by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | Feb 21, 2012 | Site News, Student Affairs
Melissa Judy
A while back I posted that I was looking for someone to help with some of the site development tasks and social media efforts related to Higher Ed Career Coach and my other websites (Primarily AthensGACareerCoach.Com). The initial interest and buzz on Twitter soon gave way to the sound of crickets chirping, and the application deadline passed without anyone applying. (Insert sad face here.)
I set the idea aside for a while, because I have been busy with clients, their resumes, and other issues, figuring that if there wasn’t any interest, I would just keep doing what I have been doing, and hope for the best. Then, in late January, I received a tweet from Melissa Judy, asking if the position had been filled. We struck up a conversation over Twitter and then e-mail and I told her how she might apply.
Not long after, I received her application and interviewed her over Skype, and I can honestly say she is exactly what I have been looking for in an intern. Melissa brings experience as a writer and content developer, as well as the perspectives of a somewhat non-traditional learner to the table.
Melissa graduated from George Mason University with a bachelor of arts in English in 2004. She
continues to support her fraternity, Zeta Tau Alpha, as an alumna member. Upon graduating, she spent time in the Army, but was injured in basic training and unfortunately had to be chaptered out. She then spent 4 years as an emergency veterinary technician before rediscovering her love of academia. While working in veterinary medicine, she met and married an Army officer before moving to Daytona Beach, FL. While there, Melissa worked in the Alumni Relations office at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University as a Communications Specialist. In addition to her alumni duties, she consistently volunteered to work with the Student Activities Office there and greatly enjoyed working with undergraduate students.
In the fall of 2010, Melissa began pursuing an online master of science in higher education administration at Drexel University and expects to complete her degree in August, 2012. Her interests lie in Greek Life, student leadership, alumni relations, communications, orientation and first year programs.
As a military spouse, she realizes that working in higher education may prove difficult with consistent relocation, so she hopes to secure a telecommuting position with a fraternity or sorority national office, or with another higher education non-profit organization. She is a member of the Association of Fraternity and Sorority Advisors (AFA) and National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA). She will serve as a graduate intern at the Association of Fraternal Leadership and Values (AFLV) western conference in April. She currently lives in Monterey, CA while her husband pursues a master of business administration degree at the Naval Postgraduate School.
Over the remainder of the semester, I’ll be working with Melissa to develop some new resource pages and anchor content, and teaching her the ins and outs of running a small business blog. Please welcome Melissa and congratulate her on her new position. She can be reached at melissa@higheredcareercoach.com
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by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | Dec 22, 2011 | Job Search, Resumes and CVs, Site News
I’ll make this post short
and sweet.
I finally finished my first e-book, which I am calling
“7 Points to a Winning Résumé.”
It’s $5 until December 30, and $10 after that. It comes with some special offers.
I have a great salespage you should check out if you are interested, with an overview of the e-book and what else you get. Please feel free to tell your friends and colleagues!
If you are not interested, come back later for more of the regular articles and advice you find here.
And if you have a break from work this month, enjoy it. I hope this month brings you happiness and good times with friends and family.
Thanks for reading.
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by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | Dec 2, 2011 | Job Search, Resumes and CVs, Site News
Putting together your résumé can be the most daunting part of a job search. It’s hard to encapsulate your education, skills and experience in just a few pages. There are different formats and styles, and what may be common in one industry may not apply to another.
You’ll get all sorts of advice from well-intentioned people. Some of it will be good, and some of it will stink. At times, it will be hard to filter through that advice and separate the wheat from the chaff.
That’s why I decided to take some of my best advice on putting together a résumé and put it into an e-book format. I know the struggle and I have worked many years to develop an approach that works for me and for my clients.
I used to thought-wrestle whenever I needed to update my résumé. I didn’t know where to start. I didn’t know what information to include, or to highlight. I loved designing the actual layout but at times, went overboard. I changed the format. I changed the font. I changed this, I changed that. And I did most of the changes based on “gut feelings” and personal preferences. I didn’t always have a rhyme or reason for my edits. But that is what happens when you don’t think through the process strategically.
But I was lucky, in that I encountered someone who helped me see the light, and to shift my thinking about the role that a résumé plays in the hiring process. I was working on my résumé and she asked me all sorts of questions about what kind of job I had, what I did in that job and what I accomplished. She asked me about my accomplishments, and about what made me unique, in comparison to other candidates. It was a nice conversation. In fact, that was all thought it was.
Then she said “Okay, let me see your résumé” and I realized what was going really going on. She said “Sean, you did a great job over the last few minutes telling me what you did, how you did it, what you accomplished, and why you are unique. but I don’t really see it on this résumé.“ [Emphasis added.]
She talked to me about conveying transferable skills, accomplishments, unique skills, scope of responsibility and motivation. And she gave me some great simple tips on how to get these things out of my head and onto the paper. This conversation shifted my thinking forever, and was actually the moment my enthusiasm for résumés and career coaching started. I made edits to the résumé, and a short time later, I had five interviews lined up, including the one which resulted in my first job at Penn State. After that, helping students and young professionals became my hobby. I spent a lot of time studying résumés, volunteering for screening committees, interviewing candidates and helping people with their résumés, cover letters and graduate school essays. After 15 years, I decided to try and make it my career.
This guide will not give you all the answers, but it will give you some different ways to think about your résumé, some practical ways to discover what employers are looking for, and some tips on how to make sure they find it in your résumé.
The truth is that you have most of the information you need to put together a great résumé. After all, it’s a representation of who you are as a professional, and you know yourself better than anybody.
But…
You have to get inside the résumé reviewer’s head.
You have to read your materials through the reviewer’s eyes.
And you have to capture and keep the reviewer’s attention.
A Winning Plan
This 7-point plan is geared toward helping you think differently about your résumé: to think like the résumé reviewer, instead of a job-seeker. To understand what knowledge and key skills you need, what experiences to highlight, and what roles to explain. The result, hopefully, will be a shift from guesswork to discovery, and from the loose and theoretical to the concrete and practical. In the end, you will have a résumé that speaks for you, stands out from the competition, and scores you the interviews you need, to get the job that you want.
Look for more information about this e-book next week.
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by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | Nov 2, 2011 | Site News
Transparency is one of the essential elements of career success. Pick up any modern book on career planning, small business development, marketing, or social media, and you’ll probably find a section devoted to the idea of transparency, and how essential it is to establishing the three foundational elements of successful relationships: people know you, like you and trust you.
It Should Be Easy, Right?
But it’s not easy to be “transparent.” Each of us struggles with something, but no one wants to be defined by their problems. Especially if you are looking for a job, looking for customers, or trying to establish yourself as an “authority” within some niche. If you’re truly transparent, people identify with your humanity, because your successes and your struggles are both familiar, and they root for you.
So What’s the Problem?
Herein lies the rub: the more risks you take in your career or with your business, the greater the potential reward…or potential loss. So you stay within your comfort zone, and try to figure your way through, on your own. And sometimes, it’s neither practical (nor healthy) to do so. But, “issues” put aside are eventually recognized for what they are…problems. And when you have a problem, it’s supposed to be okay to ask for help. As educators and supervisors, we know this. We preach this to our students. We evangelize for this to our young professionals. And yet we resist holding ourselves to the same standard, even though we know–genuinely know–that those who ask for help are usually met with kindness, understanding, and support.
So What’s My Problem?
I’ve arrived at a point with this site and with my business where it would be folly to continue without more help. As I expanded the local aspect of my business, I’ve been getting more clients for résumé writing and LinkedIn profiles, and many of these are from outside of academia, and have varied experiences that are hard to tie together into a coherent package.
I’ve always been good at writing résumés, and I enjoy challenges, but it requires a very different type of energy and focus than writing blog posts and sharing perspectives. And I find it hard sometimes to shift gears and keep moving. For the past couple of months, the result has been writer’s block, and I’ve had to devote more time to the writing I am paid for (the résumés) than to my sites.
What Kind of Help Do I Need?
I have some ideas that need to be implemented, and resources that need to be developed, and not enough time and energy to do them all. And I would like to revive my second site, Higher Ed Life Coach, and continue development on a local career resource site, AthensGACareerCoach.Com. So I am looking for an intern to help in content development, and social media, and also for high-quality, relevant guest posts. I will post something later this week about guest posting opportunities. In the meantime, here’s a description of what I am looking for in an intern.
The Internship
The Career Content Development Intern will compile career resources and develop new content for websites (primarily HigherEdCareerCoach.Com and AthensGACareerCoach.Com, but possibly including other sites currently published or under development by Cook Coaching and Consulting); may appear as a guest or co-host on podcasts; schedule guests for podcast, interview educators, job-seekers, coaches and others for site and podcast features; co-host webinars and twitter chats, assist with social media publishing (Twitter, Facebook) and assist with site management, search engine optimization and site design. Other duties will be negotiated, based on current site development needs and the intern’s interests.
Compensation
Anticipated compensation is $8/hour, for a maximum of 5 hours a week, and the duration of the internship will be 20 weeks or 100 hours. This is a part-time contract position, beginning in late November or early December, and ending in May 2012. The finalist will be required to submit appropriate documentation confirming eligibility to work in the United States of America, keep and submit accurate and timely records of hours worked, and your contract income will be reported to the IRS. Additionally, the intern will receive a profile page on HigherEdCareerCoach.Com, a HigherEdCareerCoach.Com e-mail account, and may be featured on podcasts and videos.
Qualifications
Minimum qualifications: Bachelor’s degree and at least one year of relevant experience in student affairs/higher education (undergraduate and graduate experience counts!). Excellent verbal and written communication skills, ability to research and compile information and resources quickly and accurately, experience using social media, blogging, podcasting, and producing internet video. Access to a working computer, internet connection and some form of telephone (landline, cellular or VOIP.)
Preferred qualifications: Current graduate student or recent graduate of a student affairs, higher education, college student personnel administration or related program. Ideally, the candidate will also be someone not employed full-time, who can use the internship to expand his or her career development portfolio. Experience using Mac computers, WordPress, iMovie, and Garageband to produce engaging content is a plus; Efficient and deadline-oriented, but flexible and good-humored, with an ability to deliver consistently accurate information; creative but organized, who will focus on helping our web sites reach their potential.
Application Process
Applications should consist of the following:
- A current résumé
- A cover letter, no longer than 2 pages, outlining your relevant experience and your most compelling arguments.
- Some explanation or evidence of your positive engagement in social media. This can be addressed in your cover letter, or through creative use of social media platforms (Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) to demonstrate your experience, comfort level and engagement with these platforms.
- 3 professional references who can speak not only to your character and work ethic, but toward your ability and/or potential as a writer and content developer.
Deadline
Applications should be sent via e-mail to sean@higheredcareercoach.com with the subject “Career Content Development Intern” no later than 5 p.m. ET Friday November 18. For documents, .pdf format is preferred for all attachments. Interviews will be scheduled during the last two weeks of November, and will be conducted via a webmeeting/video chat interface. Start date will be sometime in late November or early December and will be negotiated with the successful candidate.
Equal Employment Opportunity Statement
Cook Coaching and Consulting, LLC is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, national origin, or genetic condition. The company strives for compliance with all applicable labor laws outlined by the State of Georgia and the U.S. Department of Labor, including the Americans with Disabilities Act.
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by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | Jun 24, 2011 | Career Skills, Coaching, Higher Education, life purpose, Site News, work/life balance
How many times in your career have you faced a decision where there was a good job in front of you (maybe even offered to you) and you knew it was a terrible fit, or that the benefits outweighed the costs? This has happened several times to me, and luckily, in most cases, I had the good sense to walk away.
In those cases when I didn’t, though, I took a job and was miserable. It’s also happened that I took jobs and the jobs changed, or my interests changed at a different pace than the jobs (or institutions) adapted to change. In cases like these, it’s best to know what you are not.
In this vein, I want to clearly describe what I am not, and what Higher Ed Career Coach is not.
- I am not strictly a professional blogger. First and foremost, I am a professional career coach, organizational consultant and speaker. The blogging supports the dissemination of my ideas, of my perspectives on career strategy, and serves as a marketing vehicle for my coaching programs and services (individual and group coaching, webinars, information products, etc.)
- I am not an advertising professional, and this is not a “job search” site. You cannot find job listings here, and I have no intention of becoming a job board, in part because that is a saturated market, and in part because I believe that sector of the advertising marketplace is dying, as the web 1.0 model of “job boards” is being replaced by social advertising.
- I am not a conventional information marketer. I am an educator and a coach. Anything I sell through this site will be:
- Educational (i.e., based in philosophy but instructional in nature and delivery)
- Reflect my personal and professional perspectives as a reformed educator, critic, strategist, and an educational reformer (i.e., an outsider from the inside, now looking back in, and commenting on what is good and what is broken)
- Concerned with convergence of ideas, lessons from other industries and fields, and real-world factors, including economic factors, political concerns, and the environment.
- Intelligent, in that readers can expect articles to be generally written at or above the college reading level. My assumption as publisher is that my readers are smart, not easily confused, and engaged in the development of coherent and well-rounded perspectives on a variety of topics. The Flesch reading ease score for all submissions is available to me as editor and publisher, and most articles on the site rate as “difficult” or above. Articles are not revised for that reason, as long as uses of grammar and spelling are appropriate. Articles appearing here assume that the reader is an academic professional, member of the faculty, or someone capable of functioning in those capacities, so articles will not be “dumbed down.”
- Social, in that topics that relate to social networking and intelligence, and how they play into job searches and career planning, will be regular features. Understanding how to create a socially intelligent career strategy is a core concept of this site, and in most cases, coverage of other topics will also include ways to approach those topics in socially intelligent, relevant and appropriate ways.
- A good-humored, good-natured and personal brand. I want this site, and my corporate brand to reflect my values and the values of everyday educators who work in the trenches and persevere in living lives of service and commitment, despite the many and growing challenges of modern higher education.
The site’s values are drawn from the well of my experience, my commitment to the core values mentioned above, and my belief that the best answers are rooted in how individuals, institutions, businesses (including independent small businesses like my own), and personal learning networks work together to raise the collective intelligence of our society and mobilize change through social action.
To be most effective, we need to have a sense of humor as well as a sense of commitment, a belief in the good intentions of others, met with our own good intentions, and brought to life and to action by the power of personal relationships, common interests, and common goals, and not dictated by traditional methods of business, most importantly closed networks, claims on personal ownership of collective public information, and the sheer pursuit of financial gain at the expense of competitors and the public good.
My financial goals for this site are simple and rooted in the American dream. I want to support my family and spend time with them, support my profession and be able to criticize it, so that it can change and grow. I want to have good conversations with intelligent, kind, committed people. And one day, I want to be able to retire and play with my grandchildren and work in the garden, without being a shriveled up husk of a man, spit out by a system that didn’t understand him and never valued his contributions appropriately. (Which is where I was headed, if I had stayed at Penn State.)
As I mentioned, it’s never been about money. It’s always been about passion for ideas, service to the greater good, and helping people like me live lives of purpose and authenticity
Hopefully this article, and others published recently have cleared up for you what this site is and is not about, and who is or is not responsible for the content herein. If you like the ideals that this site is committed to, please keep reading and join the conversation.
If you are looking for intelligent career strategies to help you move forward in your career, and intelligent ideas for solving the problems of higher education, and you don’t mind the contrarian views, crusty language and occasional humor, then Higher Ed Career Coach is the site for you.
If you just looking for position listings, or run-of-the-mill career advice, visit a job board like HigherEdJobs or Monster.Com, a university human resources page, or LinkedIn.
That’s where I would go, if I were looking for a job, instead of planning a social revolution.
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by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | Jun 23, 2011 | Career Skills, Higher Education, life purpose, Site News
In any job search, and indeed, any business, an understanding of convergence will help you to contrast yourself from the “competition.” Potential employers or potential clients need to understand how you are different, but they will make decisions based on perceptions that you are a better fit for their needs, or a better value for their budget. To stand out, you need to explain your Unique Value Proposition, and start building your personal brand in alignment with it. This makes it clear where their needs converge with your own. This point of convergence is your potential point of agreement. I’d like to share the approaches I have taken, and open up a conversation about how to differentiate yourself from competitors.
When it came time to put some names to things, I began researching potential site names, to make sure that I could contrast myself against others trying to reach the same market. I followed the advice of several well-known bloggers and began by searching for preferred names and seeing which ones were already taken. Then I searched on terms that might mean something similar, but were not taken.
Then I combined related terms to come up with a new semantic term that did not have any results or competition. This is called working from the “long tail.” The idea is that by creating a convergent idea and a new term to go with it, you can stake out some digital claim to use of the new terms, and work to connect deeply with a smaller market. This was the case for “higher ed life coach” and “higher ed career coach” in July 2009, so I moved ahead on registration.
I had already eliminated many options because they were already taken, or seemed similar to names that already existed. I would have loved to use the words “college” or “student affairs” in my site names, but most of the good names were taken. I thought about other terms that might be appealing and settled on “higher ed.” This made sense because it was not well-worn digital ground, and because few people outside of the career field referred to the field as “higher ed,” instead using the terms “university administration” and “faculty” to describe working in the field. For all the great terms related to “college life,” they seemed to be locked up by admissions advisors, and people trying to sell lifestyle merchandise to college students. So, while it may have seemed boring to many, I chose titles that described my target audience and what I hoped to do.
I won’t claim to be the only person working in higher education that can provide solid career advice. I read other blogs, including Mama PhD, Eric Stoller’s Blog, Insider Higher Ed, Higher Ed Jobs, BreakDrink, On the Go with Ed Cabellon, and many others. I won’t claim to be the only life coach or career coach working with college students and higher ed professionals. There are many others out there doing the same things, and who have been doing so for many years.
I will say that I believe myself to be the first person with a national brand premise based on providing these types of services primarily for higher education audiences. I say this because I did the research for quite a while before betting my career on it. My brand premise and the promise that comes with it is unique, and in describing it in the way I did, publicly and as early as July 2009, I opened up a new niche in both the coaching industry and in higher education, by creating a new sector called higher ed coaching. I’ve been providing advice and coaching services under these brand names since 2009, and gaining ground. I won’t claim to have universal appeal, but readership has been climbing steadily, and my network has been growing. It’s clear that I am on to something.
So clear in fact, that I’ve been identified by some as a promising player in the coaching industry and in higher education, and by others in both fields as a threat to the status quo. I’ll explain more about that as it becomes necessary and appropriate, but for now I want to concentrate on the Unique Value Proposition of this site, its brand promise, and the services and programs that go with it. I’m not really concerned with what others are doing. There’s room on this stage for many players and I believe in improvisation and cooperation. I also believe in the unique nature of what it is I am trying to do, and in my motivations for doing them.
My name is Sean Cook and I am the original and only genuine Higher Ed Career Coach™. It is my personal coaching brand, and is supported by web properties and coaching programs and services that support my personal brand. I am solely responsible for the content of these sites, and not affiliated with any other corporation or individual coach or consultant, unless you read a specific disclosure indicating otherwise. Higher Ed Career Coach™ is my personal brand.
The Higher Ed Career Coach™ brand is…
- An Outsider brand, based in part on the idea that the higher education system and industry is broken and unable to adapt to the realities of the modern economy, political landscape, and the changing nature of learning and communication.
- A Convergent brand, based on the idea that fixing the problems of higher education will require adaptation, and that adaptation will only happen when those inside the broken ecosystem of education look outside their ivory towers and embrace open-system thinking, as well as new ways to construct and support learning and communication.
- An Intelligent brand, based on the belief that creating opportunities for understanding, reflection, research and debate are key to solving the problems of higher education.
- A Social brand, committed to the belief that intelligent networking and awareness of network resources will create opportunities for new knowledge and practice.
- Good-humored, Good-Natured and Personal, based on the value of relationships, and not measured by the value of business transactions conducted.
How would you describe the different core aspects of your personal brand? And what do you think about mine? Did I forget anything? What do you think I can do to reinforce the ideals above? Do you find them appealing?
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