When Confidence Becomes a Liability for Leaders

Posted on October 16, 2020 by Karen Huller in Branding, Conscious Leadership, Human Resources, Leadership, Talent Management | Leave a comment

We all feel best when we’re confident, but that good feeling can become a critical obstacle to being a conscious leader.

Our brain’s basic survival instinct makes us hard-wired to seek out pleasure and avoid pain. Both our learning and conditioning depend upon receiving love, and the hormonal releases associated with that feeling that tell our brain we want more.

We all want love. We crave love, and we don’t thrive without it. Thriving is not the same as succeeding or prospering. When I refer to thriving, I don’t mean as individuals. If you are alone and wealthy, you are not considered thriving. Thriving means excelling and achieving balance in multiple, 12 in fact, realms of your life. Those areas are Love Relationship(s), Parenting, Family, Social, Intellectual, Health, Career, Financial, Spiritual, Emotional, Quality of Life, and Life Vision.

Many of these realms rely upon how an individual relates to others, both interpersonally and communally.

The measure of leadership is shifting from successfully getting people to complete tasks to creating self-sustaining leaders who help companies achieve sustainable success, as in not merely financial success, but profit that does not come at a cost to people or the planet. This new definition of leadership is based on major shifts in our society over the last 100 years and various movements from industry to family dynamics to social justice.

The connotation of confidence in leadership is changing dramatically. In the past, there there was a hierarchical power structure, where the top of the organizational pyramid possessed the most power. Now, we are shifting to more of a shared power structure, which more closely mimics what America’s founding fathers had in mind – power to the people. This power shift is causing a lot of conflict everywhere, which we are seeing and even being impacted by down to the individual level.

When the power goes from the top-down, people at the bottom need to be able to rely on the primary leader, or a small group of leaders, to make decisions. In this structure, there is value to having confidence in a leader. Without having any power in decisions, these workers did not have to operate in, or worry about, ambiguity because there was authority. They could surrender their power to someone else and they could focus on the tactile, pragmatic work.

Leadership has been challenged like never before since failures of corporate leadership impacted every individual on the planet in 2008 in varying degrees. Social media has given a powerful voice to people whose voices would otherwise barely be heard by people at the top. What used to happen behind closed doors in a boardroom is now front and center and viral on Twitter the next day.

If you look at the corporate landscape as a whole, now that more of us are clued in to just how prevalent unconscious leadership is, and just how detrimental it can be to everyone, there is little trust that when a leader projects confidence, there is actual substance backing it up. Closed boardroom doors are now an ominous signal that decisions are being made that will adversely impact the majority and benefit a few.

The world of talent, which is essentially what makes corporations run, is realizing that bias and assumption drive division and create branding liabilities that threaten short-term and long-term profit.

Leaders are being forced to question everything. So, how can a leader even have confidence in an environment like this, where we have unprecedented events that no past corporate leaders have previously navigated, let alone have successfully navigated, in order to lead to any level of confidence? Even data and science are moving targets.

Confidence is an enigma. It feels awful to be uncertain about your ability to lead, to not have certainty that decisions and actions will have positive outcomes. It feels awful to be constantly questioned and scrutinized. The reinforcement that humans need in order to learn and grow is severely lacking.

What can leaders do to inspire future leaders – the leaders we will need to solve tomorrow’s problems?

The answer is self-love.

Traditionally, we don’t associate love with professional success, but it is quickly becoming visible as the exact void that needs to be filled in order to navigate the volatility and ambiguity being forced upon leadership today.

The difference between self-love and confidence is that confidence relies upon certainty and self-love is unconditional. Corporate training has been pushing ethics as the way to combat corporate conflicts that threaten sustainable profit. However, that effort has proven ineffective and emotional intelligence is quickly taking its place. This is because neuroscience has developed.

There have been several major discoveries the led to this shift. We have discovered:

The parts of the brain responsible for emotional intelligence, the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala, do not fully develop until the third decade of life.
The brain is plastic, and parts of the brain can be developed just like muscles with the right nutrition and exercise.
Self-criticism, personal trauma, and stress inhibit emotional intelligence.
Self-love and mindfulness enhance emotional intelligence.
People cannot simultaneously be operating in ego while also operating with emotional intelligence – they are at odds.

Knowing this, leaders can feel certain in their ability to lead in uncertain times by making self-love and mindfulness a habit. The ego is our protection, and confidence is run by the ego while our level of emotional intelligence is directly correlated to our level of self-love. In a state of confidence, that good feeling can cause our brain to block out any new information that threatens that good feeling. This causes leaders to be resistant to feedback, input, external ideas, and change – high risks for companies today as the pace of change accelerates.

What do I mean by self-love?

I don’t mean a sexual kind of self-love, though I’m not excluding sexual self-love from self-love practices, either.

I mean the emotional self-love – the ability to fully accept yourself unconditionally, to feel worthy of love, to feel lovable, to acknowledge that you are flawed – there is room to learn, develop and grow, and that wherever you are on that journey is perfect, and to see your mistakes as ways to learn.

So many leaders are self-critical, and the outward expression of being self-critical is being critical of others. Even well-meaning, well-intended leaders are unconscious that their criticisms come through at an energetic level and a non-verbal level. Even the most well-trained leaders are trained more in manipulating tone and posture to be non-threatening, which just comes across as passive-aggressive, than in achieving an actual state of acceptance.

Leaders, if you haven’t bathed yourself in love and appreciation for yourself lately, don’t be surprised if when you try it, you feel a powerful release – like a damn breaking. You may cry, you may even feel angry for times way back in the past where you didn’t get the love that you needed. Whatever you feel – allow it! Self-love means also accepting that you are an emotional being with a range of experiences from traumatic to divine.

In the first six weeks of the Corporate Consciousness Ripple Blueprint, a year-long certification program for corporate leaders aspiring to make better decisions, expand influence, and contribute to calming the chaos in our world, participants get to learn, try and create habits around self-love using mini-practices that can be done in less than 5 minutes daily, yet have exponential rewards that transcend professional performance and success. They are completely transformative to how leaders achieve peace of mind, interact with the world around them, and shift from a paradigm of lack and volatility to abundance and benevolence.

We are currently filling our next case study to start next month. Schedule your consultation today!

Demi Lovato – Confident (Official Video)

Demi’s album CONFIDENT available now! http://smarturl.it/dls2 Amazon http://smarturl.it/dlams2 Google Play http://smarturl.it/dlgps2 Stream http://smarturl.i…

Karen Huller is the creator of the Corporate Consciousness Ripple Blueprint and author of Laser-sharp Career Focus: Pinpoint your Purpose and Passion in 30 Days. She founded Epic Careering, a leadership and career development firm specializing in executive branding and conscious culture, in 2006.

While the bulk of her 20 years of professional experience has been within the recruiting and employment industry, her publications, presentations, and coaching also draw from experience in personal development, performance, broadcasting, marketing, and sales. Her solutions incorporate breakthroughs in neuroscience, human performance optimization, bioenergetics, and psychology to help leaders accelerate rapport, expand influence, and elevate engagement and productivity while also looking out for the sustainability of the business and the planet.

Mrs. Huller was one of the first LinkedIn trainers and is known widely for her ability to identify and develop new trends. She is a Certified Professional Résumé Writer, Certified Career Transition Consultant, and Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist with a Bachelor of Art in Communication Studies and Theater from Ursinus College and a minor in Creative Writing. Her blog was recognized as a top 100 career blog worldwide by Feedspot.

She was an Adjunct Professor in Cabrini University’s Communications Department and an Adjunct Professor of Career Management and Professional Development at Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business She is an Instructor for the Young Entrepreneurs Academy (YEA) where some of her students won the 2018 national YEA competition, were named Ernst & Young’s America’s Next Top Young Entrepreneurs, and won the 2019 People’s Choice Award.

She is board secretary for the Upper Merion Community Center and just finished serving as Vice President of the Gulph Elementary PTC, for which she received recognition as a Public Education Partner and Promoter from the Upper Merion Area Education Association. She lives in King of Prussia with her husband, two daughters, and many pets, furry, feathered, and scaly.

Renewing Your Team Bond With Personal Branding and MT/EQ Training

Posted on October 9, 2020 by Karen Huller in Branding, Conscious Leadership, Human Resources, Leadership, Talent Management | Leave a comment

It may seem pretty simple to state this, but the thing that brings people together more than any trust fall is understanding.

As a client’s team member said yesterday during her personal branding consultation, everyone is a product of their experiences and everyone who has an opinion has it for a reason.

What if we gave up the idea that one person’s opinion is more valid than another’s? It’s true that some opinions are more educated than others, but if we stayed open to the idea that even educated opinions are still opinions, not facts, society might make leaps and bounds in innovation. Science is not static and few cause-effect relationships are linear, especially when it comes to people.

For employers who are committed to protecting the health of employees and who are sensitive to their concerns about COVID, team building during a pandemic has to evolve from in-person venues to virtual venues. This may feel like a challenge. The good news is there are equally, if not more, effective virtual options that can not only renew team bonds, but also create greater harmony, increase productivity, elevate engagement, and even help leaders discover new ways to leverage the talents, experiences, and passions of their team members.

Companies already understand the value of corporate branding, even if they don’t invest in it or implement it. For many companies, providing personal branding services may seem like a way to make talent prime for the picking by competition. However, engaging a personal branding expert to help employees, especially executives and front-line, customer-facing employees, hone powerful personal brands has a quadruple bottom line that can solve issues many managers are most pained with right now, such as low engagement, loss of identity, disjointed teams, and risks of or realized turnover.

When a company invests in personal branding, included is an assessment of alignment with the corporate brand. Any deviation from alignment causes exactly the pains described above.

When you combine personal branding with Mindfulness and Emotional Intelligence mini-practices, training, and coaching, employees gain clarity on who they are, why they are there, how they relate to each other, and the greater vision of their future with the company. They learn how to integrate the mini-practices into full-capacity (in terms of time/energy or both) schedules.

In fact, while strong time management is usually given credit for people’s effectiveness to deliver on time, especially during now with the world’s volatile state, energy management is the skill employers want to enhance if they are finding that their employees are not able to work at full capacity, whether at home or in the office, especially if the suggestion or mandate that they will be doing additional training or team building feels more like a burden than a benefit. In fact, energy management training is what most employers can do to alleviate immediate pain and create capacity for additional training.

Ethics training has proven ineffective. However, thanks to breakthroughs in neuroscience, we know exactly what part of the brain is responsible for emotional intelligence, that the brain is “plastic,” meaning that you can develop parts of the brain like a muscle, AND various techniques to accelerate the development of emotional intelligence. Every day I hear people in my HR and recruiting circles talk about the growing importance of hiring for soft skills and developing hard skills, but there are just are some experiences that can’t be replaced. In fact, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, including a story a client told me two days ago, that someone was tolerated by a company because the benefits of their experience outweighed the risks of their behavior. Hiring for soft skills may work for entry-level and junior positions for which you expect to train the employee anyway, but it’s just another hiring fantasy to think that it would be at all cost-effective or beneficial to the company in the short or long-term to hire a senior person who has the right people skills and turn them into subject matter experts. It’s generally accepted that a professional will make an investment of ten years (K. Anders Ericsson) or 10,000 hours (Malcolm Gladwell) to become an expert.

Now, when a company combines on-the-job training with personal branding and MT/EQ training, it has all it needs to realize its vision and mission.

The last quarter of the year is here, and slots are filling up. Schedule a consultation today.

Together or apart – Lissie

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How Much Detail Should You Really Put in Your Résumé?

Posted on December 17, 2019 by Karen Huller in add value, Branding, Career Growth, Coaching, Job Search, Leadership, Résumé Writing | Leave a comment

Both you and I know that there is no lack of advice out there, and one of the most frustrating experiences for those who are job seeking is how to figure out whose opinion is right.

I invite my clients and my students to run others’ advice by me, and I don’t make them follow my advice (though I do have to stick to rubrics I develop for my students.) I encourage them to run experiments but run them fairly scientifically so that they can achieve some objectivity. (My blog post next week will talk more about how to do this.)

Just be aware that anything new will feel foreign and you will tend to be resistant to it. Once you know and accept that, you can get past it faster and open yourself up to the possibility of there being a better way.

When it comes to your résumé, whether you are going it alone or engaging a professional, the method you use has to make sense for what you want to accomplish. Reverse engineer what is right based on your goals.

For instance, my process is very front-end heavy (to ensure a consistent quality), and my branding services are an investment that I am committed to generating returns in the form of multiple, high-quality employment leads that represent greater satisfaction and (probable) better income.

However, if you are in a situation where you just need a job to make any income, and you refuse to turn down an offer no matter how badly it positions you for better opportunity or income, engaging me would be a waste of time and money. It won’t pay off as designed.

In this situation, you may be tempted to include every job you’ve had, because you “need” to appeal to any potential employer. What will happen is that you will only look appealing to employers who are looking for baseline skills, which usually result in you receiving baseline pay and working among baseline colleagues. This might be all you need right now – no judgment here.

In this situation, professionals like me are going want something more for you. That’s because we know it’s possible, and we’ll tell you to think about what you would really like to do, and what you have done in the past that you enjoyed, and what criteria your next employer needs to meet. We’ll challenge you to think about what this attractive employer needs to know about you and to only put in your résumé experience that matters to them. This is advice that you’ll likely ignore if your goal right now is survival. At a minimum, we’ll say, make sure that you include what you accomplished (not just what you did), so that they know you did what you were supposed to do, you did it well, and that it made a positive difference – the more precise and specific, the more believable and impressive you’ll seem.

I’ve heard some recruiters, and even some hiring managers, claim that no résumé should ever be longer than one page. For entry-level through 3 years of experience, I agree, with some exceptions being academics and scientists. For more experienced professionals, people who want a 1-page résumé are in the minority. Certainly, brevity is valued in the corporate world. However, sometimes one page is inadequate to deliver the details that are important to audiences who value them.

A résumé’s basic job is to inspire invitations to interview. But I hear many job seekers complain about the time that they spend going to interviews for jobs that they ultimately would never want to accept at companies that they would never want to work for bosses to whom would never want to report. The résumé can do much more than just inspire interviews. It can help employers self-qualify and disqualify themselves as potential fits for you. The offer goes not just to the most qualified candidate, but ultimately the candidate who has the greatest potential to be successful in that role, in that culture, on that projected path, with that team, for that boss.

If you want your résumé to do this, there are questions you can ask yourself to determine what to include based on your goals, not just general advice. These are also questions that can help you through the interview process to help you notice (by what questions they ask) if what is important to them is also important to you.

Do you want your future employer to care only what you were supposed to do, not that you did it or how well you did it?

Think about what you want your future employer to care about in all of their hires.

Have you ever worked in an environment where not everyone was held up to high standards of performance?

Think about working among people who only worked up to their job duties and did nothing further.

How financially stable could that company be if there are people on the payroll doing the bare minimum (or less)?

Would you wind up taking on more than your fair share of work, and, if you do, will that be recognized and rewarded?

Is the impact that you want to make going to be diminished by the lack of performance among others?

If you care about the performance of others around you, make sure your résumé reflects your ability to perform as an individual (first and foremost) as well as how the team contributed.

Do you want them to care only that you achieved results, not how you achieved results?

If your goals go beyond survival to making sure that your next employer’s values align with yours, then think about how they would do things and how they would want you to do things. For example, if all that matters are the results (not how they were achieved), where else in that company is there a focus on metrics over methods?

What would work be like if you worked among high achievers who would do anything to achieve?

Will a culture that only focuses on results lead to the company hiring people who will do anything for results?

How will that impact collaboration and team dynamics?

How will results be rewarded?

What might be sacrificed, then, for the sake of results? Are you willing to sacrifice that for results?

Are the how and how well important to you?

If the answer is yes, the challenge for many is how to add MORE context to achievements without adding length. I used to be frustrated by that task, but have found that if I approach it like a challenge – a test of my wordsmithing ability – not only do I enjoy it much more, but I complete the challenge successfully. I have developed a story formula that enables me to ensure that I have captured all potential impressive, relevant details of a story, and then use the visual layout of the story details to more objectively see what are the most important pieces of the story. Finally, I try to put them in a simple VERB (effort/action that directly led to results) > OBJECT (measurable results) + preposition/conjunction (due to/in order to) + intention/supporting details/additional impacts.

The White Stripes I just don’t know what to do with myself

The Whie Stripes i just don’t know what to do with myself from the album elephant

Karen Huller, author of Laser-sharp Career Focus: Pinpoint your Purpose and Passion in 30 Days (bit.ly/GetFocusIn30), is founder of Epic Careering, a 13-year-old leadership and career development firm specializing in executive branding and conscious culture, as well as JoMo Rising, LLC, a workflow gamification company that turns work into productive play.

Karen was one of the first LinkedIn trainers and is known widely for her ability to identify and develop new trends in hiring and careering. She is a Certified Professional Résumé Writer, Certified Career Transition Consultant, and Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist with a Bachelor of Art in Communication Studies and Theater from Ursinus College and a minor in Creative Writing. Her blog was recognized as a top 100 career blog worldwide by Feedspot.

She is an Adjunct Professor in Cabrini University’s Communications Department and previously was an Adjunct Professor of Career Management and Professional Development at Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business She is also an Instructor for the Young Entrepreneurs Academy where some of her students won the 2018 national competition, were named America’s Next Top Young Entrepreneurs, and won the 2019 People’s Choice Award.

How Does a Professionally Branded Résumé Give You More Bang for Your Buck?

Posted on November 5, 2019 by Karen Huller in Branding, Career Growth, Careers, Coaching, Hiring/Recruiting, Human Resources, Job Search, Leadership, Résumé Writing, Talent Management | Leave a comment

When hiring a professional résumé writer, it can be tempting to price shop. However, it’s important, even critical for the unemployed, to know what kind of return you can expect on that investment because you don’t know how long you’ll need that money to last.

That’s why I’ve created a specific process to build professionally branded résumés that ensure top-quality results.

What does the process look like?

Stages of my Epic Branding Life Cycle:

Consultation/Interview
Delivery of Branding Points
Mini360°
Finalization/Prioritization of Branding Points
Mega Document Audit
Request for Additional Information – Gap Fill Using Story Formula
First Draft Delivery (5-10 business days from receipt of additional information from client)
60-minute draft review
Semi-final draft delivery
Client 10/10 rating and 100% satisfaction
Continue with next document or campaign strategy and coaching

Let’s not get too far ahead, though. If you want to try this on for size, start with a free consultation.

Free Branding Breakthrough Consultation

Admittedly, I won’t be successful working with all candidates in all situations. It is a top priority that when you invest in my services, you get return on investment. While there aren’t many instances where I can’t provide ROI, I will be forthright and give you whatever guidance or referrals I can to point you to a solution for your situation.

That being said, if you have experienced long-term unemployment, are changing industries or roles, have reputation issues, or have been underemployed or underpaid, I’m highly adept at helping you get over the hump of these challenges to reach your goals and have many testimonials to prove it.

If you are not yet at least 80% certain of your target role, you are not ready to move forward with the branding process and I will help you determine if my career discovery services can help you achieve that clarity.

Sometimes personalities clash and visions don’t align. Sometimes your target role can be outside of what I consider myself an expert in, and I may recommend another provider. Sometimes my approach doesn’t work with your timeline and expectations.

The consultation is a great way to try before you buy. If we partner in this process, we’ll be working very closely together. I may need to be able to confront you if you are not working in your best interests. It’s not tough love, but it is compassionate coaching without judgment. It’s best to know ahead of time if you can handle this and if my way of working with you works for you.

Regardless of whether we fit or not, I will deliver value and immediate practical advice that you can apply right away to see a difference in your momentum. If you have not been satisfied with the results you have been getting with your tools and efforts so far, I will help you understand probable reasons why and viable solutions that will help you make the necessary shift to see better results.

The Proposal

Often you will receive a proposal prior to the free branding breakthrough consultation if it’s clear from information you provide what journey(s) will enable you to reach your goals. Otherwise, I’ll at least explain that branding services that include résumé and LinkedIn profile writing range from $1,000 – $2,500, and campaign support services are between $2,000 and $15,000. I’ll do my best to estimate on the call where in that range you’re expected to fall, and then follow up with an exact proposal that outlines your specific investment for the journey(s) being recommended.

You will see that while I require payment upfront for most journeys, I also offer guarantees (very few résumé writing services and career coaches offer these) and use PayPal, which allows you to pay over a 6-month time period at 0% financing (pending you are approved). I have taken as much risk out of this decision as possible!

You Choose

Once you confirm your desire to partner and specify which journey(s) you will take with me, you will be invoiced using PayPal, be sent a link to schedule your branding consultation, and receive a request for supporting documentation that may include, but is not limited to:

Job descriptions/postings for target roles (copied and pasted vs. URLs, which expire)
Internal job descriptions
Personality and/or strength assessments (I may recommend some prior, depending)
Performance evaluations
Informal kudos or testimonials you’ve received (I’ll import your LinkedIn recommendations)
Letters of recommendation

The more documentation you send, the more time prior to the consultation I’ll need to review it. I ask for at least 24 hours.

If you don’t have any of the above supporting documents, my process will ensure that we will still get where we need to go.

NOTE: Should you need to reschedule, please text 610-888-6939.

Your Branding Consultation

At the scheduled time, I will call you promptly at the number you include on the scheduling form.

I will have already developed questions cued from your materials so that I have a rough “bread crumb” trail to follow. All of the content you send to me prior to our consultation is copied and pasted into one master document, which I call a mega document.

We will talk more about your target role, criteria, and the conditions you will need to thrive in your new role. I will share with you my insight based on 20 years of experience working closely with employers and my expertise on employment trends what your audience will need to know about you in order to qualify you.

From there, the process is somewhat organic. One answer may lead to additional questions. I will stop you if I feel that we are straying from relevant stories and information. It is critical to me that we use our time efficiently and effectively.

Otherwise you can assume, even if you are going on a tangent, that you are providing excellent, relevant information.

At some point, you may be compelled to say, “Good question!” That is because my keen intuition enables me to understand where we need to delve deeper.

We will both come to an agreement about what qualities, experience, talents and skills distinguish you for your target role and employer.

At the end of your branding consultation, you will feel understood, proud, confident, and hopeful. You may have a new appreciation for yourself and all you have done, especially if it went unnoticed or unrecognized by your previous employer(s). You will feel more certain that all that you have to offer is needed, not by everyone, but by a particular segment of the market that your new content will now be able to recognize easily, allowing you to attract the RIGHT opportunities that represent your maximum opportunity to succeed, grow, and earn.

The First Deliverable – Branding Points

In the hours following your branding consultation, I will analyze and synthesize the totality of the notes compiled to date in the mega document, which will be well over 10 pages at this point, sometimes as many as 25 pages. I will identify 4-6 primary themes and compose branding points that encapsulate these themes, which are a combination of your qualities, experiences, talents, and outcomes that you produce as a result of having these.

I have found that fewer than 4 branding points does not provide a strong enough foundation to substantiate that you are a uniquely qualified candidate. More than 6 branding points adds unnecessary complexity to substantiating your unique value. Also, emphasizing too much value can inspire skepticism.

Because my goal is to be comprehensive and connect soft and hard skills and outcomes, some of them can be complex, even wordy. This is not representative of your final, outward-facing content.

I’ll deliver your branding points to you within one business day along with a template. It is at this early stage that I have learned it is best to procure feedback from people who know you best.

People find it much easier to spare 15 minutes to read and weigh in on 4-6 bullets vs. a several-page résumé or LinkedIn profile content.
We want to ensure (before content is created) that all of the unique dynamics that make you a valuable employee are captured from the start, so that the content created can substantiate them.
We also want to have a comprehensive, accurate foundation from which all of your branded content can be built so that we can tell a consistent story across various media, even while accommodating language that is germane to each media.*
- The résumé is written to be concise. Pronouns and excess small words are eliminated for brevity, but it doesn’t sound like you would speak.
- The LinkedIn profile, though it has character limits and still has a business audience that appreciates brevity, is best written to humanize you. That means it will be written in a more natural voice, in the 1^st person.
- A biography is written as though someone else is introducing you, in the 3^rd person. It hits the highlights of your journey. At it’s best, it still expresses a theme to your journey so that it tells a compelling story, rather than chronicling your work history.
- Other platforms and social media have “voices” as well, e.g. Twitter appreciates sarcasm, and infographics are stories in images, icons, and symbols.

* You may not opt to engage Epic Careering for multiple media, but it is still recommended that all of your content tells a consistent, compelling story by basing it on the branding points provided.

Mini360°

Along with the branding points, I’ll send you a template that you can use to invite 4 people who know you really well, preferably in various contexts, to provide feedback within 2 business days.

As feedback comes in via e-mail, you’ll forward the feedback right to me. It’s best if I read it raw, exactly as it was written, rather than interpreted or summarized.

I will take none of the feedback personally! My primary focus is making sure that the branding points fully encompass and unveil your brilliance in all its glory.

People will tend to want to wordsmith, and you will probably have someone comment on how long or wordy they may be.

This is OK.

Some of this feedback may not be applied at this stage, which is more about my internal processes, but it can be valuable later in the content creation stage.

Upon receipt of all feedback from you and your contacts, I will hone the branding points. I’ll highlight the changes and make notes to address all of the feedback so that you understand exactly what was applied, what was not, and why. Additional questions that I will need you to answer in order to make sure that the branding points align with your vision of how you want to be promoted will also be included.

Along with the semi-final branding points, I will request that you prioritize them in order of what you want most to be recognized and appreciated for.

The process continues until you communicate that the branding points are 10/10, at which point they are considered final and the next stage begins.

Mega Document Audit/Request for Additional Information

During the branding consultation, you probably will have found it helpful to refer to specific points in time when you overcame a particular challenge, or used your unique qualities to finesse a solution. However, all of the impressive context of that story may not have been captured at the time due to a need to be efficient and effective at uncovering all of your unique value.

It’s also probable that there are additional stories about previous experience that would further support and validate your branding points, perhaps even in a way that your more recent experience would not.

I cross reference your branding points with the mega document, color coding where stories support your branding points. This enables me to see clearly which branding points are substantiated the most by recent and/or previous experiences.

The strategy is to make sure that the higher priority branding points are proven with a majority of the space, or “real estate” on your résumé, and where human eyes can see it more evidently. It also helps me understand where there are gaps in substantiating your branding points and what details of stories are missing, but needed, in order to paint a compelling picture of the value you offer and how you delivered such value in the past in relation to your branding points. This enables us to use a sound strategy for what to include or omit when needing to accommodate constraints on space.

You will be sent one or several requests for additional information that include a formula that enables you to provide only the information that is missing. In all fairness, this can seem like a daunting task for busy executive clients. Because chunks of time are easier to find/make than long periods of time, I recommend that you use your phone’s dictation features to open a reply e-mail, go to the formula, and dictate your answers as you are able. Then save the reply e-mail as a draft. Return to it, continuing to dictate your answers as you are able until it is complete, and then deliver it to me.

If you should get stuck during this process, I encourage you to schedule a call using a link that is shared with all clients so that I can help you work through whatever challenges you face in providing me with this information.

The Draft Design and Content Creation

Upon receipt of the completed information request, the drafting process begins. I have a proven, professional template (available for purchase, along with summary and bullet-building tools) and go to work strategizing and composing content that demonstrates your branding points using hard business terms as concisely as possible without losing the impact of details that build the business case for interviewing you immediately.

Most drafts take 5-7 business days, but sometimes based on the initial consultation and scope assessment it may take 7-10 business days, in which case you will have been informed with the proposal.

Along with your draft, you’ll receive a link to schedule a 60-minute phone review and some guidelines to help me arrive at a final draft that 100% satisfies you sooner than if you were to make comments and send them via e-mail.

60-minute Phone Review

We don’t always need 60 minutes to go over the changes, but some clients want to understand why some things were worded or placed in a particular way, need to provide additional clarity on certain aspects of their achievements, company or role, and just have preferences that I want to understand fully. Not only do I want to accommodate client concerns and answer your questions, but I also have best practices to maintain reader-friendliness and flow.

We won’t take time on this call to wordsmith; that’s best done on MY time after the call. I aim instead to understand the source of any concerns or the nature of your preferences. At times, I may advise you if something stands in contradiction to best practices and trends. As my customer, I will go with your decision, but will also make sure it is a well-educated decision and that the potential impact or consequences of your decision are clear.

Semi-final Draft Delivery

Within 1 business day from the phone review (with few exceptions), a semi-final draft will be delivered. If this draft falls short of the 10/10 rating needed to finalize it, I’ll trust you to use your best judgment in determining if another call is required. You’ll decide if clarity is needed from either party, or if you can communicate desired changes (and reasons) in an e-mail.

Though I aim to finalize the project as quickly as possible so that you can be in action in your job search efforts, I also do not rush you or limit the number of drafts that are created, as long as the target of the résumé remains consistent with what you identified from the beginning of the branding process.

The Final Product

Not only will every story told in your résumé prove your branding points in some way, but they will compound to create a sense of resonance and urgency that you are a HOT candidate that better be scheduled for an interview IMMEDIATELY before the competition swoops you up.

This also positions you as a premier candidate throughout the interview process. A résumé written in this way transforms how an interview is conducted. Rather than answering standard qualification and risk mitigation questions, your interviewer will be compelled to sell you the opportunity, telling you more about the daily, weekly, quarterly and annual goals and promoting the company’s benefits, perks, and growth opportunities. You will have more opportunity to paint a picture of how you will be successful in this role and to ask questions that help you determine if this opportunity is truly a fit for your criteria.

Often clients share that if a position winds up not being a fit, the company is so interested in hiring them that they custom design an opportunity that fits them! There is zero competition for these jobs, and it happens a lot more often than you think!

How This Differs From Other Résumé Writing Services

The investment is on the high end of what you’ll find across the market. This is a reflection of the experience that goes into the process and the quality of the output.

Many of the good services you will see out there can turn bland, functional bullets into achievement statements. That doesn’t make them branded. When the bullets align to build a business case for what makes you in-demand talent that your target needs, it’s branded.
- If you see services offered under $100, the contents of your current résumé will be rearranged and formatted into a reader-friendly, error-free (hopefully), ATS-friendly (hopefully) document. Résumé building services fall into this range. Some of them have content databases where you select your target role/industry and you are offered choices to drag and drop into your résumé that you are then expected to customize to fit your situation.
- If you are on a budget, have more time than money, and you still want branded content, just use my builder; it’s the only builder available that helps you create branded content and it’s fun to use.
My process is front end-heavy to ensure consistent quality backend output. I equate this to sharpening your ax when you want to quickly and precisely chop down a tree.
I do require your commitment to a partnership in the process (you have mine)!
I apply psychology, hypnotic copywriting, personal hiring experience, data, such as eye-tracing tests, and cutting edge industry best practices to strategically craft and locate content in a reader-friendly way where your audience will expect it. This produces more compelling, distinguishing content that resonates instantly and deeply.
Not only have I been a certified professional résumé writer for nearly 10 years, but I also served on the certification committee. I have seen what’s out there, and I have seen the best. I know I am providing a premium quality service! My advice was recognized by Feedspot as some of the best in the world. You are not hiring an admin to word process your résumé when you engage me. You are hiring a top-notch professional with executive-level experience in the employment industry and unprecedented credibility as an adjunct professor.

Not everything that’s fast is better, though I understand if you have an urgent need to supply a potential employer with a résumé so that you can strike while an opportunity is hot. I do not bypass my best practices, however. I have learned that the result is content that fails to produce a return on your investment and falls short of my own high standards. If you are not able to invest time being partners in this project, we just are not a fit to work together, and I wish you success and happiness in your career journey. I hope there will be a better time in the future to work together so that I can support you in optimized career growth, impact, recognition, and income.

As you can see, a lot of experience has gone into designing the branding process so that I’m able to deliver consistent quality that creates results.

Even a professionally branded résumé, however, won’t generate opportunity unless it is seen by someone in a position of power to hire you. The whole reason I do this is to help you get to the finish line. If you aren’t sure how to invest less time in your job search while getting more results, you want to acquire a life skill that will ensure true job security, and you want to form habits that make career growth a pull rather than a push. I invite you to partner with me on your campaign strategy, tools, and execution along with magnetic performance coaching.

Carly Simon – Nobody Does It Better (Live On The Queen Mary 2)

Music video by Carly Simon performing Nobody Does It Better (Live On The Queen Mary 2). (C) 2005 Columbia Records, a division of Sony Music Entertainment http://vevo.ly/f5G1o0

Taking On Fixing the Broken System of Hiring and Careering

Posted on October 22, 2019 by Karen Huller in add value, Branding, Careers, Challenge, Change the world, Coaching, Engagement, Hiring/Recruiting, Human Resources, Leadership, Talent Management, Workforce Policies | Leave a comment

Any workable solution has to bridge the agendas of all parties – talent, recruiters, HR, and hiring managers. Everyone is working from different playbooks, even using different dictionaries. So much money has been thrown into HR tech, and none of it has fixed what’s broken.

#realities

There are problems with the human solutions:

Bias – It requires a LOT of self-awareness, which requires time for reflection. Time is something of which we all, recruiters included, have less and less. Speaking of…
Time – It’s not reasonable to expect recruiters to read résumés for 300-3000 job applicants. Then you also expect that they send a response and gather and provide feedback while spending adequate time on the phone with candidates who appear to fit, and hold on-site interviews, test, reference check, network, maintain professional partnerships, etc.
Arbitrary job requirements – Companies are too cryptic or even naive about what skills and experience candidates really need to step successfully into a role.

There are problems with the tech solutions:

Keywords – What % of résumés do you think actually have all the right keywords, and in a context that qualifies the candidates’ proficiency or lack thereof? Relying on keywords shrinks a candidate pool significantly.
True success indicators – Keywords do not predict performance, so the candidates that rise to the top of search results are not necessarily the ones who will perform the best.

Some other unfitting pieces of the puzzle –

Rolling recruitment:

Companies, especially in this market, need to be pooling talent whether there are positions open or not, but candidates aren’t buying into this whole talent community thing. They change jobs when they’re ready to change jobs, and once they land, it’s not a great career management move to jump ship because a company you vied to work for when you were looking is finally ready to hire.

******

Market pay:

If companies invested money in programs that ACTUALLY improved engagement AND accountability (few do!), maybe they would be able to give their current talent the money they expect and would be offered elsewhere instead of losing this talent, suffering losses from vacant positions, and then having to pay a new hire more and invest resources and potentially money in training new talent. Projections on actual losses that may not show up on the balance sheet need to be factored into payroll budgeting.

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Communication:

Companies automated so much of the recruiting cycle that it seems human-to-human communication is perceived as a nuisance instead of a necessity. HR people don’t want candidates calling. Third party recruiters often have zero interface with a hiring manager. How many recruiters wasted weeks trying to find candidates with X experience only to find out that the client hired a candidate without it? In all that time the recruiter could have followed up with candidates with real updates.

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Culture killers:

Hiring managers are spending a large percentage of their time killing drama, trying to get their teams business-ready in the face of resistance to change, and fighting politics and bureaucracy that there is little to no time left to give thoughtful consideration to candidates who don’t check all the boxes and provide productive feedback. Eliminating a candidate because they don’t have industry experience, for example, can be shortsighted.

******

Elimination criteria are evolving:

Background checks are still revealing crimes related to marijuana for candidates in states where it is now legal. Blacklisting is a practice facing increasing scrutiny. Companies are (and have been) eliminating references due to fear of litigation. Discriminating against candidates who suffered long-term unemployment or any unemployment is now illegal in certain municipalities and states. Eliminating candidates who have been underpaid, or using previous pay to justify paying lower than market rate are illegal. Pursuing litigation against your former employer isn’t as illegal as facing retaliation from your former company, but it won’t be long until it is, I predict.

******

There are no band-aids for the problems that plague hiring and careering. The whole system needs to be torn down and replaced.

Yes, I have ideas. I’ve paid close attention as a former job seeker who experienced long-term unemployment, a former IT recruiter, and as someone who has been a close confidant of corporate leaders as a career coach for 13 years as well as an adjunct professor teaching the next generation of talent how to navigate job search, careers, and leadership. I need the right ears. I need to find partners. This is a HUGE undertaking, larger than the sum of all I’ve accomplished to date. Hit me up if this mission speaks to you.

Wounding and Healing of Men

Provided to YouTube by The Orchard Enterprises Wounding and Healing of Men · Francis Dunnery Hometown 2001 ℗ 2004 Francis Dunnery Released on: 2004-08-03 Auto-generated by YouTube.

Does Your Résumé Pass the Professional Test? [Checklists Within]

Posted on October 14, 2019 by Karen Huller in Branding, Career Growth, Careers, Coaching, Hiring/Recruiting, Human Resources, Job Search, Leadership, Résumé Writing, Talent Management | Leave a comment

The minimal requirement of a résumé is to qualify the professional. I would estimate that 75% of résumés that I have read from students to executives over my 20 years in the employment industry don’t pass this simple requirement.

The standards of résumés have evolved as technology has exponentially increased the number of applicants, and best practices constantly evolve to keep up with changing job markets and human resources technology trends.

So, what does it take to qualify a professional today?

Here’s an easy-to-follow checklist. Does your résumé:

Identify the role you are targeting?
Include at least 6 key skills commonly found on job postings for your target role, also known as keywords?
Communicate your proficiency in these skills or quantify your experience with them?
Make clear the recency and relevancy of these skills to your target role?
Outline your experience applying these skills to create desired outcomes for previous employers in bullets underneath each work experience?
Prove that you have applied these skills to create value?
Present your experience in a reader-friendly format that effectively uses white space?
Link to relevant work samples and your LinkedIn profile?
Get you interviews for jobs that you are qualified to do?
Have your accurate contact information within the body of the document (not the header)?

Once you qualify yourself as a candidate, you might expect that, if seen by a human being and not screened out by an applicant tracking system, you will be filtered into a group of candidates who will be pre-screened or invited to interview. The résumé has done its minimal job of moving you to the next stage.

If you invest in a professional résumé writer, you can expect your résumé to check all of the above boxes.

Most job seekers, however, are able to read and apply professional résumé tips to get their résumé to this very basic level, and it’s worthwhile to learn this life skill so that you can respond to opportunity when it presents itself, as it sometimes does.

Are they willing? It appears most are not.

Here is what most résumés do:

Provide the name and contact information.
List employment and education dates.
Identify previous companies and titles.
List the primary functions and responsibilities of the role.
List skills.

None of the above actually qualify you. They hint that you might have the qualifications, but stating what your job responsibilities were does not communicate that you performed those responsibilities well. Also, having years of experience is not the same as gaining proficiency in skills, let alone expertise. In 1999 when I graduated college, it was not difficult to earn an interview with a résumé like this.

Now, even in a “job seekers’ market,” in which there are more opportunities than talent available, you are vying for the same positions as other qualified candidates. Employers usually move forward the candidates who have provided clear proof of performance.

Unless you are pursuing a position that requires no previous experience or you have a very unique, in-demand experience made clear based on where you worked and your title, employers will not take the time to find out if you are qualified, even if you are. No matter how many jobs you apply for, you can expect very little, if any, response to a résumé written based on the standards of the last millennium.

I estimate that about 2% of the résumés seen by employers are branded. This résumé goes further than qualifying a job seeker. It positions a professional as a top candidate and creates a sense of urgency that you need to be brought into the interview process immediately before another company snatches you up. It speaks directly to their needs, challenges, and initiatives and distinguishes you from other equally, or even more, qualified candidates as uniquely talented.

If you have any particular challenges in landing a new job, such as changing roles or industries, time out of the job market, associations with disreputable companies, multiple short (under 2 years) job stints, or having been fired, then your job search may continue indefinitely without a branded résumé and a branded, proactive campaign.

If you have none of the above challenges, but want to create demand, generate multiple competing offers, and have the luxury of choosing which opportunity best aligns with your short and long-term career and lifestyle goals, branding is essential.

Branded résumés:

Start with defining your ideal audience’s challenges, initiatives, and goals and identifying what 4-6 themes you want to convey that will position you as the solution.
Qualify you.
Make obvious the role you are pursuing, as well as the industry, if relevant.
Have short (under 5-lines) summaries that demonstrate (vs. state) your qualities, perspective, unique experience, and expertise in the context of how they have created value consistently throughout your career for previous employers.
Define the scope of your previous roles in short position summaries under your experience.
Tell stories that further validate the unique, relevant value you offer in concisely written bullets that explain not only what you achieved, but how and with what results and impact.
Define subjective terms, like “large” and “quickly” in quantified terms.
Omit terms like “responsible for,” “participated in,” “collaborated with” in favor of more specific, action-oriented verbs.
Are generous in explaining the outcomes produced, often accompanied by explaining the challenges needed to be overcome in achieving those outcomes.
Present all of the evidence of your skills proficiency, not just in a skills section, but also in context of what you have achieved using those skills within the bullets.
Answer the question, “so what?” with each bullet and summary.
Omit irrelevant experience, but may include experience further in the past if it supports that the professional gained unique insight, learned and applied industry-recognized best practices, worked for a name-worthy employer, or worked in an industry with transferrable, but not frequently applied, best practices.
Position information where employers expect to find it and in a way that is easy to read.
Maximize the “real estate” above the fold of the résumé, stating relevant work experience before the reader has to scroll to the next page.
Are intentional about where acronyms and numbers, aka “stop signs”, appear based on eye tests.
Use formatting features, such as bold, italics, and underline, sparingly to emphasize relevant data.

Though careful thought and intention is put into every single word choice in a branded résumé, it still has to be written so that the reader can make a decision in 6-8 seconds. Every résumé will make an impression in that amount of time.

Possible impressions you can make from undesirable to ideal include:

Unqualified/under-qualified – Pass
Lacking attention to detail/uncommitted to excellence – Pass
Possibly qualified/potential to be trained – Maybe
Probably qualified/potential to fit culture – Maybe
Qualified, but probably does not fit culture – Maybe
Qualified with potential to fit culture – Follow Up
Qualified, probably fits culture – Priority Follow Up
Qualified, fits culture, and probably attractive and visible to our competition – Follow Up Immediately!

When you start the interview process with a branded résumé, you are positioned as a front-runner from the get-go and the interview process looks very different. Rather than answering questions that help an employer mitigate their risk, they are selling you the opportunity from the get-go. They still will have to mitigate their risk, but they’ll make sure you are engaged and interested first. At this point, it’s your opportunity to lose.

With a branded résumé and a proactive strategic campaign, a job seeker often rises so far above other candidates that companies consider custom-designing a role that allows you to make the maximum impact. Negotiating then doesn’t happen in the context of tiered, approved salary levels; you name your market price based on the value that you know you will create when you are given all of the conditions that are conducive to your success, and you negotiate those as well. You are positioned so competitively that there is little to no competition.

The branding process isn’t something you invest time, energy or money in if you need a job and any job will do. Learn how to master a qualifying résumé and save your money for a professionally branded résumé when you decide to be more intentional, proactive, and progressive in your career goals.

Should you learn how to write a branded résumé? Well, many branding professionals have engaged Epic Careering to write their résumés and profiles because A) it’s challenging to be subjective about a product/service when that product/service is you, and B) they appreciate the personal branding process that we have honed over the last 13 years and the quality output that it consistently produces.

The general rule of thumb, according to authors like Robert Kiyosaki and Tim Ferriss who teach people how to make their money work for them instead of working for money, is to outsource to a professional anything that someone else could do better and in less time. Especially if you are unemployed, time is money.

If your résumé doesn’t pass the professionally branded test and you have a desire to be in control of your career, schedule a free branding consultation today.

If you have had the experience of being the only candidate considered for a position, please share your story in the comments. It’s hard to believe that it happens until it happens to you! Inspire others to have hope that it can happen for them, too!

The Platters – Only You (And You Alone) (Original Footage HD)

(P)(C) Mercury Records (USA) 1955 Only You (And You Alone), más conocida como Only You es una canción estadounidense compuesta en 1955 por Buck Ram y Ande Rand.

Old School Hiring Practices Facing Scrutiny and Backlash in a Job Seeker’s Market

Posted on October 8, 2019 by Karen Huller in Branding, Careers, Coaching, Engagement, Hiring/Recruiting, Human Resources, Leadership, Talent Management, Workforce Policies | Leave a comment

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! There are more job openings than candidates.

I don’t think all people in hiring positions have gotten the memo – it’s a job seeker’s market. I say this because for three years now, I have been tracking and capturing gripes of job seekers (as well as recruiters, human resources professionals, and hiring managers.)

The power has shifted, and qualified job seekers are in a position to demand that a few irksome practices be abolished in favor of you wooing them into accepting your position. In a few cases, the law is even in their favor, as more legislation is passed at the local level prohibiting employers to play games with job seekers.

If we apply the trickle-down theory (not the economic theory) of adoption to hiring best practices, there are going to be early adopters, those who are watching and following the early adopters to see if new practices succeed, those who will only jump on the bandwagon after most others, and those who insist on bucking anything new.

Traditionally, this theory purports that cost is a factor for products, which does apply somewhat to practices, since new employees require training when a company updates standard procedures to adopt new best practices. More recent revisions of this theory take a closer look at motive to adopt anything new. Herein lies a mystery. All companies need talent of some kind or another.

Look at how long it took employers, even early adopters, to jump on the candidate experience initiative. User experience (UX) has been a web interface design focus and official term for nearly 25 years. Customer experience and guest experience have been evaluated and improved in retail and entertainment since the dawn of the industries, but didn’t adopt the Xx acronym until the mid 2010s, and the x can connote a purely digital experience. Patient experience has been measured since the 1980s.

In 2005, talent management thought leader, Kevin Wheeler, introduced the Candidate Bill of Rights initiative. Five years later, the term “candidate experience” was coined and within a couple years, several entities started recognizing companies who provided exemplary candidate experience.

What took employers so long to focus on the experience of candidates? The motive wasn’t there as long as they were in the position of power.

Though candidates have the power, not all employers got the memo, so if you are a candidate and you stand your ground on any of these practices, just know that you could risk an offer with employers who are on a slower adoption curve.

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The following are hiring’s most hideous, harmful practices of which job seekers and their advocates are becoming more vocal and less intolerant about:

Not being transparent about budgeted salary

Job seekers have traditionally been advised to not be the first to bring up salary to avoid being categorized as money-motivated, which could also contribute to the candidate being a flight risk, apt to leave their job at the drop of a better offer. Now we know – employees who stay loyal tend to be paid less than professionals who change employers. This is backwards, yes. Companies, in essence, are losing money by having to replace people they lose with people who will expect more compensation when they could have just offered better pay raises and growth opportunities. Retaining employees costs less than vacancies, re-allocating resources to backfill positions, and paying to onboard and train new employees, and that’s not even taking into account lost productivity while new employees ramp up.

Not being upfront about budgeted salary also doesn’t make sense from a time standpoint. If you have 5 qualified candidates, but only 2 would accept your offer, why invest time in interviewing all 5?

Now that the power is in the job seeker’s hands, it’s the companies who choose to withhold budgeted salary who risk being perceived as wanting to get as much as they can for as little as possible, while C-suite employees enjoy 7-figure compensation and bonuses.

Also, don’t undervalue talents’ time. If they are currently employed, it requires them to take time off of work to interview. If they aren’t employed, their time is their money. They don’t actually have time (or energy or emotions) to invest in opportunities that are not going to help them meet their lifestyle needs.

Don’t jerk job seekers around. When a requisition for a position is approved, it is approved with a budget. Negotiating, at its best for long-term mutual benefit, is supposed to achieve a win-win. We’ve seen how win-lose negotiating eventually backfires.

Asking about perceived weaknesses

I personally like this question, but I have seen/heard certain thought leaders encourage candidates to avoid it because it’s a trick to get candidates to disqualify themselves. As a recruiter, I asked it, but not for that reason. In fact, to preach that the only reason this question exists is to get candidates to shoot themselves in the foot is plain old inaccurate. It has a more noble intention, though I also recognize that the means can be achieved through more conscious questioning.

The intention when I asked this question was to gauge self-awareness, accountability, and coachability. All of these are requirements of being employable.

However, I am in Marcus Buckingham’s camp of focusing more on identifying and applying strengths vs. developing weaknesses as a sound career management strategy. All strengths can be liabilities, however, if unchecked. It can take real world experience to test how to balance strengths, and in doing so, there is trial and error. It’s the error – the acknowledgement of the cause/effect relationship between something done too extremely or too deficiently, and the future correction, that leads to growth and development. Also, as we become we wiser and realize that there are a multitude of things we don’t know that we don’t know, we start to better recognize knowledge and skill gaps.

Questions to identify such moments don’t have to be so entrapping. You can achieve the same result by asking two behavioral questions – one that deals with soft skills and one that addresses hard skills.

A. “Tell me about a time when you identified a knowledge or skill gap. How did you become aware, how did you fill it, and what impact did that have?”

B. “Tell me about a time when you identified an area of growth. How did you become aware, what did you do to develop in that area, and what impact did that have?”

Demanding salary history; asking for W2s

Unfortunately, I worked for a firm that had a policy to require salary history and request W2s to validate a candidate’s most recent salary. It went against my values. As someone who had been chronically underpaid (until I learned and applied negotiating skills with my own boss), I did not feel that a person’s past salary should have any influence whatsoever on their future salary (and the training that my company sponsored in 2004/2005 confirmed this.) Still, it was our policy. This, among other policy and cultural changes, were the impetus for my own disengagement.

Perpetuating low pay keeps marginalized groups marginalized. This policy is anti-equality and sustains gender and race wage gaps. This is why many municipalities and states have passed laws prohibiting employers from requesting salary history.

Ghosting/Blacklisting

The majority of job seeker gripes revolve around spending time pursuing open positions, filling out online applications, doing due diligence as advised, and then getting nothing – zero response – from a company. Even an automated confirmation of receipt would be reassuring to some level, according to job seekers. However, once a candidate is in the system, they expect an update of some kind. Newer applicant tracking systems build in candidate updates and make it quite simple to blast out when no more applications are being accepted, when first round candidate interviews are being scheduled, and when the position is formally closed with an accepted offer. Not all employers have such sophisticated ATSs, however the early adopters and those that have followed them do. The companies lagging behind are sending a message that they are not focused on candidate experience.

One of my most viral LinkedIn posts to date is about recruiter blacklisting. Some have mistaken this post as an endorsement for this policy, but it was really intended to make job seekers aware of things that they do to burn bridges with recruiter, and how the small world of recruiting can mean a mistake with one recruiter may restrict your ability to work with other recruiters as well.

It happens, and to be clear, I am not condoning it. It, too, is illegal in certain states and municipalities.

However, when a bad reference comes back or a candidate abuses a client or no-shows, their file gets marked accordingly. Many readers who commented rightly pointed out that some recruiters are on a power trip, and can be vengeful in limiting someone’s future opportunity because of a bad experience that perhaps that recruiter even precipitated.

Yes. There are recruiters who have become a bit too accustomed to judging candidates as worthy or not worthy of working with them. These are the recruiters who need a wake up call. Just as ATSs allow recruiters to keep notes on which candidates have misbehaved, there are several recruiter rating sites out there now, and their brand is sure to be tarnished by acting from ego. Karma is a b*tch.

Automated rejections to candidates who have interviewed

This is a bit like breaking up over text. When two or more people have invested time getting acquainted face-to-face, an automated response just seems shallow and dismissive. Some of these candidates could be your second choice, and you might want to tap their shoulder in the future should your #1 reject the offer, not work out, or move up quickly. Any of the candidates you’ve personally met are potentially in a position to promote or tarnish your employment brand. Have you read Glassdoor lately?

I get that you can’t give a personal response to hundreds of candidates who apply, but if you’ve had under 20 people interview, (and, really, if you’ve had over 10 without an offer, there’s a flaw in sourcing and/or qualifying) it is reasonable to expect that you can let them know they are no longer being considered, even if you use a template – at a minimum.

Not giving accurate feedback and updates

If someone takes the time to come out to meet you and your team, take a moment to give them real, individualized feedback and updates. A phone call is preferred, but I have had the experience, as I’m sure any recruiter who tried to make it a policy to provide feedback, of someone swearing that they would take feedback professionally, take it personally, and dismiss the feedback as wrong, or even discriminatory. There are liabilities in providing feedback, even when the reason for rejecting a candidate is on the up and up.

However, if your hiring practices have been thoroughly audited (have they?), and you are sure that bias is not influencing hiring, I’m certain that you can provide a legitimate reason for a candidate not being considered, or even being forthright about something that puts them at a competitive disadvantage or advantage.

Do you think there are legitimate reasons to NOT let a candidate know that they are one of three finalists? What this information does is help the candidate understand that, even if they feel that they are a shoo-in, their efforts to find their next opportunity need to continue.

Don’t let a candidate believe that a job is theirs to lose so that they cease other opportunity development while you continue to vet other candidates.

4-month long hiring cycles

At the executive level, especially in this day and age, leaders need to be scrutinized to a certain degree. The stakes are high, and there are potentially many stakeholders. It is understandable that the hiring process can be delayed for due diligence and because getting busy executive leaders and/or directors to arrive at a consensus can be a time-consuming process.

However, we all know that the pace of change is accelerating and even at the executive level, decision-making needs to be expedited.

At an even lower level, four months is just excessive. Top talent who make things happen and innovate will perceive a long hiring cycle as a systemic sign of slow progress. If you have justifications for such a long hiring process (such as clearances or thorough background checks), it would be best if you clarified this from the beginning.

Passing over people for employment gaps

When I finally landed after a 10-month unemployment period induced by 9/11, I found myself expected to disqualify technical candidates who had been unemployed for 6 months or longer. This client request was based on the implication that tech talent who had not been actively working for 6+ months somehow lost their touch, grew stale, or had skills that are now obsolete.

This was 18 years ago, and things weren’t changing that fast! This was a huge conflict for me, and one that made me rethink my own career choice.

Fast forward to the great recession, and layoffs touched more people than ever. Hard-working, talented, valuable, qualified employees were out on the streets, not just those you could assume were dead weight – which is a bias, if you hadn’t recognized this.

There are some who never financially recovered from that, 10 years later! Add to being laid off any kind of personal or health challenges and you have people who are now perpetually in debt.

Anyone can be the casualty of poor leadership in any economy.

Requiring 3 references from past supervisors

Even 14 years ago when I was recruiting, many of the companies we recruited for and from instituted “no reference” policies. Apparently, many employers had been sued for defamation, among other things. The best some of them can do is verify work history and maybe be coerced into affirming or denying that they would hire them again in the future.

Here in the pharma-rich Greater Philadelphia area, pharma professionals, among others, are unable to provide references because their company adopted this policy. Does that make them unemployable? No.

Reference checking is and has been a hiring best practice based on the theory that past behavior is the best predictor for future behavior, as is the behavioral interviewing methodology.

Has this theory been proven, though? Is it infallible? Are references the only or best way to validate performance?

There are two sides to every story, and then there’s the truth. Hearing someone else’s version of a story does not help you arrive at truth, necessarily. In fact, it can raise caution flags where there needn’t be any.

My previous firm’s policy required three reference checks. Every time I butted up against a challenge, I had to validate the challenge in order to circumvent the policy and move forward with a candidate, or I was told to find new candidates. This was an unnecessary hurdle to finding the right candidate.

I’ve also learned that, not only can references be biased, but they can also can be faked or pressured.

I admit, I check references for people I hire for my company, even subcontractors, but it’s not a witch hunt. It’s a way for me to learn how to inspire their best work and what projects I might want to outsource to someone else. I don’t require a certain amount and most of the time, if they have impressive, specific LinkedIn recommendations, that is good enough validation.

As a recruiter, sometimes the validation a reference provided was used verbatim in my candidate presentation to a client, so they do have value, but should not be required to consider a candidate. Special circumstances and changing corporate policies have to be considered.

Using the term “overqualified”

I admit, I have defended this term as a justifiable reason to reject candidates. It’s true that from experience, some employers have learned that hiring an experienced person to do a job below their abilities has resulted in that person disengaging, growing frustrated by not being able to apply their knowledge, jumping ship at better offers more in alignment with level and pay, and resentment toward younger managers who feel threatened.

A hiring manager will not trust a candidate’s word over their own experience, but this can still signal a bias.

The problem is that the term “overqualified” has become synonymous with age discrimination. You can’t detach that meaning once it’s there.

The pressures of decision-making authority and staff supervision can lead to burn out, family issues, and even health complications. For many legitimate reasons, some people choose to sacrifice income for better quality of life. Get a candidate’s why – always.

If there are ethical, logistical, or cultural reasons why you won’t offer an experienced candidate a position, explain them explicitly.

*****************************************************************

These are just 10 of many trends that are shifting as companies become more aware of the need to be attractive to top talent in order to survive the next few years.

Epic Careering wants to make sure that more of the opportunities that are available for today’s and tomorrow’s talent are with conscious companies with conscious leaders who are nurturing a conscious culture.

If you know or work for a company that has a future at risk, that is losing top talent to competitors, or that is behind the curve in adopting consistent conscious hiring and leadership practices, nominate them anonymously. Provide their name, your reason, and any contact information that will help us get through to a decision-maker.

Bob Dylan The Times They Are A Changin’ 1964

TV Movie, The Times They are a Changing’ (1964) Directed by: Daryl Duke Starring: Bob Dylan

When A New Guy Gets Your Promotion

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Karen Huller in Branding, Career Growth, Careers, Coaching, Crossroads, Employment Situation, Goal Achievement, Job Search, Leadership, Promotions | Leave a comment

I have not counted how many times over the past 13 years someone has come to me to help them move up or out after their company hired a new guy for the position that they felt was their next move upward. If I had to guess, I’d say about 100.

Of them, some have only wished that their supervisor would have thought about them and recommended them for the job, but never actually verbalized their desire or made attempts to understand if there were knowledge gaps they needed to fill.

Then there are a portion of them who had made their ambitions quite clear, but felt it was a natural progression, not as if there were gaps in knowledge or experience that they needed to fill in order to be qualified for the next level up.

In both of these scenarios, a short and long-term solution is to coach the individuals to be appropriately assertive and proactive in seeking understanding about what is really needed in order to be ready for the next step up.

The first stage is always qualifying that it is, in fact, the right next step. Too many people become managers because that seems like, or is presented as, the only way to move up. This leads to a large number of managers who have neither the desire nor the training to know how to motivate and inspire engagement and performance. They then usually resort to being taskmasters, micromanagers and even tyrants. They are responsible for a team of people to meet numbers and use fear as a tool because their tool kit is limited. This becomes a vicious cycle, as one manager trains the next and on up they go, unconsciously creating a toxic culture.

Please, if you aspire to be a corporate leader, learn how to use inspiration, trust, recognition, self-awareness, accountability and mobility as tools. Then practice them under the guidance of a coach to influence from wherever you are now, and brand yourself internally and externally as a leader.

In yet a third scenario, the professional has been as proactive and assertive as possible to procure performance feedback and identify and fill knowledge gaps. However due to any number of reasons – politics, nepotism, vendettas, a complete failure on a leader’s part to thoroughly prepare team members for promotion, or failure on the professional’s part to make accomplishments visible – promotions still go to someone else.

In all three scenarios, branding would be a smart next step. However, only in the third scenario would I suggest an all-out strategic campaign to change companies.

In the meantime, operate under the assumption that this new person might be better at something than you, and find out what it is. You will most certainly know better than them the inner workings of your company. Befriend the new guy, ask for opportunities to show him or her the ropes, and show everyone that you do have what it takes to take on more.

Think back to when you were a new person and think about the things that you learned in your first 90 days that made a difference in your results, and I’m not talking about what you learned about the other people you work with.

Don’t be that guy that warns the new guy about office gossip, or the hardhead, or the ego maniac. These are opinions, even if multiple people share them. All the new guy will think is that you are judgmental and they will be wary to trust you. Stick with the facts and note when something you pass on is a subjective observation, like “The boss prefers that all KPIs are blue in the weekly report.”

I don’t think I have to tell people to not be a saboteur to the new guy, but it does happen. It can be tempting to want the boss to see they made a mistake by not giving you the promotion, but that’s not the outcome that is usually produced by being a saboteur. In fact, more often than not, it just confirms that you were not the right person for the promotion.

Start becoming more aware of when your ego is kicking in and make it a habit to start switching into your higher self – your higher self is the one that gets promotions, not your ego.

Sometimes it happens that a promotion was not granted due to timing. In an ideal world, open communication and accurate foresight would enable an employee and supervisor to have a frank, two-way conversation about the real expectations of a promotion – the hours, the responsibility, the travel, and the pressures. The employee would be able to discuss the changes with any personal stakeholders, like family members, who would be impacted by any changes in lifestyle and make the decision that is best for everyone, even if that means giving up a significant raise.

This is not an ideal world. With about half of Americans living paycheck-to-paycheck, extreme increases in the cost of living (when you include the technology needed to get by today, not to mention keeping up with the Jones’), increasing healthcare costs, higher education debt, and the perception of shortages of opportunity even though it is a job seeker’s market, whether it’s the right next step or not, few people would turn down a promotion. If an employee has personal things going on that a manager feels may interfere with being able to meet the expectations, that frank conversation may never happen. I do not condone this – this is just a far too common reality.

External candidates are sometimes chosen over internal candidates because managers know too much about the internal candidate’s life.

Have you endured or are you about to face a big life change? Have you missed days to deal with something personal? Has it become a trend?

It can feel unfair. It can feel like neglect, abandonment, or misfortune. It can also sometimes be a blessing. In a few of the cases I have mentioned above with prospective clients, the professional wound up needing that time to adequately deal with a major life change. While, of course, I am all about supporting people in moving up, over, or out, sometimes staying put is what works best at the time. Not aspiring to achieve more in your career in order to manage life is totally okay and it doesn’t have to be permanent. However, you will need to make it known if and when your aspirations change and you want to get back on a growth trajectory.

In most cases, getting passed up for a promotion was the impetus of change that led my clients to far greater happiness and fulfillment – the kick in the pants they needed to start taking control of their career direction.

If you want to know more about how to:

• Assess what the best next step in your career is

• Develop greater self-awareness to become more promotable

• Gain additional tools that will expand your influence and leadership

• Communicate assertively and confidently with your supervisor

• Be the person that gets thought of first for a promotion, even if you previously needed to stay still for a while

• Brand or rebrand yourself for what’s next in your career and what’s after that

Scheduling a free consultation is your next step.

Survivor – The Search Is Over (Official Music Video)

Survivor’s official music video for ‘The Search Is Over’. Click to listen to Survivor on Spotify: http://smarturl.it/SurvSpot?IQid=SurvTSIO As featured on Ultimate Survivor.

LinkedIn is Hiding it’s Best Features

Posted on July 24, 2019 by Karen Huller in Branding, LinkedIn, Marketing, Networking | Leave a comment

I’ve noticed over the 16 years as a LinkedIn user that, though LinkedIn has and offers some of the best practices, sometimes its interface doesn’t make following those best practices intuitive. In fact, some of its best features are hidden.

Cases in point:

1. Personalizing invitations

LinkedIn’s Quick Help resources advise and warn you: “To uphold LinkedIn’s trusted community, we encourage you to only connect with people you know. By sending fewer and more thoughtful invitations, you can help us keep LinkedIn a trusted space for everyone… We’ve found that most people ignore invitations from people they don’t know. A large number of rejected invitations could result in limitations on your LinkedIn account.”

Then, on another page, it tells you how to personalize your invitation, but doesn’t tell you that many people ignore boilerplate invitations. When I mean many, I mean that I personally know hiring managers, other LinkedIn experts, other career services professionals, executives, and speakers/authors who all intentionally ignore invitations without a personalized message.

(Here are 4 great reasons to ALWAYS personalize your invitation.)

Yet the easier thing to do is click connect. You have to click again on “Add a note” to personalize your message. On the phone apps, the ability to send a personalized invitation took a surprisingly long time to become a feature. It was hidden for a while, and now it’s more visible, but still just under “Connect,” which sends a boilerplate invitation. Importing your other contact lists sends a generic invitation in bulk.

Every…single…expert will tell you to ALWAYS personalize your invitation, and here are four good reasons why. So why wouldn’t sending and personalizing your invitation be the default option?

2. Groups

Groups are one of the most powerful features of LinkedIn that help you increase your visibility, promote your expertise and brand, and engage directly with people who can be new network connections that help you expand your network. There are three ways to get directly to groups from your desktop homepage, but none of them are obvious. LinkedIn only points out one of them. The other is by using the search bar, but groups usually show up last among the search results (this is the only way I have found to get to groups from the iPhone app.) The third is the 9-dot “work” drop-down in the upper right corner.

3. Knowing your contacts

LinkedIn says, ”We recommend only inviting people you know and trust because 1st-degree connections are given access to any information you’ve displayed on your profile.” They have taken steps over the years to inhibit super-connectors from expanding their networks unchecked. The LION (LinkedIn Open Networker) subculture has their reasons for accepting all invitations, but once they hit or were imposed with limits, they have to then remove people they don’t know to add people they meet and for whom have genuine reasons to stay connected. They then had to tell people, “Sorry – I’m at my limit.”

I have openly heard their side, however, I have found that by knowing my network, my efforts to connect with or connect other people are often successful and my network has grown into a healthy community of over 1400. I am “found” by many people (enough for my bandwidth) and my search results are rich with relevant people, even without an upgraded account. Here are other reasons I have chosen to fill my network with people with whom I have personally interacted and what I do when I receive an invitation from someone I don’t know. As we’ll discuss in a bit, invitations like these are a good sign.

Some of the changes that LinkedIn has made have penalized people who have added too many people. However, they don’t leverage their navigation or user experience to prevent this. You used to have to adjust settings to only allow people you know a certain way to invite you, and when you sent an invitation you used to have to select how you know them. Certain selections would require you to put their e-mail address. However, people have multiple e-mail addresses and not all of them may be connected to your LinkedIn account. This might be why this is gone, or it could be because the super-connected LIONs are connected enough to be a threat and have successfully influenced interface design to make it easy to connect with anyone, whether you know them or not.

Sidebar: You’ll find Steven Burda and Jason Alba, both quoted in the article linked above on LIONs, in my network because I have had real-world interactions with both of them. In fact, Steven was my neighbor. Our daughters are in girl scouts together. Jason and I connected years ago about his job searching software. I was the 2^nd guest on his podcast, Ask the Experts.

4. Stats

Whether you have a free or upgraded account, LinkedIn shows you how many people viewed your profile and posts. Views alone, however, are not a great way to measure the effectiveness of your profile content or activities on LinkedIn for what you probably want to achieve – professional opportunity. What is more relevant is how many invitations you receive in proportion to profile views. This will tell you if your profile brand and content is compelling. This is a quantitative measurement, but qualitatively, if you want to know if your brand is effective, evaluate how well the people who invite you align with your target audience(s) and profiles.

Something else LinkedIn will show you in notifications is when people interact with your dynamic content – status updates, posts and comments. It will show you, again, how many views, but with each interaction that takes a bit more effort, you can see how effective your posts are at increasing your visibility (because more engagement means more visibility as other people’s networks will see their activity in relation to your post and it may even show up on other people’s home feeds as a result), promoting your expertise, and engaging with people who have a high probability of adding value to your professional goals, as well as the goals of your other connections. Likes are the easiest to give. LinkedIn has now added other reactions (that sometimes don’t work for me) and takes just slightly more effort. Commenting, now that LinkedIn has autosuggestions, takes about as much effort, but obviously making a custom comment requires thoughtfulness – a large increase in effort. Tagging others doesn’t take as much effort, but is a great testament to the value of your content and does an even better job of increasing views of your content. Again, though, more views without engagement can be more of a sign of content that could use improvement, such as a call to action.

LinkedIn will count post and status update comments, but remember to evaluate your qualitatively as well. Analyze your results so that you can continue to improve how your content and activity supports your professional objectives.

What are some great LinkedIn features that aren’t so obvious?

You’ve got to hide your love away – The Beatles (LYRICS/LETRA) [Original]

THE INSTRUMENTS IN THIS SONG ARE FROM THE MOST HONORABLE RIOHEY KANAYAMA PLEASE SUSCRIBE TO HIM: https://www.youtube.com/user/goldmine196909 If you liked this song, I invite you to listen the rest of Beatles songs subtitled into english and spanish, following the link below: ► https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qyPusDodDk&list=PL632iTavofD48JGlFY4VkYDKxoWfX17a1 TAGS: You’ve got to hide your love away, the beatles,, the beatles You’ve got to hide your love away, los beatles, os beatles, the beatles lyrics, los beatles letra, o beatles legendado, beatles, beatles john lennon, beatles paul mccartney, beatles ringo starr, beatles george harrison, yoko ono

Karen Huller, author of Laser-sharp Career Focus: Pinpoint your Purpose and Passion in 30 Days (bit.ly/GetFocusIn30), is founder of Epic Careering, a corporate consulting and career management firm specializing in executive branding and conscious culture, as well as JoMo Rising, LLC, a workflow gamification company that turns work into productive play.

She is an Adjunct Professor in Cabrini University’s Communications Department and previously was an Adjunct Professor of Career Management and Professional Development at Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business She is also an Instructor for the Young Entrepreneurs Academy where her students won the 2018 national competition and were named America’s Next Top Young Entrepreneurs.

Job Security Now Through 2030

Posted on April 30, 2019 by Karen Huller in Branding, Careers, Goal Achievement, Job Search, Mindfulness, Personal development, Professional Development | Leave a comment

While some prospective clients come to me hoping I can help them land somewhere “stable,” another group come to me because they realize that their companies’ stability has become golden handcuffs, and has held them back from reaching their full potential.

Even if this was the time when you could graduate, land at a large company, work with them for 30 years and retire with a great nest egg saved up, it may not be in your or the world’s best interest.

Retention does not equal engagement, and now we know what disengagement costs companies (something around $400B+ in the US alone.) The pace at which companies need to innovate and evolve is exponentially faster than it was, and that is predicted to continue accelerating exponentially throughout the 21^st century. Ray Kurzweil, developer of the Law of Accelerating Returns, proposed back in 1999 that in the 21^st century we would in face experience 20,000 years of progress compared to centuries past.

Companies are already finding that by the time they roll out the technology in a large enterprise, it’s already outdated, or even obsolete.

Whew. Starting to feel anxious? It’s possibly because your brain would really love to protect you from all this change, but even it is operating on a default mode that in a much different day and age would have helped you survive, though today it can mean the opposite – in life and in career.

This Saturday, I spoke at The Jump Start Your Job Search event on how to create your own job security. There were really three major efforts that I outlined:

Branding: Being intentional about how you want to be regarded and building either a campaign, for active job seekers, or a broadcast plan, for those well on-boarded and looking ahead, around that.

High Performance: Leveraging neuroscience breakthroughs in human performance optimization to continually expand and develop by creating habits of mini-practices that enhance critical thinking, creativity, intuition, emotional intelligence, resilience, and even health.

Personal and Professional Development: Rather than relying on your company to invest in your development, own it by consistently assessing your desired growth trajectory, studying the market, acquiring new skills, enhancing your self-awareness, and consuming and creating in equal proportions.

My proven hypothesis – Doing all three of these on a consistent basis, dedicating at least 10% of your budgeted time and money to them, will shift your career management from being exertive and exhausting to management and magnetic, thus leading to sustainable job security.

Caveat: I cannot promise you that the role that you want and/or have right now will be stable in the future. That’s because 85% of the jobs that will exist in 2030 don’t even exist right now.

However, by doing as advised above, you will become a master of adapting and evolving, reinventing yourself, and staying viable and valuable into the future, however it may be.

Fleetwood Mac – Don’t Stop (Official Music Video)

You’re watching the official music video for Fleetwood Mac – “Don’t Stop” from the 1977 album “Rumours”. The new Fleetwood Mac collection ’50 Years – Don’t Stop’ is available now. Get your copy here https://lnk.to/FM50 and check out North American tour dates below to see if the band is coming to a town near you.

She is an Adjunct Professor in Cabrini University’s Communications Department and previously was an Adjunct Professor of Career Management and Professional Development at Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business She is also an Instructor for the Young Entrepreneurs Academy where her students won the 2018 national competition and were named America’s Next Top Young Entrepreneurs.

Branding

When Confidence Becomes a Liability for Leaders

The answer is self-love.

What do I mean by self-love?

Demi Lovato – Confident (Official Video)

Renewing Your Team Bond With Personal Branding and MT/EQ Training

Together or apart – Lissie

How Much Detail Should You Really Put in Your Résumé?

Do you want your future employer to care only what you were supposed to do, not that you did it or how well you did it?

Do you want them to care only that you achieved results, not how you achieved results?

What would work be like if you worked among high achievers who would do anything to achieve?

Are the how and how well important to you?

The White Stripes I just don’t know what to do with myself

How Does a Professionally Branded Résumé Give You More Bang for Your Buck?

Carly Simon – Nobody Does It Better (Live On The Queen Mary 2)

Taking On Fixing the Broken System of Hiring and Careering

There are problems with the human solutions:

There are problems with the tech solutions:

Some other unfitting pieces of the puzzle –

******

Wounding and Healing of Men

Does Your Résumé Pass the Professional Test? [Checklists Within]

The Platters – Only You (And You Alone) (Original Footage HD)

Old School Hiring Practices Facing Scrutiny and Backlash in a Job Seeker’s Market

Bob Dylan The Times They Are A Changin’ 1964

When A New Guy Gets Your Promotion

Survivor – The Search Is Over (Official Music Video)

LinkedIn is Hiding it’s Best Features

You’ve got to hide your love away – The Beatles (LYRICS/LETRA) [Original]

Job Security Now Through 2030

Fleetwood Mac – Don’t Stop (Official Music Video)

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