery for working adults, and Work Strong, Your Personal Career Fitness System.

© Copyright 2009 WEDDLE’s LLC.  All Rights Reserved.

In a normal year, this would be the time for preparations.  The silly season of fall recruiting would be about to start, so the smartest among us would be doing everything they could to get ready for it.

But, of course, this year is different.  Hiring activity is still way down, so there seems to be little reason to worry about how prepared we are.  And yet, there is.  The pace may slower than we would like, but the economy is picking up steam.  A recovery is on the way.  And it’s for that recovery that we should be preparing right now.

I call such activity “precruitment” because it includes the steps we must take to ready both ourselves and our organizations for the rigors of a reenergized War for the Best Talent.  It’s the preparatory actions that are essential for recruiting success.

What do they entail?  The following checklist isn’t all-encompassing, but it will get you started.

Workforce Planning

Review the 2010 budgets of your organization’s strategic business units and confer with their leaders to determine:

the likely demand for talent over the next 12 months

and

any new kinds of talent required by changes in strategies, product or service mix or the marketplace.

Assess the internal supply of talent to see who might be appropriate and available to meet the expected demand.

Identify the gaps in talent that will have to be met with external recruiting and during which quarters in 2010 those requirements will likely occur.

Review the size and skills of the recruiting team to determine if additional permanent or contract recruiters will be needed to address all requirements, whether they are expected to be filled with internal mobility or external recruiting.  Begin laying the groundwork now to acquire the staff resources you will need in the future.

Reputation Management

Assess the credibility and persuasive power of your organization’s employment brand and takes steps to remediate it, if necessary.

Reenergize your Employee Referral Program by training your coworkers on (a) the key elements of your employment brand and (b) how best to articulate them to high caliber prospects outside the organization.

Research online documents, blog commentary and postings at Web-sites that publish “employer evaluations” to determine what’s being said about your organization.  If necessary, devise a strategy to counteract negative points of view and implement it right away.

Asset Management

Review the following to ensure posted content is accurate and up-to-date:

the career area on your organizational Web-site;

your organization’s Facebook page, if it has one;

your organization’s LinkedIn group or profile page, if it has one.

Launch a promotional campaign (or reinvigorate the one you already have) to encourage interest and participation in your Employee Referral Program.

Launch a relationship marketing campaign to reconnect and develop greater familiarity with the individuals whose resumes are stored in your applicant tracking system database.

Push your applicant tracking system vendor to upgrade its technology for identifying the source of your candidates.  (You’ll be surprised—and horrified—at how rudimentary and thus inaccurate many of these systems are.)

Research changes that have occurred among the 100,000+ job boards and career portals currently online to update your list of the best sites for acquiring the best talent for your organization.  Negotiate posting rates now while volume is low and deals can be made.

Resource & Process Management

Secret shop your recruitment process to determine where bottlenecks or behaviors might detract from the candidate experience.

Eliminate the single greatest source of frustration among job seekers by ensuring that your auto-responder is working and that you are acknowledging the receipt of every application and thanking every applicant.  In addition, add a notice to the career area on your Web-site and on every job posting that asks candidates to include the address of your auto-responder on their “white list” so that your message gets past their spam filter.

Conduct a review of best practices in interviewing for both hiring managers and recruiters.  Where possible, do these sessions at the same time to foster a collaborative spirit among the two groups.

Develop a “Leader’s Checklist” and distribute it to all hiring managers to reacquaint them with the tasks involved in your recruiting process and who is responsible for accomplishing them.

Meet with your recruitment ad agency (or your own staff) to review:

the tone and content you want to see in your job postings;

which social media tactics you want to see executed and where;

and

other sourcing strategies you are likely to employ (e.g., campus visits, career fairs).

Also, solicit their input on alternative methods you might use to differentiate your employer and its outreach to talent.

There are, obviously, many other steps you can take to get ready for the recovery, but attending to workforce planning and reputation, asset, and resource and process management are among the most important.  They are, as well, the key elements of successful precruitment.

Thanks for reading,

Peter

Visit me at Weddles.com

Peter Weddle is the author of over two dozen employment-related books, including Recognizing Richard Rabbit, a fable of self-discovery for working adults, and Work Strong, Your Personal Career Fitness System.

© Copyright 2009 WEDDLE’s LLC.  All Rights Reserved.

A recent poll of U.S. workers found that the one thing we most want from our employers is job security.  While that’s completely understandable in today’s crazy world of work, I’m afraid we’re more likely to get a visit from our fairy godmother.

The global economy is now more interconnected and interdependent than at any other time in history.  If government economic policies change in China, U.S. producers are affected.  If consumer tastes change in Europe, American businesses feel the impact.  If a South American company goes bankrupt, the people working in its plant in Tennessee will be hurt.

It is a highly turbulent and unpredictable environment.  And that uncertainty makes it all but impossible for our employers—whether they are American or foreign-based organizations—to predict what kinds of talent they will need tomorrow or the day after, let alone six months from now.  As a result, they might promise us job security, but they can’t deliver it.

If you don’t believe me, consider this.  The average tenure of a CEO in their job is now down to less than four years.  If that insecurity can happen in the corner office, it can (and will) happen everywhere else in the organization.

But, you know what?  I’m delighted that job security has joined the gold watch and buggy whip.  Think about it.  Job security was something only employers could provide, and they did so only when it suited their financial interests.  We had no control over the situation, so we stood around hat-in-hand, hoping for a little something we could count on from organizations that were more interested in counting their profits.

What’s the alternative?

Career security.  It’s the ability to stay employed in jobs of our choosing, regardless of the economic situation in any country or the financial condition of any one employer.  Career security is something we create for ourselves, so we control what happens to us in the workplace.  We become the master of our career, rather than its victim.

Instead of hoping that our employer will hang onto us when its business turns down, we monitor the employer’s status and if it starts to weaken, we take the initiative and move to a new workplace opportunity.  Instead of wishing upon a star when our employer gets bought, moved to a new location or reorganized, we line up options with other organizations to ensure our star keeps rising.

Now, some employers will say that such behavior is disloyal.  It’s not.  There are always two parties in the expression of loyalty, and loyalty only makes sense when there’s reciprocity between them.  In other words, if we are loyal to our employers, they should offer their loyalty to us in return.  The death of job security, however, has destroyed that reciprocity.  Employers can no longer be loyal to us, so we must be loyal to ourselves.  And, career security is the way we do so.

How is career security achieved?  I think it involves three steps.

First, we have to get to know ourselves.  We have to figure out what we love to do and do best.  That’s not our passion; it’s our talent.  Everyone is born with a natural capability or talent, but only those who take care of it—those who never stop developing its range and depth—can achieve career security.  And to make such a commitment, we have to know what our talent is.

Second, we have to take our talent to work.  We have to arrive with all of our talent each day and use it to do our best work every day.  Employers are desperate for such high performing employees.  In fact, according to the Society for Human Resource Management, 70% are now paying bonuses to hire talented contributors, and 65% are paying above market salaries to hang onto them.

Third, we must keep our career strong.  We can only work at our talent and use it to do our best work if you are employed by the right organizations and in the right jobs.  Career self-management by hoping for the best (or waiting for our employers to deliver it) is a sure-fire formula for career cardiac arrest or what most of us call unemployment.  Proactively reaching for opportunities where we can excel, in contrast, is the single best way to increase both the paycheck and the satisfaction we bring home from work.

Job security is definitely an attractive idea, but it’s an idea whose time has passed.  Career security, on the other hand, is a concept fit for the turbulent world of work in the 21 st Century.  It has the power and the promise to position us for enduring success.  And, it is acquired from the only source we can really count on—ourselves.

Thanks for reading,

Peter

Visit me at WEDDLEs.com

Peter Weddle is the author of over two dozen employment-related books, including Recognizing Richard Rabbit, a fable of self-discovery for working adults, and Work Strong, Your Personal Career Fitness System.

© Copyright 2009 WEDDLE’s LLC.  All Rights Reserved. 

Job security has joined the pay phone and carbon paper.  It’s no longer a part of the world of work.  Employers may promise it, but they can’t deliver it.  The global marketplace is just too dynamic, too unpredictable.

Does that mean there is no security in the workplace?  Absolutely not.  The kind of security you can achieve, however, is unlike that historically promised by your employers.  If you want to be secure at work—and who doesn’t—you need “career security.”  It’s the ability to stay employed in a job of your choice, regardless of the state of the economy.

As many of us have painfully learned in today’s recession, job security is controlled by employers.  It is provided at their discretion and only when it serves their bottom line.  Career security, in contrast, is something you create.  It is a protective shield that you erect by taking two important steps.

First, you must become a career activist.  That’s a person who throws off their passivity and takes charge of their career.  They don’t wait around for their employer, their boss or their mentor to do it.  They don’t hunker down and hang on, hoping that someone will sprinkle pixie dust on them.  A career activist decides that they would rather be the master of their career than its victim, so they climb in the driver’s seat and set its course.

Second, you must keep your career moving.  You are a living organism which means either you’re growing or you’re dead.  The same is true of your career.  Either you’re extending the strength, reach and endurance of your career or you’re in the throes of career cardiac arrest … or what we all know as unemployment.

How do you keep your career in motion?  By setting and working continuously toward 3 goals:

Your Achievement Goal is something you can accomplish in the next six-to-twelve months.  It identifies an outcome you can achieve in your current job, such as a step-up in your performance, the completion of a special project, the solution to an especially tough problem or the resolution of an issue that has degraded your work.  It enables you to give your employer a fulsome return on its investment in you and to give yourself a “career victory” that is meaningful and useful for you.

Your Advancement Goal is an objective you can reach in the next three-to-five years.  It identifies the next job you want to hold or the next level of work you want to be able to perform.  It may involve your current employer or it may require that you move to another wok situation, but it will always represent a major leap forward in your capability and contribution in the workplace.  Your advancement goal should stretch you beyond your current level of performance, but also be a realistic challenge.  It is a brass ring, but one that you have a reasonable chance of grabbing.

Your Development Goal is the bridge between your achievement goal and your advancement goal.  It enables you to build on the success you accomplish in the near term by adding the supplemental skills and knowledge that prepare you to conquer each of the challenges you identify for the longer term in your career.  Your development goal transforms you from a stationary state to one in motion, from operating as a worker-in-place to the continual growth of a worker-in-progress.

A career activist doesn’t have crystal ball.  They have no better insight than others about which path the economy will take.  They are certain, however, of one thing: a stationary target is much easier to hit than a moving one.  That’s why they actively manage their careers and keep them moving forward all of the time.

Thanks for reading,

Peter

Visit me at Weddles.com

Peter Weddle is the author of over two dozen employment-related books, including his latest, Work Strong, Your Personal Career Fitness System.

© Copyright 2009 WEDDLE’s LLC.  All Rights Reserved. 

Whether you’re sourcing with a social media site or a job board, one fact remains true: whenever you connect with a passive prospect, you are interrupting them.  They aren’t looking for a job or for you, so your contact is, by definition, intruding into whatever it is they are doing.  That’s the premise behind “interruption marketing.”  It’s the process of barging in on top talent while still conveying a positive first impression.  When executed effectively, it transforms even the most passive prospects—those who normally wouldn’t even consider a new job offer—into a person who is actively interested in your opening.

Interruption marketing can be used to shape both your recruitment advertising and your networking online.  It is based on several attributes that are particularly prevalent among passive prospects:

They are busy with their jobs so have the attention span of a gnat.

They listened to their mothers so are wary of strangers.

They are already successful so never look for a job but are always on the lookout for career advancement opportunities.

Interruption marketing is the process of tailoring your communications to accommodate and, where possible, leverage these attributes.  That means your messages must be short and to the point.  They should introduce you as well as your opportunity.  And, they must focus initially, at least, on the one topic that interests passive prospects the most when learning about an employer and its employment opportunities.  Done well, interruption marketing conveys the right information with enough impact to get busy people to stop whatever they’re doing and make a conscious, but quick decision they wouldn’t otherwise make.

That decision can produce one of four possible outcomes.  Three of those outcomes are positive and just one is negative.  The positive outcomes are:

The prospect indicates an interest in your opportunity and wants to learn more;

The prospect is not interested in your opportunity, but refers you to someone who might be; and

The prospect is not interested and does not make a referral, but agrees to hear about other opportunities you may have in the future.

The lone negative outcome occurs when a prospect is not interested in your opportunity, in making a referral or in ever hearing from you again.  And even that decision isn’t as bad as it might seem at first blush, because at least you now know not to waste any time on them in the future.

The form and content of interruption marketing communications are different depending on whether you’re advertising or networking.  Both, however, are a form of marketing, NOT sales.  Their role isn’t to close the deal and recruit the prospect, but rather to get them to move from a passive to an active state so you can evaluate and, if appropriate, sell them.

For recruitment advertising, interruption marketing begins with the title of your ad and continues through just the first four lines of copy.  If you don’t get those right, passive prospects won’t read any further, and the opportunity to sell them (with the rest of your ad) will be lost.

What elements should they include?  Here are my recommendations:

The title should be short (35-40 characters) and hard hitting while addressing three pass-fail topics.  Either your title has these elements and passive prospects will read on, or it doesn’t and they won’t read any further.  The topics are: the location of the opening, the kind of talent or skill you’re seeking (not the position’s bureaucratic label), and the one aspect of your organization’s employment experience most likely to influence “A” level talent.  Don’t guess on this last element, it’s critical that you get it right.  So, ask the people who really know—the “A” level talent who already work for your organization.

The first four lines of the ad should lead with your strength by covering four pass-fail topics.  The first two topics describe the key aspects of your offer: why the opening is a dream job and why your organization is a dream employer.  The best evidence for that is an answer to one or more of the following questions: what will they get to do, what will they get to learn, what will they get to accomplish and who will they get to work with.  Then, address the topic of compensation by stating a salary range in numbers.  Why is that so critical?  Because the best talent doesn’t work for money but they do use their pay level as a measure of their career advancement.  And finally, make a strong statement about your employer’s commitment to individual privacy.  Passive prospects are risk averse, so they need to know you will protect them.

For networking, interruption marketing begins with your first message to a prospect.  You only get one chance to make a first impression, so it’s important that you make the right one.  In this case, the Subject line of your message as well as the first four lines of its content will determine if a prospect reads any further.

Here’s what I recommend you include:

The Subject line should be short (35-40 characters) and intriguing, but not obfuscate the purpose of your communication.  It should have impact, but not come across as a hard sell.  Use a professional tone and, as with the title of a recruitment ad, focuses on that one aspect of your organization’s employment experience most likely to influence “A” level talent.

The first four lines of the message should reassure them that you’re not some online wacko who’s wasting their time, but rather a recruiter who’s done their homework before connecting with them.  To achieve that goal, use a businesslike but not overly formal tone and offer the following information.  First, tell them how you identified them as a prospect.  For example, you might explain that they were recommended by one of their friends or colleagues or that you saw their post on a blog or message board or that you were impressed with their profile that you found on a social media site.  Then, use short declarative statements to describe why you think they would be a good fit with your opportunity.  The more explicit you are—by relating your opening to their current or previous experience—the more persuasive you will be.  If you don’t have that kind of detailed knowledge, make your case by answering one or more of the same questions that should be addressed in the body of a recruitment ad.

Interruption marketing is founded on a truism of communications.  No matter how powerful the media—regardless of whether you’re using LinkedIn or LatPro, Twitter or TopUSAJobs.com, Facebook or FortBendJobs.com—it’s the message that ensures your success.

Thanks for reading,

Peter

Visit me at Weddles.com

Peter Weddle is the author of over two dozen employment-related books, including his latest, Work Strong, Your Personal Career Fitness System.

© Copyright 2009 WEDDLE’s LLC.  All Rights Reserved.

Back in the day, accomplishments at work were only accomplishments if they were acknowledged by a supervisor.  That reality had at least two downsides for you.  First, it limited the definition of an accomplishment to whatever made sense to your supervisor, whether or not it made any sense at all for you.  And second, your accomplishments were only recognized if your supervisor bothered to do so, and sadly, not all supervisors have good human relations skills.

The net effect of this situation was to diminish your perception of your accomplishments.  If you have any doubt about that, think back to the last time you wrote a resume.  Remember how hard it was to recall your achievements in your most recent job, let alone those in jobs you held before that?  That fuzziness indicates how little impact your accomplishments have had on your own sense of success at work.

Such a malformed view of your role at work is a threat to you and to your career.  It undermines your self-image and, ultimately, your self-confidence in your own capability.  And, it clouds how people see your contribution on-the-job and potential in the workplace.  If you are only as accomplished as your supervisor acknowledges, they are in control of what happens to you and your career, and nothing could be more dangerous in today’s much more demanding world of work.

What should you do about this situation?

Throw out supervisor-defined accomplishments and focus, instead, on personal “career victories.”  A career victory is different from an old fashioned accomplishment in several ways:

First, a career victory is defined by you.  You set a goal—I will improve my work skills or I will increase my output on-the-job—and you determine what constitutes reaching that goal—I will improve my work skills by completing this course of instruction or I will increase my output on-the-job by learning how to use that software program.

Second, career victories occur wherever you say they do.  They may happen on-the-job or outside it, in an academic institution, a professional association or a volunteer activity.  A career victory is not limited to what happens in your employer’s workplace; it describes what happens to you—the self-improvements you realize by reaching goals you set—in whatever venue you select.

Third, career victories occur however you say they do.  They are not dictated by what best serves your supervisor or employer.  A career victory may certainly do that, but its purpose is to reinforce your self-esteem and advance your career.  You decide what self-improvement will do you the most good and the conditions under which it will be realized.

Fourth, career victories occur whenever you say they do.  They don’t depend upon your supervisor’s ability to recognize them or their willingness to express that recognition in a way that will do you any good.  A career victory is a success that you recognize, and it is a well deserved pat on the back that you give yourself.

Career victories are based on a very simple, but powerful premise.  It analogizes achieving career success to riding a bicycle.  In other words, you can coast for a short while in your career, but most of the time, you’re going to have to peddle—you’re going to have to engage in continuous self-improvement—to keep making steady progress.  If you don’t, your career will start to wobble and eventually topple over.

Although this concept may seem a bit strange at first, it’s not all that hard to get used to.  After all, almost all of us know how to ride a bike.  And even if we haven’t done so for awhile, it’s one of those skills you never really lose and thus can quickly regain.  Achieving career victories, therefore, is something anybody and everybody can do.  They are a democratic activity.  And, unlike accomplishments, where recognition can be colored by the biases and limitations of your supervisor, they are an equal opportunity form of celebration.

You can use your career victories in several ways.  To start, I suggest that you memorialize your victories in writing by creating a “career record”—a diary of sorts that describes all of your work-related successes.  This document isn’t a resume, although it can certainly make writing a resume much easier.  It is, instead, a simple listing of your self-improvement goals and what you did to meet them.  That record, in turn, can help you see your progress in the world of work so you can celebrate your successes (whether or not they are recognized by your employer’s performance appraisal system).  And, it can provide a wake-up call if you find yourself coasting along and losing momentum in your career.

Focusing on your career victories doesn’t mean that your contributions on-the-job are any less important.  Indeed, they can and should be career victories to which you aspire and for which you strive.  The reason you do so, however, is not to gain the recognition of your supervisor, but instead to express and experience the best you can be.  That’s the true definition of success in the modern workplace.

Thanks for reading,

Peter

Visit me at www.Weddles.com

Peter Weddle is the author of over two dozen employment-related books, including his latest, Work Strong, Your Personal Career Fitness System.

© Copyright 2009 WEDDLE’s LLC.  All Rights Reserved.

As many of you know, I’ve long been concerned about the terrible quality of recruitment ads that appear on the Web.  In fact, I’ve often described reading job postings as a cure for insomnia.  They’re so boring and so uninspired, they would put a brick to sleep.

The only people who can stand to read today’s job postings, therefore, are active job seekers.  They have no choice.  Passive prospects, on the other hand, have plenty of opportunities from which to choose, so a lot of them chose to ignore the ads they see online.

Now, it appears that this same affliction has seeped into ads posted on social media sites.  Whether it’s on LinkedIn or Twitter, what we’re seeing today isn’t professional networking, but propagating narcolepsy online.

Let’s look at ad titles, for example.  A job posting’s title is its front door.  Too many titles today, however, look like they lead to a house of horros.  Consider these recent titles posted on LinkedIn:

Seeking Inside Sales Manager for Randy’s Ring & Pinion in Everett, WA

Seeking former Army Captain with supply chain, logistics, Army Force Generation (ARFORGEN) cycle, or materiel readiness experience.

JDE Purchasing Functional Analyst.

You can hear the snoring already.  During the period I checked, the first and second titles generated exactly zero responses.  Even active job seekers were turned off.  The third title did manage to bring one response … from a job board urging the employer to post on its site.

The shortcoming common to all three of these titles is their focus on features.  As our colleagues in sales and marketing have learned the hard way, features don’t sell; features and benefits do.  In other words, if you want someone to “buy” your organization’s value proposition as an employer, your ad’s title (and content) must describe both the key feature of that proposition and the value it offers to the prospect.

For example, the first title above might be modified as follows: “Seeking Inside Sales Manager to Head High Performing Team at Leading Retailer in Everett, WA.”  In this case, the feature is a management job in sales in Everett, Washington.  The benefit is the opportunity to work with an established and successful group of people in an established and successful company.  Why?  Because the chance to work with winners is one of the key motivators for high performing talent.

How do you produce such an ad?

Here’s my suggestion for a simple 3-step process that will help make sure your ad titles generate interest among top prospects:

Step 1:  Identify the one or, at most, two key aspects of your employment value proposition that most appeals to top talent.  How can you figure that out?  Ask the top talent who already work for your organization.  What should you ask them?  Try this simple question: “What do you value most about working here?”.  Or this: What single factor had the greatest influence on your decision to say “Yes” to our employment offer?”.  Remember, the goal is not simply to find a feature—your company is big—but a feature and its benefit—your company is big so offers significant growth potential.

Step 2:  Find the right words to articulate the feature and benefit you identified in Step 1.  Passive prospects have the attention span of a gnat, so your title must be short and clear if it is to have any impact.  It must convey the information necessary to pique their interest and do so in the fewest number of words possible.  That means avoiding buzz words whose meaning is vague or unclear—“employer of choice” is a perfect case in point—and focusing on words that make an emotional connection with “A” talent—“high performing,” “successful,” “leading” are good exemplars  As long as the words express the truth, the more exciting, impassioned or moving, the better.  What you’re trying to achieve with a job posting title is an impulse purchase—you want the reader to make a spur-of-the-moment decision to invest some time in reading your ad.

Step 3:  Test the ad title on your target population.  Take the title (and the ad, if you’ve written it) back to your high performing colleagues and ask them if it accurately portrays what they most value about working for your organization.  If it does, post your ad; if it doesn’t, refine the statement and check with them again.  In other words, don’t post until your ad is good enough to transform passive prospects into active applicants.  Why?  Because the caliber of your ad is the first impression an individual has of your organization’s employment brand.  And if the ad is so boring it puts them to sleep, it’s also the only impression they will have.

A growing number of recruiters today invest hours online searching through profiles on LinkedIn or using Twitter to tweet with prospects.  Many, however, won’t devote the same amount of time or exert the same level of effort to write good copy for the recruitment ads they post on the same sites.  From a prospect’s perspective, however, both activities say something about the values and culture of an employer.  The surest way to undermine your networking, therefore, is to publish narcolepsy online or what is now all too often provided as a job posting.

Thanks for reading,

Peter

Visit me at www.Weddles.com

Peter Weddle is the author of over two dozen employment-related books, including his latest, Work Strong, Your Personal Career Fitness System.

© Copyright 2009 WEDDLE’s LLC.  All Rights Reserved.

Recruitment ads posted on the Web generally fall into two content categories.  There are the really brief notices that offer the job title, employer’s name and maybe a couple of candidate qualifications that are deemed essential to satisfactory performance.  And then, there are the novellas that run on and on and on with enough job and organizational detail to impress even a government bureaucrat.  Unfortunately, both are unlikely to motivate the kinds of talent most employers and recruiters want to hire.  Whether they’re posted on a job board or on LinkedIn and Twitter, ads that are too brief or too long are too weak to have a big impact on “A’ level talent.

The key to developing high impact content for a job posting is to remember what it—the ad—is supposed to do.  Recruiting is definitely a sales activity—we are, after all, trying to convince prospects to buy the employment value proposition of our organization.  That’s our job, however, not the job of our ad.  A job posting has a much more limited sales goal.  Its role is to convince the prospect to invest a little of their most precious resource: their time.  The ad must sell them on the value of paying attention to what we have to offer while ignoring everything else going on around them.

To accomplish that objective, a job posting must be developed in a two step process:

Step 1: Figure out what matters to your target demographic. 

To sell your employer successfully, you have to know what triggers your best customers to say “Yes” to its offer.  In other words, you aren’t interested in what motivates “C” level talent; you want to know how you can effectively engage the “A” level talent your employer needs.  Since such prospects are almost always employed, even during a Great Recession, you must figure out what factors have the power to induce them to do the one thing we humans most hate to do: change.

Ironically, these factors seldom include the kinds of information we typically provide in a job posting.  They are rarely the requirements or responsibilities of a job.  But don’t take my word for it.  Ask the experts.  Ask the “A” level talent you already have in your organization.

Pull together a focus group of the top performers in the fields for which you’re recruiting and ask them what triggered their decision to say “Yes.”  Encourage them to be as specific as possible and to rank order or prioritize the factors they identify.  As our colleagues in sales have long known, there probably won’t be universal agreement on any single factor, but there will almost always be consensus on the top two-to-five motivators.  These are the triggers—the specific benefits of employment—you want to highlight in your job posting.

What are these factors likely to be?  The following list is by no means exhaustive, but it is a place to start.

The reputation of the organization, its products or services, or even its leaders;

The kinds of people who will be a new hire’s coworkers or the caliber of their boss;

The location of the facility and the quality of life available in that area;

The opportunity the organization presents to do interesting and/or important work;

The prospects for professional growth and/or advancement that would come from employment.

Step 2: Express the triggers in sentient language. 

The dictionary defines sentient as “endowed with feeling.”  Sentient language, therefore, is a word or words that touch the reader, that have an emotional impact on them.  An idea expressed with a normal vocabulary might be very clear and comprehensible to the reader, but it doesn’t have the impact necessary to trigger them to make a change.  Sentient language, on the other hand, conveys the same idea in a way that matters to a group of prospects—in this case “A” level performers—and influences their behavior in a direction conducive to their recruitment.

For example, if you learn that your organization’s reputation is one of the key motivators for “A’ level prospects, you can express that idea several ways.  You might say:

Our organization is a Fortune magazine “best company to work for.”

or

Our organization empowers you to do your best work.

The first expression is an abstract statement of fact.  It provides helpful information, but does not include an emotional wallop sufficient to motivate a passive prospect.  The second statement, in contrast, uses both a single term (“empowers”) and a phrase (“do your best work”) with sentient impact—the ability to touch and influence a prospect.

Why worry about something as mundane as word choice in your job postings?  Well, there are at least three reasons for doing so:

First, most postings on the Web today have the emotional appeal of a brick.  That’s true whether they appear on job boards or on LinkedIn and Twitter.  As Noan Cohen recently noted in the The New York Times, “Tweets arte generally banal,” and banal doesn’t recruit top prospects.

Second, we are still in a War for the Best Talent.  Despite an unemployment rate that is steadily creeping toward 10%, it is still very difficult to recruit people who have rare skills or are “A” level performers.  In that kind of environment, a high impact job posting is one of the best weapons at your disposal.

Third, despite all of the brouhaha recently about social media’s role in recruitment, the message remains just as important as the medium.  You can be on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter and be just as disappointed with your yield if you use a message with little or no impact as you would (allegedly) be using more conventional sources.

“Less is more” is clearly an overused phrase.  However, if your less is more impactful than a longer expression or even a shorter but duller one, you’ll have enormous success in recruiting top talent.

Thanks for reading,

Peter

Visit me at Weddles.com

Peter Weddle is the author of over two dozen employment-related books, including his latest, Work Strong, Your Personal Career Fitness System.

© Copyright 2009 WEDDLE’s LLC.  All Rights Reserved.

If you’re looking for a job, you’re probably doing so with two strikes against you.  I realize that’s a harsh statement, but sadly, it’s almost certainly true.  Why?  Because most of the people in the job market today conducted their last job search prior to December, 2007, the date today’s Great Recession began.  The conventional wisdom on which they relied, therefore, was designed for a very different time and a very different employment environment.  This recession hasn’t changed the rules of the game; it’s changed the game, itself.  What was right for conducting a job search BGR (before the Great Recession) is totally wrong for doing so AGR (after the Great Recession).  Yet, that’s exactly what a lot of people are doing.

It’s understandable that so many of us still believe we can find a job the old fashioned way.  After all, we know how that approach works and have grown comfortable using it.  Moreover, conducting such a traditional job search was based on an assumption that was especially easy to accept:

Our careers were stable so we could put them aside while looking for a job.

The economy may have contracted, but a recession didn’t fundamentally alter the way business was conducted.  Those in transition, therefore, had but one task to accomplish: getting themselves reemployed.  It was always a challenge, of course, but at least it was a single challenge.  We didn’t have to multitask.

That assumption was bolstered by a second assumption that was equally as easy to accept:

The disruption caused by a recession was painful, but transitory.

Recessions forced employers to implement temporary reductions in force.  As soon as the economy began to strengthen, therefore, they would quickly refill their empty positions and even add new ones to accelerate their growth.  The resulting “more jobs” recovery meant that those in transition could get by with tried and true job search techniques: they would send out a slew of resumes, do a little networking around the edges and, before too long, have several job offers, including at least one that was better than their last job.

These two assumptions underpinned the BGR conventional wisdom.  It enabled us to view our being in transition as simply an interruption in the norm.  The world of work was basically unchanged, so our careers remained intact even as we moved from one employer to another.  In effect, we had a “come as you are” job market.  There was no need to shore up our occupational prowess or to add ancillary skills that would extend our range of contribution or to revitalize our network of professional contacts.  Our careers were good enough just as they were.

This Great Recession, however, has reset the dynamics of the American workplace.  The downsizing we are witnessing today is not a temporary reduction in force; it’s a permanent reduction in structure.  Employers are shaving huge chunks off their organizational charts, and those jobs will never be replaced.  As a result, what began after the 2001 recession as a “job less” recovery has morphed into a “less jobs” recovery after this recession.  There will simply be far fewer positions available even as the economy begins to grow.

What does that mean for you?  If you’re currently employed, it means you’ve lost your job security.  If you’re in transition, it means the quest for reemployment is now considerably more difficult.  For both of you, it means accepting two new and very different assumptions and, without sugarcoating them, these truisms impose additional obligations on you:

Careers are now in flux so you must take charge of your career and take the steps necessary to protect its health.

Workplace disruption is the new norm so you are always in transition and must make those moves serve your best interests.

I realize that this unconventional wisdom is tough to take.  I understand you would rather that I tell you the world is as it has always been.  I can’t.  I owe you the truth.  I have too much respect for your inherent talent to spin a fairy tale that makes you feel good but sets you up for failure.  The AGR workplace is already emerging, and there is no going back.  To put it bluntly, you can embrace this new reality and position yourself for the real and sustained success it offers or you can pretend it doesn’t exist and lock yourself into an ever smaller and more desperate box.

What’s the best way to embark on the positive course?  If you are actively looking for a new job, you must first accept that your quest is now more challenging than it has historically been and then adopt an appropriately tailored job search strategy.  If you are currently employed, you must first accept that your job security has now disappeared and adopt the same tailored strategy as your peers in transition.  Here’s what it entails:

Attention.  As it was BGR, finding a job AGR is a full time occupation.  Forget “funemployment.”  If you’re in transition, you need to be working on your job search 100% of the time and with all of the talent and energy you can muster.  If you’re currently employed, on the other hand, forget comfortably coasting along.  You also need to be searching for a job, as well, only the one you seek is the next opportunity you’d like to have.  It may be with your current employer or with another organization, but wherever it occurs, it must enable you to extend your development and contribution in the workplace.

Guts.  Unlike during the BGR period, finding a new or another job in the AGR era requires that you also take a second job.  Not everybody is going to be willing to do that.  It takes courage and self-confidence.  You have to push yourself outside your comfort zone and tap into more of your talent and energy than you’ve probably ever used before.  You must be both a proactive job seeker and a proactive career self-manager.  Your second job, however, is not a secondary endeavor; it is every bit as important as your first job and should be given the same priority and level of effort.  Said another way, working on your own career is just as critical to your success as working on-the-job for your employer.

Readiness.  To be a successful career self-manager, you must become an expert in and regularly practice “career fitness.”  You must accept responsibility for the health of your career and act to execute that responsibility every single day.  You must know how to increase the strength, endurance and reach of your career and be dedicated to performing the activities that will achieve those outcomes.

One of those activities, for example, is to “pump up your career’s cardiovascular system.”  The heart of your career is your professional knowledge and expertise.  When you’re looking for a new or better job, therefore, enroll in a professional development course to bring your skill set up-to-date.  Then, tell your supervisor what you’re doing and/or add the activity to your resume with the annotation “On-going.”  That simple step will signal to employers that you realize the importance of staying current in your field and that you take personal responsibility for doing so.  There’s no more powerful statement than that of your workplace character and potential contribution.

A new era is dawning in the American workplace.  Coming as it does after the Great Recession and shaped as it is by that extraordinary event, it is most appropriately described as the AGR world of work.  It is an environment unlike any we’ve ever seen, but one that holds great promise for those who can and do adapt.

Thanks for reading,

Peter

Visit me at Weddles.com

Peter Weddle is the author of over two dozen employment-related books, including his latest, Work Strong, Your Personal Career Fitness System.

© Copyright 2009 WEDDLE’s LLC.  All Rights Reserved.

In the past six months or so, we’ve all learned new acronyms and new definitions for words we thought we already knew.  We’ve heard countless news reports about TARP or the troubled asset relief program for banks and other financial institutions.  And, of course, there’s been much made of the stimulus program and its focus on “shovel ready” projects that will help to reinvigorate the economy.

Eventually, I suppose, all of this investment will trickle down and have a beneficial impact on those of us responsible for talent acquisition.  Patience, however, is not a virtue in the c-suite of most organizations today.  They’re under too much pressure to accept our relying yet another acronym: HOTAIRE or Hold On, The Advertised Improvements Roll-out Eventually.  They want—indeed, they expect—results right now.

How can you respond?  I think the best approach is a combination TARP and stimulus strategy for recruiters.  It should focus on some of our most troubled assets and fix them with “shovel ready” solutions.  Here are my suggestions.

The Troubled Asset: the Career area on most corporate Web-sites. 

Most Career areas have the look and feel of a store.  They provide a transactional experience—hey, we’re a buyer of labor, you’re a seller of labor, so let’s do a deal—that appeals only to active job seekers.  It leaves the passive prospect cold.  And, of course, it’s the passive prospect we most want to attract and recruit.

What “shovel ready” project will enable you to fix that problem?  Launch a blog on your site.  There are only two things that will attract and hold the interest of passive prospects: credible information on what it’s like to work in your organization and interaction with their peers.  So, design your blogging program not as a something your recruiters do, but rather as a way for the best and brightest in your organization to recount their experiences on-the-job.  Think of it as a platform for your “A” level performers to strut their stuff to their peers.  It will transform the look and feel of your Career area from a store to a farm, a place that nurtures relationships with exactly the kind of talent you want to recruit.

Blogging done well takes time and effort, so how can you get your already busy “A” level coworkers to sign up?

First, limit each person’s participation to a three month assignment.  Make their involvement a short term project not a penance.

Second, position a person’s selection to blog as career-enhancing inside your organization.  Make sure it has a positive impact on their performance appraisals and salary review.

Third, select three new bloggers—representing different career fields and work experiences –every three months.  Give your bloggers some company and some competition.

Then, stand back and watch your all stars battle it out, both to be selected as a blogger and to be the best blogger on the Web.

The Troubled Asset: the resume database in most corporate applicant tracking systems. 

Employers invest hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars building up a resume database and then do very little with it.  Their recruiters may conduct a perfunctory check of the archived resumes when sourcing for a new opening, but typically that’s about it.  They see the database as a static stack of electronic files, rather than as a platform for building relationships with the people behind the files.  Yet, those people are prospects who don’t have to be sourced and have already expressed an interest in the organization.  In effect, they are a ready-made way to cut both the cost and time to fill vacancies.

What “shovel ready” project would enable you to realize those savings?  Start communicating with the people behind the resumes.  Launch a campaign of regular email messages that push out information about your organization and pull in updates to their careers.  The communications should be no less frequent than quarterly, but no more frequent than monthly.  The goal is both to pre-qualify individuals for your future openings (by keeping their record current) and to pre-sell them on your organization as an employer (by sharing information about its work and successes).

People are all but overwhelmed by email these days so how can you get them to accept, let alone ready your messages?

First, make the program opt-in.  Respect their right to say they don’t want to participate.

Second, make sure the content of your messages is interesting.  Avoid marketing or even recruiting collateral and instead, send them brief vignettes of the on-the-job experiences of your top performers—the people who would be their colleagues if they worked for your organization.

Third, get the mechanics right.  Ask them to add the email address of your messages to their white list so they won’t be caught up in their spam filter and use a common subject line so they learn to recognize your messages when they arrive.

Then, get ready for a significant response.  The simple act of signaling your continued interest in applicants is so rare among employers, you are likely to get a lot of takers.

Hiring activity is way down at the moment, so now is the time to invest in improvements that will upgrade your performance once recruiting picks back up.  While there are many ways to make such an investment, I think you get the best return by focusing on your most troubled assets and on solutions that are “shovel ready.”  Do that, and you greatly diminish the possibility that you will need a career-damaging bailout down the road.

Thanks for reading,

Peter

Visit me at Weddles.com

Peter Weddle is the author of over two dozen employment-related books, including his latest, Work Strong, Your Personal Career Fitness System.

© Copyright 2009 WEDDLE’s LLC.  All Rights Reserved.

We’ve all heard of the alpha male and female.  The dictionary defines them as the dominant person in a group, the one everybody emulates and follows.  The term was originally coined to describe behavior in wolf and dog packs, but for most of the 20 th Century, it also accurately depicted the way we interacted in our careers.  One person was on top, and the rest of us brought up the rear.

While wolves and dogs are stuck with this leader-follower relationship, however, we humans have an option.  We can pull ourselves out of the back of the pack—out of the pack altogether, in fact—and assume a new role.  I call it the “alpha career athlete.”  It recognizes our innate ability to act as individuals and to set our own unique course in the world of work.

More often than not, the alpha career athlete still finds their employment in an organization.  Most aren’t free agents or independent contractors.  They work in teams, on projects and for departments and they report to a boss.  Their on-the-job experience is similar to that of every other person in the workplace.  What changes is their view of who they are working for and why.

An alpha career athlete works on themselves for themselves.  They are interested in learning just how good they can be in their profession, craft or trade.  They accept a job because it challenges them to be better than they have been, and they devote all of their talent to passing the test.  Moreover, that same commitment to self improvement also enhances the value of their contribution to their employer.  In effect, they protect their employment and preserve their paycheck by persevering in their determination to excel.

In Search of (Personal) Excellence

In 1982, Tom Peters wrote a business classic called In Search of Excellence.  The book’s popularity was largely based on the author’s research into how companies achieved superior performance.  It outlined a number of practices that other organizations could implement in order to achieve their own version of excellence.

What many readers missed, however, was the underlying premise of the book: success was best achieved through a commitment to excellence.  If you wanted your company to prosper, it wasn’t enough to be good or even very good and certainly not mediocre or just enough to get by.  The one sure pathway to prosperity was excellence.

What was true for organizations in the 20 th Century is true for individuals in the 21 st Century.  Success is not achieved by being loyal to one’s employer or by knowing how things get done inside an organization.  It is not assured with years of experience or even with a knowledge of the current state-of-the-art.  What produces sustained career advancement in today’s world of work is a commitment to personal excellence.

It is what drives the alpha career athlete.  He or she is “in search of excellence.”  They are on a quest to become the champion inside them.  This is not some quixotic adventure, but rather an entirely rational determination to express and experience the talent with which they (and all of us) were created.   Alpha career athletes believe that, just as every company can achieve superior performance, so too can they.  And they’re resolved to do so.

Companies, however, have Peters’ guidelines with which to work; alpha career athletes need something else.  They need a set of practices that will engage, refine and unleash the excellence within them.  What follows are what I think those practices must be:

I. Pump Up Your Cardiovascular System.  The heart of your career is your occupational expertise.  Re-imagine yourself as a work-in-progress so that you are always adding depth and tone to your knowledge and skill set.

II. Strengthen Your Circulatory System.  The wider and deeper your network of contacts, the more visible you and your capabilities will be in the workplace.  Make nurturing professional relationships a part of your business day.

III. Develop All of Your Muscle Groups.  The greater your versatility in contributing your expertise at work, the broader the array of situations and assignments in which you can be employed.  Develop ancillary skills that will give you more ways to apply your core expertise in the workplace.

IV. Increase Your Flexibility & Range of Motion.  Moving from industry-to-industry, from one daily schedule to another or even from one location to another is never easy, but your willingness to adapt will help to keep your career moving forward.

V. Work With Winners.  Working with successful organizations and coworkers enables you to grow on-the-job, develop useful connections that will last a career and establish yourself as a winner in the world of work.

VI. Stretch Your Soul.  A healthy career not only serves you, it serves others, as well.  A personal commitment to doing some of your best work as good works for your community, your country and/or your planet is the most invigorating form of work/life balance.

VII. Pace Yourself.  A fulfilling and rewarding career depends upon your getting the rest and replenishment you need in order to do your best work every day you’re on-the-job.  Discipline yourself and your boss to set aside time to recharge your passion and capacity for work.

All of us have the inherent capacity to be an alpha career athlete because all of us have an inherent talent that wants to be—deserves to be—discovered.  Humans are the only beings, however, who can willfully choose to ignore their gift.  And happily, they are also the only beings who can choose to recognize it.  So, become the alpha career athlete you were meant to be; put yourself in search of (personal) excellence.

Thanks for reading,

Peter

Visit me at Weddles.com

Peter Weddle is the author of over two dozen employment-related books, including his latest, Work Strong, Your Personal Career Fitness System.

© Copyright 2009 WEDDLE’s LLC.  All Rights Reserved. 

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