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Leadership. The key to a great workplace.
I spend my work days helping clients make career progress. In this role, I hear horror stories about subpar working environments. After a while, a person might start to wonder if there are any pleasant places to work. But I gained a new perspective as part of a market research project I’m completing. After interviewing three leaders of local organizations, all with stellar reputations as employers, I’m feeling more optimistic. First was my conversation with City Manager Darin Atteberry, who heads more than 2,000 employees and is responsible...
read moreA Lean Approach To Career Development
A trusted advisor suggested that I read The Lean Startup by Eric Ries to improve my company. Yet just a few chapters into the book, I realized that not only could it advance my business, it has the potential to improve the career results of my clients, as well. The heart of lean startup is about developing a successful product or service by being as efficient as possible, relying heavily on input from future buyers to direct how it should be created. Say you have an idea for building a better mousetrap. Traditional approaches would have you...
read moreSwitching careers – steps to achieving your goal.
Last week I chatted with a security officer while waiting for a meeting to begin. She was happy to tell me how she’d worked for the organization for seven years, but was now ready to switch careers and work for a different company. “I just want a change,” she explained. As a career counselor, I couldn’t resist asking which field she was targeting next. “Something in healthcare, maybe as an intake specialist,” she told me. “But I really don’t have background doing that. I just need someone to give me a chance to show them what I could do.”...
read moreWhat to say when you don’t have experience!
Recently, as I helped a client prep for an upcoming job interview, I asked him to tell me about his experience with one of the job’s requirements: the ability to use the software program Crystal Reports, a tool to create high-end documents. His answer, “I don’t have experience with that.” Until then, he’d provided impressive responses to every question, and this answer landed like a lead balloon. I feared it might kick him out of contention, so together we came up with this action plan which could be executed before the interview: Do his...
read moreFinding your focus – the key to a successful resume
This past week I led a resume workshop for a group of reading tutors with AmeriCorps. They’re wrapping up their year with the organization, and are prepping for next career steps. Writing a resume can feel like an intimidating experience: what to include? How long should it be? Which format is best? But I let them all in on a secret for simplifying the task: before you begin, have a career focus in mind. One of my favorite analogies related to this is that we all have a career-closet full of experiences: where we’ve worked, education we’ve...
read moreAn insider‘s perspective – career research
For years I’ve touted the virtues of career research interviews as a way to define great fit career paths. These are conversations with people who have already succeeded in areas that interested career seeker, allowing them to gain an insider‘s perspective on what another’s work life is really like. They are, by far, the most effective route I’ve come across to choosing a career niche. So I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when my business advisor suggested that I have some similar conversations with individuals who have succeeded as...
read moreFort Collins Startup and ARTup Week
At age 12, I started my first business, selling strange baked-dough sculptures at a roadside stand. The product served no purpose other than to be weirdly ornamental, and of the few people who stopped to check them out, most thought they were cookies. I only sold a few, but it was enough to motivate me to pursue other entrepreneurial endeavors down the line, including my current business, Career Solutions Group, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. According to a Gallup poll, the majority of workers—61%–dream of owning their...
read moreLet your “star” shine!
Not long ago I met with Jennifer Spencer, a business consultant with the Larimer Small Business Development Center in Fort Collins. The SBDC is my go-to for when I need some fresh ideas on how to improve the results of my service business. This time I wanted to brainstorm ways to increase the flow of leads, as they’d dropped off when I moved out of my high visibility location on Mulberry. “If they can’t see your sign, then it’s all about gold stars and reviews,” Spencer told me. She then went on to explain how many of us now approach...
read moreDo you love your job?
This being the week of love, it may be interesting to know that on average, only about 15% of people love their jobs. Yet overall, only 33% of people love their lives. And while aging can be a downer for many, turns out that the older we are, the happier we’ll likely become: 36% of those ages 50-64 are happy, as are a whopping 41 percent of adults ages 65+. This could be because they don’t have to go to work! But if hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to work you must go, Meg Selig, MA-Ed., author of Changepower and a regular writer for Psychology Today,...
read moreResume tips. From so-so to Wow!
My business writes more resumes at this time of year than at any other. My theory is that once the New Year starts, career-progress hopefuls attempt to update their own documents, yet after a few weeks of trying, decide that working with a professional may ultimately get them better results, despite the $100 to $750 fee. However these tips can help you get professional results for a fraction of the cost: Be clear on what you want your resume to accomplish. A successful resume is designed to help get you in the door for appealing...
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