by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | Jul 7, 2011 | Coaching, Job Search
If you are still looking for a job, July and August can be tough times. You may see your friends and colleagues moving into new positions, starting trainings, and getting ready to teach classes. Search processes can move quickly at some institutions, and come to a standstill at others.
Staying motivated during this phase of your job search is essential, but it can be really hard to do on your own. But this phase is not a time to give up or back-burner your search. Filling essential positions is a priority for most institutions, and being in the right place, at the right time, and in the right frame of mind can make all the difference.
To help you keep going, I’m offering a coaching special again, and it will feature 4 1-on-1 sessions over 3 months, brief e-mail and phone check-ins for 6 months, and access to online activities and select webinars. And, after talking with a few potential clients about what they would find attractive, I’ve kept the price the same as last year’s “8 Weeks to August” coaching program ($300) but set up a payment plan for it, to allow clients who join the program to stretch out the payments.
And, like last year’s coaching special (and like I offer for all of my coaching services), I am offering a money-back guarantee. If you participate in all the coaching and are not satisfied with your progress, you can ask for your money back (some of it or all of it!) If I can’t help you, then I don’t want your money.
More information about the summer coaching special is available at the sales page for this program, or by e-mailing me at sean@higheredcareercoach.com.
If you are still looking for a job, don’t wait! The special price for this offer will expire July 15, or when enrollment reaches 20, whichever comes first. At this point, I have a few clients already lined up, and based on early feedback, I’m expecting a good response.
This is the lowest rate I expect to offer on individual coaching this year, and I am planning to raise my regular rates on August 1st, and to change the structure of packages I offer individual clients.
So, if you are still looking for a job, and could use a strategic partner to help you move forward in your career, act now!
Go to the sales page and sign up now for the Summer Coaching Special.
by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | Jul 1, 2011 | Career Skills, Higher Education, interviews, Job Search, Student Affairs, transferable skills
Understanding how skills you have gained in Student Affairs will benefit you in any position is critical if you plan to advance in your career. I serve on the steering committee for AthFest, a non-profit organization that plans the local music and arts festival each summer, the Athens GA Half-Marathon in the Fall, and year-round art and music education events for local children. The festival was last week and I put many of the skills I gained working in Student Affairs to good use.
Candidates will often be asked to give examples of times when they planned a program, dealt with a difficult person or situation, or responded to a crisis. This week, I will give some examples from my recent experiences during AthFest. I will do my best to explain them in a loose P-A-R (Problem-Action-Resolution) style, to emulate the way that candidates should use in their interviews.
Part 3: Crisis Management
One of my favorite questions to ask Residence Life candidates is related to crisis management. Sure, Residence Life is a “generalist” role in many ways, but if we specialize in anything, it’s crisis management. The ability to respond quickly and calmly to potentially dangerous situations and ensure the safety of students and staff supersedes everything else. This was a running theme throughout my career. I dealt with suicidal students, guns in the residence halls, a riot, drug dealers, sexual assaults, suicide attempts and completed suicides, power outages, bats in the residence halls, and multiple facility issues. I was trained by the Red Cross in Emergency Shelter Operations and for a while, I was responsible for oversight of Residence Life’s Emergency Plan and related training for all the professional staff and RAs. As a result, handling crises comes as a second nature to me.
Good thing, too, because emergencies come on their own schedule, and they don’t usually announce themselves ahead of time. This was the case last Friday, when lightning struck a column on the corner of the Trappeze Pub on Washington Street, and rained bricks onto the street and three people below: the manager of the pub, a man on the patio of the neighboring pub, and one of our business vendors.
People were screaming and running away through the rain, and I heard one lady yell to me “You’ve gotta call the festival! You’ve gotta call it!’ She kept running away, but like most people who handle emergencies, I ran toward the commotion. First, I went to the volunteer area to see if other staff knew what had happened, because it wasn’t clear where the lightning had struck. Someone said they heard it had struck Trappeze, so I rushed back, to find gawkers looking up at loose bricks that might fall at any minute, and scavengers (some adult, some children, some drunk, and some just curious) collecting the bricks. I went in and asked Aaron, the Trappeze manager, if he was aware of the situation (he looked confused, which I later learned from him was the result of him being one of the people bricks rained on. We laughed about that, and he asked why I hadn’t noticed the cement dust in his hair.) I then told him I would like to barricade the area off, and would try to keep scavengers from stealing bricks. He agreed it was a good idea and thanked me. I went out, got one volunteer to stand in the area and shoo people away, and two others to help me get barricades.
We returned, and I ordered onlookers away, telling them the area was unsafe, and worked with staff and police to secure the area and later, to get signs posted. I made two newspapers, talked to a nice reporter from the Red and Black, and as is common when talking to student reporters, got slightly misquoted, but not badly enough to ask for a retraction. Then I spent the next three hours talking to the bar owner, the people hit by bricks, Athfest central staff and the Police.
Student Affairs Skills Used:
- The ability to remain calm and move quickly into assessing the situation and taking action to ensure safety of people and security of the area first.
- Thinking on my feet about who should know about a situation, and reporting the details to proper authorities.
- Following up about the safety of those involved.
- Answering questions when approached by the media and referring them to the proper persons.
- Having a sense of humor after the fact, and appreciating that the situation could have been worse, but that the response was the best one available at the time.
- Looking forward, I plan to ask the steering committee to debrief the incident and to consider writing up an emergency plan (which I will offer to coordinate.)
Questions for Your Consideration
- Do you have a good example of a time when you handled a crisis?
- What did you do to respond?
- How was the problem resolved?
- What questions are important to ask yourself, when deciding how to respond to a crisis?
by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | Jun 30, 2011 | Career Skills, Higher Education, Job Search, Student Affairs, transferable skills
Applying transferable skills you have gained in Student Affairs will benefit you in any position as you advance in your career. I serve on the steering committee for AthFest, a non-profit organization that plans the local music and arts festival each summer, the Athens GA Half-Marathon in the Fall, and year-round art and music education events for local children. The festival was last week and I applied many of the skills I gained working in Student Affairs.
Candidates are often asked to give examples of times when they planned a program, dealt with a difficult person or situation, or responded to a crisis. This week, I will give some examples from my recent experiences during AthFest. I will do my best to explain them in a loose P-A-R (Problem-Action-Resolution) style, to emulate the way that candidates should approach describing their transferable skills in their interviews.
Part 2: Dealing with Difficult People and Situations
It probably won’t surprise anyone that I encountered the most difficult situations (and the most difficult people) during artist and vendor arrival and departure. The first area I addressed in planning the artist market was to introduce barricade passes for all artists, vendors, and staff, and to explain the rules, and have all of these people fill out a brief web form saying they understood and would comply with the rules before sending them the passes. Barricade duty was a major logjam in the past. This year, it wasn’t, and things went very smoothly. I borrowed this idea from the Welcome Week Committee at Penn State, which started doing something similar a few years back to help sort out traffic and help filter it to the appropriate zones and residence halls. I knew everyone wouldn’t follow instructions but that many would. The result: smooth move-in and move out for all but a few vendors. (The difficult people were the ones that didn’t follow instructions.) Here are a couple of situations I dealt with and how the problems were resolved.
People Parking in the Wrong Area
There are a few universal truths to any parking equation. First, parking is always limited to an amount below the expectation of the people parking. Second, for most event planners, it’s also beyond our control, so we get put in the awkward position of apologizing for how things are, because we can’t apologize to the person complaining for how unrealistic their expectations are, and even if we could, they would find it insulting.
Some problems I dealt with during the festival:
- People parking in someone else’s spot while unloading. In these cases, it wasn’t that there wasn’t another place for the other person to park. On several occasions, people parked in the assigned booth space of another artist. Imagine the complaints you’d get during arrival if some student went into their room and found someone had parked their VW Beetle on one side of the room while setting up the other side (invariably the one with the bigger closet, or nearer to the window.) Just like I would do when I was in Residence Life, I gently pointed out the issue and asked the offender to move as soon as possible, and the offended party to be patient as the problem was really just a result of congestion, and not of intentional ill-will or a desire to take over their territory.
- People blocking the main entry and fire lane, and abandoning their cars, thereby causing a logjam of angry people. For the most part, people had the barricade passes in their windows and were easy to find, so I found them and asked them to move, or enlisted other staff to help do so. The result: no major delays in loading and unloading, once inside the festival area.
People confused about or unhappy with their booth assignment
Anyone who ever worked in Residence Life can tell you that the most stressful and time-consuming situations that happen on arrival day have to do with assignments. This is also true for festivals. Some examples:
- People being confused about their assignment. I dealt with several artists who couldn’t find their spaces, or who moved into the wrong space. Some of these were accidents, due to people misreading the painted and chalked-in lines on the pavement. In these cases, I offered the parties involved the option to trade spots or to have assistance moving their tent, displays and art to the correct location.
- People unhappy about their assignment. One artist was upset about another accidentally taking her spot, and even more unhappy that the other artist’s spot was by the porta-potties. Her answer? Pick another spot altogether, and express frustration at our intern. I was called in to speak with her and offered her help to move to either of the assigned spots. She asked why she couldn’t move to the third spot, and I told her that I wasn’t bringing an uninvolved third party into the scenario. She unhappily accepted help moving, and expressed her frustrations toward me. I explained that I had offered her help, and that if she was unhappy with the options I could give her, I would happily refund her money and help her pack up and leave. This is one of the great differences from Residence Life, where I would have had to refer difficult people like her to my supervisor. How nice would it have been if I’d been able to tell every student who tried to game the system over my 15 years in Residence Life that I’d help them pack and give them a refund for the pleasure of not having to deal with bad behavior and insults? The artist relented and later I apologized anyway, and gave her some free beer tickets, and we were copacetic. You can’t do that in Residence Life, either. (But wouldn’t it be great?)
Some Take-Aways
- Most people will try to follow directions if you give them ahead of time and make it convenient and easy. The barricade passes were the best example of this. Almost every artist and vendor had theirs and passed through smoothly. Those who didn’t were apologetic. This was a nice change from previous years, when artists and vendors got in frequent arguments with the barricade worker. We didn’t have a single incident like that this year.
- No matter how much you plan ahead of time and explain something, there will be difficult people who ignore it, don’t understand what to do, or simply decide to do their own thing. You can’t control what other people do, only how you respond. Those who ignored directions were the cause of most of the issues we experienced. Most of these situations were resolved easily and quickly once I explained them. Those that weren’t were resolved later with beer tickets and apologies for the inconvenience (not for the issue itself.)
- It’s nice when you can resolve a difficult situation at the lowest possible level of an organization. Remember this during fall arrival and give your student staff and entry-level professionals some latitude. You’ll probably be pleased with the results.
Questions for Your Consideration
- Do you have any good examples of times you dealt with difficult people or situations?
- What did you do to resolve these issues?
- What were the results? How was the issue was resolved?
- How do you relate your transferable skills when applying for new positions?
by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | Jun 20, 2011 | Coaching, Higher Education, Interview Tips, Job Search, job search tools, Student Affairs
Are you still looking for a job in higher education? If so, my summer coaching special may be for you!
I’ve been having a few issues with getting my sales page done for the summer coaching special, but wanted to let people know the details. Sales pages can come later. The important thing is the offer.
Here it is:
For $50 month for 3 months and the balance $150 within 6 months? ($300 total), here’s what you will get:
- 4 sessions of 45 minutes to an hour (4 coaching hours) over 3 months-by end of September
- Unlimited brief e-mails and phone coaching/catch-ups of 20 minutes or less for 6 months. (until the new year)
- Membership in the online group and all activities there, to do on your own, and work out your strategy. I will be participating in the discussions.
- Free admission to select job-search webinars and teleseminars for 3 months.
- Ability to renew at the same rate for 3 more months if you don’t have a job.
- Money back guarantee if you are not satisfied for any reason, as long as you have actively engaged in coaching and activities.
If this sounds okay to you, I can invoice you via PayPal for $50/month for the next 3 months. You would need to pay the PayPal service fees. Or you could send me a check.
Either way, I am hoping there will be interest. I am equipped and ready to take a maximum of 20 job-seekers at any time, so respond now if you are interested. I will have a waiting list, if necessary, but if you need help now, that probably won’t do it for you. So don’t wait!
If all this sounds good, e-mail me at sean@higheredcareercoach.com and I will get you online access to the course and an invitation to the course e-mail list.
I have already had several inquiries without even advertising, so I expect this group to fill quickly. Don’t let that discourage you, but also don’t sit on your hands.
Let’s get you a job this fall. Act now.
by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | Jun 13, 2011 | Interview Tips, Job Search, Negotiation
Salary negotiation is a really hard process, and one of the top concerns of job-seekers in any industry. It’s the “poker round” of the hiring process, where both sides try to set aside their enthusiasm for working together and think in their own best interest, cards closely held to their vest, and wait for the other to either show their hand or fold. It can be gut-wrenching and nerve-wracking, because nobody ever wants to leave money on a poker table.
Before I go any further with this analogy, I want to say a couple of things. First, I am a lousy poker player and in many ways, a lousy negotiator, because I’m not motivated by money. I’m usually motivated by fear of losing money, and a desire to win. And I struggle with both, and can be frustrating to play poker with, as a result. I am usually the one to fold early, and I have a lousy poker face. Other players can usually tell when I have a winning hand, and they will fold early rather than fork over a lot of money. So take my advice about poker and about negotiation at your own risk! I usually end up leaving money on the table, or having others walk away out of sheer frustration.
But come along for a moment, and let’s break this down, using the poker game analogy, because I think many people can relate to it.
When you are dealt a hand in poker, you know what it is, and depending on whether you are playing stud, or draw, you either know your hand outright, or you can make a couple of trade-outs for fresh cards, to see if you can find a hand worth playing.
If you are playing stud poker, you know your hand from the get-go, and can make your bets based on that hand and your perceptions of the moves others around the table are playing, and whether they are betting, calling or holding.
If you are playing draw poker, you may place an initial bet, based on your gut feeling about being able to cobble something together worth doing, and then raise, call or fold, again based on the moves that other players make in response.
In the salary negotiation process, you also have to start with the hand you are dealt. It starts with your Unique Value Proposition. This is the where you describe your knowledge, skills and experience in ways that show your potential fit into a position. The keys to putting together this UVP (also referred to in the business world as a Unique Selling Proposition or USP) is that you have to explain who you are, what you can bring to the table, and why you are the best person to do so.
Let’s put a formula to negotiation, using your Unique Value Proposition:
- First, describe who you are, in terms of current education, skills and experience.
- Second, differentiate your education, skills and experience from other candidates.
- Third, describe, in terms as concrete as possible, the value that you will add to the employer’s bottom line, that others cannot. (i.e., how you will solve their problems.)
- Fourth, be ready to fold and walk away when the stakes get too high.
As I mentioned before, I am a lousy negotiator and this does affect my bottom line. I’m going to be spending more time in the near term explaining the Unique Value Proposition for this site and for my coaching programs, trainings and consulting services.
In the process, you’ll see content on this site, and the nature of the free and paid programs that go with it, change. I’m doing this for two reasons: so you can clearly see the value offered, and so that I can tweak the business model so that it results in sustainable business. In short, because being a good coach and a lousy businessman isn’t sustainable, and I really want to win, for the sake of my family and all they’ve sacrificed over the last couple of years to help me build my sites and my business.
It’s basic economics in action. Let’s return to what I learned in ECON 201 when I was actually listening to Dr. Benjamin’s lectures in Sirrine Hall my sophomore year at Clemson, when I wasn’t sleeping off the night before, or checking out the cute sorority girls who wouldn’t really even tell me the time of day.
Transactional business is driven by the concept of marginal utility. The success of any business model hinges on the perceptions of price in relation to utility of the product or service. In business transactions, people (including employers) don’t pay for experience. They don’t pay for history or content. They pay for value.
When utility (perceived value) outweighs price (i.e., risk), people will pay more (by upping their ante.) When price (risk) outweighs utility (perceived value), it’s easy to fold and walk away.
Key questions to consider in preparing for negotiation:
- How are you presenting your value?
- How are you contrasting your unique value against other options (other candidates, or starting over with a search.) This might also be seen as overcoming objections to price.
- How comfortable are you in protecting your unique value, by folding (walking away)?
Once you get these points down, you’ll be ready to not only play, but to win.
So are you going to up the ante, call, or fold?
Hate my analogy? Love it? Tell me in the comments!
Did You Enjoy This Post?
- Please take my reader survey and tell me what you think about Higher Ed Career Coach. It’s 11 questions and shouldn’t take long. Also, SurveyMonkey will be selecting one recipient at the end of June to receive a $25 Amazon gift card. So give your feedback and get a chance to win!
- Please like the Cook Coaching Facebook page and join the career discussion boards there!
- Follow Higher Ed Career Coach on Twitter
- Connect with me on LinkedIn
- Sign Up for our mailing list and get early announcements about upcoming site features, workshops and coaching specials.
- If you are interested in one of the upcoming summer groups or workshops, follow the links below.
by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | Jun 10, 2011 | Job Search, job search tools, Resumes and CVs
This week, I’ve been putting out articles on Interview Ecology, and exploring the risks and benefits of introducing the “new and shiny” into the process. We’ve considered whether bringing a iPad into an interview is akin to bringing an invasive species into an eco-system.
This ecosystem approach relies heavily on the idea that anything that distracts or disrupts may destroy the delicate balance of a search process, and bring up dissonance in respect to person-environment fit, resulting in a candidate not getting a particular position.
Which forces me to bring up a particular pet peeve of mine: the all-the-sudden popular and ugly-as-sin QR code. I hate them, because like many fads, most people rushing to use them don’t understand how to make sure they add value to the experience. In general, I feel that most people might as well take a poop on their résumé as put one of these on it, because adding a QR code without adding something of value to the “interview ecosystem” is well…just a load of crap.
I’m already anticipating the response from candidates and tech geeks who think these things are cutting edge and allow a new layer of interactivity that wasn’t possible before. Well, I call bullshit. Scanning these blotches into a smartphone just allows lazy people to avoid typing a URL into their browser, as if the 20 seconds of time spent doing so will add up, like all the partial pennies Richard Pryor dumped into his bank account in Superman III, and will result in the résumé screener having a richer, more exciting , and complete view of the candidate.
Bullshit. Bullshit. BULLSHIT.
The same can be achieved by pointing someone toward a regular URL or hyperlink. QR codes only add new functionality to a paper résumé, which you probably aren’t viewing anyway. And anyone with half a salt lick of sense in their head can run a long URL into an URL shortener. So if space on the résumé is your major concern, that’s no argument, either.
Now, I will admit upfront to being a résumé geek and a purist. I don’t believe all the hogwash people throw around about résumés going away. Advances in technology and social media are just changing how they are delivered. And nothing takes away from the basic truths at play:
- Your résumé needs to be targeted toward your industry, level of experience, and the level of position you are seeking.
- It needs to be scannable (visually scannable)
- There has to be a sense of logical and visual flow that draws a reader in, and keeps them reading and scanning. And…here’s the big one…
- It needs to be attractive and not full of distracting bullshit.
I had a client recently work with me on his CV and he had a QR code on it, at top right. I asked him why it was there. He replied that he wanted to show himself as cutting edge and tech savvy. So I asked him where the QR Code goes, and what value was added by putting it on there. And…wait for it…it went to an online pdf copy of his CV!
We talked a bit and I told him I didn’t see the point of having it there, if it only went to his CV. He was really tied to keeping it there, so we came to a compromise position. He had also been updating his LinkedIn profile, which had some great recommendations on it, and some other links to relevant information. So we decided to point it there, because doing so added some value to the equation. The result: the QR code went from being poop on his résumé to being rich compost instead.
My criticism of his strategy should not be equated with a critique his level of technical savvy or his readiness for the type of job he was applying for, and I’ve told him as much. In fact, I think he’s a great candidate, or I wouldn’t be working with him. I don’t work with clients I don’t believe in, because that’s not fair to people on either side.
Ultimately, I’m grateful for the perspectives his situation has given me, and what it allows me to share with you.
Here are the big take-aways:
- New technology is great, and showing comfort with it is just fine. But using tech badly could actually hurt your candidacy. Make sure that your use of technology is appropriate and that there is a clear point to using it (like adding interactivity or pointing to recommendations or portfolio work.)
- If using a new way of doing things distracts from your design, content or flow, you really need to weigh the risks of using it against the value added. And if you can’t do this on your own…
- It pays to talk this sort of stuff out with a trusted friend, advisor, or career coach.
What do you think? Tell me in the comments.
Did You Enjoy This Post?
- Please take my reader survey and tell me what you think about Higher Ed Career Coach. It’s 11 questions and shouldn’t take long. Also, SurveyMonkey will be selecting one recipient at the end of June to receive a $25 Amazon gift card. So give your feedback and get a chance to win!
- Please like the Cook Coaching Facebook page and join the career discussion boards there!
- Follow Higher Ed Career Coach on Twitter
- Connect with me on LinkedIn
- Sign Up for our mailing list and get early announcements about upcoming site features, workshops and coaching specials.
- If you are interested in one of the upcoming summer groups or workshops, follow the links below.
