Author Archives: bryandilts

What is your portfolio?

…rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western science. (Gary Zukav)

 I recommended Ben for a job as a programmer.  He had been programming intensely for 6 years.  He had proof of his skills with C++.  He had produced a video game that was more complex than many in the stores at the time.  I was enthusiastic and said he was a junior, perfect for a 3 month programming job.  The hiring manager agreed to an interview.  I forgot (really just forgot) to mention he was a high school student, not a college student.  The manager, out of courtesy, let the interview go on anyway.  The portfolio (the game), the enthusiasm and knowledge of the kid were so great, that he was hired.  Let’s not forget he was cheap too.

How can a high school junior get a job as a college junior?  It took an enthusiastic mistake and a portfolio.  You can create your own enthusiasm.  See my post about motivating your friends to help. Don’t try to make a mistake, just capitalize on them.  The portfolio is not as easy as it looks.

Your portfolio is separate from your resume.  Your resume is a list of accomplishments. It is a list of what happened because you were at a job, a list of improvements.  Your portfolio is concrete examples of your output.  In marketing it is letters, brochures, ad campaigns and internet links.  In programming it is websites you created or programs that actually run, all with examples of your coding.  Graphics artists often carry a huge folder of their art with them.  Some leaders actually write a book about their performance and get it published.  A network technician can dial in to the five computers in his basement from the interviewer’s office. A writer should have documents he produced.

Put proof in an envelope, on a CD, or in an internet site.  Show what you have done.

Proof can flat out get you hired.  No question about it.  Can you prove what you have done?

Something To Do Today

Ask your boss what you could put in your portfolio that proves you deserve a raise.  Put together that portfolio and see if he gives you one.  If he doesn’t, show that portfolio to other employers and get a new job.

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Coming next:     Blackmail your boss?

I just quit and my old boss wants me back!

Quit or be fired?

A genius’ resume – Leonardo da Vinci

Even Leonardo da Vinci needed to look for a job.

Here’s the resume and story of one part of his job search.

How to motivate your friends to help you find a great job

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with enthusiasm.  (Winston Churchill)

Would you recommend someone for a job if you were sure they would fail miserably?

Do you want to work with someone who is unable to deal with problems?

No one else does either.

On the other hand, it is fun working with someone who is trying to learn, who goes the extra mile on the job, and who wants to do what they have studied.

If you are excited by your possibilities, your friends will be also. That’s how you motivate your friends, be excited.  For example:

We place a lot of programmers in new jobs.  The ones who are so excited that they create programs in their spare time always find jobs.  It doesn’t matter if they ever went to college.  Their enthusiasm gets them jobs. They love programming.  Employers love them. Everyone who knows them is going to bat for them.  People they don’t know call them up to see if they can help them find a job.  Their enthusiasm is contagious.

On the other hand are programmers who took courses in programming in college.  They passed their courses. Programming doesn’t excite them. It’s just a job. If their college degree can’t get them a job in programming, they’ll never look at a computer again.  For them there is nothing exciting.  Their friends and contacts hear them complaining about the jobs they supposedly turned down.  There is no way they are going to get a strong recommendation for a job.  Sure enough, the job market stinks for them.

Motivate your friends.  Find out what is exciting about the jobs you are applying for.  Do the job for free for a charity.  If you are a computer technician, go looking for broken computers and tear them apart.  Put together a network in your basement. Offer to teach at your library or a nursing home.  Salesperson? Do what my partner did, became a charity “hit woman”.  Get the job of calling on businesses for donations.  You will talk to a lot of leaders of industry.  And guess what?  If you do a good job, they’ll be impressed.  Your friends, family and acquaintances will see what you are doing.  They’ll tell other people.

Be excited.  Do your job for free because you love it. Help others and demonstrate your love of your desired job.  You will motivate your friends and mere acquaintances to help you.

Something To Do Today  

Really evaluate how you have been acting.  Are you a member of the “beef and whine club”?   Find something you enjoy doing that is related to the job you want.  Do it with enthusiasm for free.

Photos, logos, and fancy fonts on your resume

There is a certain majesty in simplicity which is far above all the quaintness of wit.  (Alexander Pope)

If a resume gets you an interview, it is a great resume.  That is the only measure of success.  It cannot get you a job.  It can get you an interview.

Applicants want their resume to stand out.  It used to be done by using extra nice paper.  Sometimes the resume was sent with a single crisp fold or in a flat envelope so that it was just slightly different.

With email, it is harder to stand out.  Content, readability and accomplishments are critical.  But, what about photos, logos and fancy type?

Photos

I like photos, but they can get me in trouble.  A few lawsuits have been filed charging race discrimination against companies that kept photos of applicants.  The idea was that if you had a photo, you COULD discriminate.  Of course asking for your race on the application seems a much better way to bias the reviewer.  Anyway, don’t send photos unless you are willing to take a little risk that your resume may be trashed.

Logos

If you have a certification (cert) that is highly sought after, use it.  If there is a well known logo associated with the cert, use it at the top of your resume.  Don’t go nuts.  For example, the gold standard for PC programmers is Microsoft certs or Sun Java certs.  Use those logos.  If you are a CPA, attach those letters to your name.  Don’t add your dog training certification unless you are applying as a dog trainer.

Fancy fonts

Fonts should make your resume easy to read.  Don’t mix 3 or 4 fonts on your resume.  It distracts, not enhances.  Please don’t use brightly colored fonts.  Sometimes a resume looks okay with one other color than black.  Usually 3 or font colors look terrible.  Don’t distract.

Content is king.  Bullets and bolding are usually all you need to attract attention to the most important parts of your resume. First work on content, form will follow.

Something To Do Today

Look at your resume.  Is there anything distracting?  Hand it to someone else and ask them.

Talent war heats up in Silicon Valley

Yes, talent wars are starting again.  See this article about Silicon Valley.

Are you prepared to be stolen away?  Programmers and accountants are being snatched everywhere.

Can you protect your teammates from being pilfered at a critical point in your project?

Resume search optimization – how to get found

How to get your resume seen online could be a book.  That book hasn’t changed in the last 5 years.  Here are the basics:

  1. Include every keyword that is in the job listing
  2. Figure out a way to repeat the most important key words
  3. Resubmit your changed resume occasionally

Keywords are critical

Computerized filters are being used more often. Monster.com has them available for all employers who pay a slight premium.  If your resume does not have every important keyword or acronym, the computer eats it and spits out a form letter. No human sees your resume.

Put a list of certifications, education, software used, tools mastered and techniques employed at the end of the resume.  Include every abbreviation or keyword in the ad.  If you are missing a minor keyword, consider saying at the end of your resume, “I understand CDF and JCL but have never used them.  It may get you past the computer filter.  If you are submitting your resume directly to the hiring manager, you might take the list off.

Repeat important keywords

Your resume will be ranked by keyword usage.  When my query brings back 300 hits, I want to see the most likely resumes first.  I sort on “relevance” and cherry pick the top resumes.  The best way to be ranked highly is to intelligently use the keywords multiple times.

Resubmit your resume

Job boards usually show the most recently submitted resumes first.  If your resume has not been submitted for 3 months, it is at the bottom.  Worse, recruiters may assume you have a job if your resume is that old.  They won’t call you. Refresh your resume every week or two.

Just these three changes may change your invisible resume to a real interview magnet.

Something To Do Today

Go read the job description of the last job you submitted your resume for.  Did your resume have all the keywords?  Did it repeat the most important keywords?

Intriguing cover letters

The best cover letter I ever heard of was a clean sheet of paper that literally only said,

“I can do that job.”

The resume beneath it was thoroughly read.  The candidate was carefully considered.  A cover letter can have no greater success.

I always read the first sentence or two of a cover letter. Unless I am intrigued, I never read more.  I don’t have time to read that you work hard, like people, are a team player and deserve a chance.  Everyone says that.  It just proves you are average.

I thoroughly read cover letters that have useful gems in the first sentence.  I keep reading sentence after sentence until it gets boring.  A cover letter masterpiece has me convinced to do an interview before I see the resume.  It extracts 2 or 3 gems from the person’s background and displays them briefly.  I want those gems.  I make a decision based on those gems of information.

If you explore beneath shyness or party chit-chat, you can sometimes turn a dull exchange into an intriguing one. I’ve found this particularly to be true in the case of professors or intellectuals, who are full of fascinating information, but need encouragement before they’ll divulge it. (Joyce Oates)

To discover gems in your background, ask yourself:

  1. Why haven’t they filled this job already?
  2. What are the most critical job skills?
  3. Which of those skills is hardest to find in the job market?
  4. What have I done that proves I am way better than average?

Now craft a single short sentence that shows you are exceptional.

Create 3 more on different subjects.

Now write several short cover letters based on those sentences.  Make sure each sentence in the letter proves you are extraordinary.

I would be intrigued by your gem filled letter.  I would decide to interview you before I even looked at the resume.

Something To Do Today

Hand your cover letter to a friend who is somewhat distracted.  See how long it takes them to look like they are slogging through the letter.  That’s where the boring stuff starts.

How to succeed when you fail miserably

I almost committed career suicide.  Here’s what I did.

“Why are there no blacks and only 3 latinos out of 1200 employees?” I figured there was a good reason, and the president of the 25,000 person company gave me one.  However, my manager got me into his office and yelled at me.  He really yelled at me.

I left his office, grabbed my coat and walked out.  I had a choice to make as I got in my car.  Should I replay the incident over and over and get madder and madder, or should I concentrate on something else?

I chose badly for 15 minutes.  I got madder and madder.  Then I realized what I was doing.  I figured out that something must have triggered that outburst.  The president was not bothered by my question.  The manager that yelled at me was badly embarrassed.  I forgave him and started concentrating on something else, anything else.  In 10 minutes I was enjoying life on my terms again. And, yes, I found out three months later that they were now actively recruiting and training blacks specifically for that division.

Most jobs you apply for, you won’t get.  That’s just the statistical truth.  So how do you handle it when you lose?  You certainly have to notice what happened.  It is great to try to figure out what went wrong, if anything.  After you’ve evaluated what happened, start planning your next job success.

If you keep replaying every negative thing that happens while searching for a job, you’ll go crazy.  When you concentrate on what went well, you reinforce your positive behaviors.  When you relive the things that went wrong, you reinforce the negative. You also feel worse.  Work at feeling better.

To find yourself jilted is a blow to your pride.  Do your best to forget it and if you don’t succeed, at least pretend to. (Moliere)

My wife is a good piano player.  When she is learning a new piece she is careful NOT to practice known mistakes over and over.  She slows way down and practices it right.  Then she speeds up.  In her mind and in her fingers she concentrates on minor victories.  It can take her a month of practicing 2 to 4 hours a day to get a piece just right.  She’d go crazy if she concentrated on her mistakes.  She enjoys practicing because she celebrates every minor success.  She can find a success every minute.

You need to look for successes in your job hunting. If there is something you know you did wrong, slow down.  Instead of rehearsing the errors in your mind, mentally see yourself doing it right.  Find a quiet place and relax.  See yourself correcting mistakes and getting a positive response.

If someone else screwed up, slow down.  Concentrate on what you did right.  You can’t control the other person.  You can’t change history.  You can find a quiet place and relax.  You can rehearse in your mind what you did right.  In your mind you can practice correcting any mistakes you made.

Good mental hygiene is the difference between self improvement and self destruction. It also just plain feels better.

Something To Do Today

Get the book The NewPsycho Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz.  It has a lot of great ideas about how to control your thoughts and happiness.

The war for talent is starting, it is getting ugly.

The talent war is starting up again.  I’ve been seeing it this month as I try to find highly qualified programmers and accountants.  Click here for an article about how it will destroy many teams and employers.

Change what you associate pain and pleasure with

I got this from Sandi in an email today and had to share it with you.  Your job search is marketing of yourself.  She is a marketer.  Her ideas about deciding what causes you pleasure or pain directly relates to your job search. — Bryan Dilts

Change What You Associate Pain And Pleasure With

By: Sandi Krakowski

You may not realize it right now but you are, at this very moment, being motivated and influenced by two things. These two things literally control how you make decisions, when you’ll make them and quite frankly, IF you’ll make them at all… or sit in limbo.

Many people go through their day, all day long, without ever giving much thought to these very important two things. Myself included! It’s not like I get up in the morning and take a conscious thought of how these two things are motivating me…. but they are. Deep inside my subconscious mind, inside your mind as well, these two things are moving everything… forward, backwards or even holding at a standstill.

What we associate pain and pleasure with is the single greatest motivator in everything we do.

I’m here to tell you that 8 years ago this month I made a decision to CHANGE on a very conscious level what I personally associate to pain and pleasure.

Maybe you’re like me and you’ve always thought it painful to get a critique on something. Coming from the childhood I did where I was motivated nearly every single day by my performance, it was obvious that pain was directly attached to any kind of critique or opinion. And let me say this, this kind of underlying belief did NOT help me as an entrepreneur and thriving business owner.

If you associate pain to any opinions, suggestions, input or critiques, because maybe you didn’t have the loving, nurturing and caring support you deserved as a young person growing up, you will do anything to avoid these at all costs. Here’s the startling part, you’ll do it without even thinking.

You’ll ignore suggestions.

Fear critiques.

Hate when someone asks you to wait because something else must come first. You can see where I’m going with this.

However, 8 years ago I began a process of growing my life and my business simultaneously that caused me to make a decision to change this underlying belief. Now I am extremely happy when my mentor or someone I ask for input gives me critiques, wisdom and advice on how I can improve. It also changed something else in me very dramatically- who I’d listen to when it came to input on my business. I’m now very cautious, in a very good way, who has the privilege of speaking into my life and giving me suggestions for my business.

Listening to the postman and his thoughts on what we should do to grow our business to the next level, or letting that person who has never made millions of dollars, let alone even thousands of dollars in an online business give me their ideas is now attached to pain. And rightfully so. I don’t want the critique and input of someone who hasn’t done what I am seeking to be exceptionally good at! I do however pay more than six figures per year to get the best in the world to give me their thoughts. Because I associate extreme pleasure to moving to the next level!

So my question for you today is this- who are you taking input, ideas and suggestions from?

If you let someone at Walmart that you bump into, or let’s get a little more personal, that relative of yours give you input on whether to invest into your business the first thing they’ll say is, “Can you afford it?”

Newsflash, we were more than $450,000 in DEBT when I invested into my business! I didn’t consult with my checkbook to determine whether or not I could ‘afford’ to invest into something that could change my entire life and business. That kind of mindset comes from someone who has a fixed income anyways.

Trying to build a bigger future on your current income is a faulty business model!

No, I listened to the input of multi-millionaires who reminded me that to increase my own skill and to develop what is necessary in business it would take some sacrifice. It would take a commitment to “be here a year from now” and to not give in the first time hardship came. I sold things on eBay, learned to cook very inexpensively so I COULD do whatever it took to always have a mentor.

We also took an inventory on what we were spending our money on…. and made a conscious choice… pain and pleasure, remember that?….to associate pain with not moving to the next level. This motivated me to avoid whatever held me back. PERIOD.

It took a “Balls to the wall!” approach when it came to my business… which means in plain English “Do the things that make money for crying out loud” and don’t sit on Facebook all day chatting about the cutest things you can find on Pinterest and how “one day” I’ll pay cash for them when my business that I’m building on free tools finally grows.

It is my personal conviction that when someone says to me that they cannot invest into their skill set because of a layoff at work, or a down turn in their personal economy, they simply do not understand what it takes to build a business. They are still locked in a corporate mindset that says, “This is how much we earn and this is how much we can spend because it won’t change unless someone else increases my pay.”

YOU my friends have got to associate pleasure with doing the work and increasing your own paycheck because YOU have made a decision to not settle for less.

If you want a pay increase, you are going to have to make sure your skill set lines up with what commands and directs a pay increase! And you’ll need to associate PLEASURE with the entire process.

You can’t take on a typical a college degree mindset, where it becomes painful and tedious to study and learn things. Stop. Check that thought. Is this your belief? Change it!

You must flip that and begin associating pleasure to learning and more pleasure to activating what you learn!Attach PAIN to staying the same way, associate deep internal pain to doing things as you’ve always done them. You are being motivated every single day by what you associate pain and pleasure to.

This is how you pay off debt, you change your habits, you make decisions correctly and quite literally, you change your life.

The question becomes, will you do what it takes?

ONLY you can decide. For those who are ready? I’m here to take you to the next step. Come on over to my Facebook page right now and tell me that YOU have made a decision to do whatever it takes!

http://www.facebook.com/sandikrakowskibiz

With love,

Sandi Krakowski