Secrets of My Success

Hi Team,

I’ve written another guest post over at Blog@Work. Cheers to Anastasia for thinking of me!

This time, I’m revealing all my special secrets — the amazing formula for success that I followed that got me where I am today.  Amazing secret formula! Or is it??

Here’s an exerpt:

Do you have to script a 10-year and a 5-year plan, follow them to the T, and ensure every action of every day furthers you to those goals? Hells no. But some healthy post-mortem self reflection will show you the hidden patterns underlying what at the time seemed like you were just doing what seemed interesting, or were lucky – position X opened up and you got to have experience Y. Look for them. Can you repeat the patterns again? Can you use those patterns to help you take it to the next level?

Patterns and formulas can help you be deliberate when you feel the need for a structured push. But don’t forget to just go do what seems interesting.

Go check it out!

Weekly Review 12/6/08

As mentioned, I skipped the holiday week and held over the 11/21/08 Goals & MITs to this week.

How did I do?

1. Goal: Add more great content.  MIT: Update resume and post masked version.

Yep, that one got done during the holiday week. Check out my resume here. If anyone would like to read it and offer critique or advice, please do! And by the way, there is some great resume advice over at Free Money Finance.

2. Goal: Add more great content. MIT: Write 5 days minimum (this is an interim goal to help me work up to writing every day – I’m still trying to work out the baby/day job/moonlighting schedule)

Well, I wrote every day but Friday and I’ve decided I’m taking Fridays off: it’s pizza night wherein we make our own pizza after work.  Can’t be working 100% of the time, need to increase the fun quotient! BUT, I’m still not writing as much as I want to. That’s partly a function of the baby/day job/moonlighting balance, and partly because I think up great posts when I’m out & about but I just can’t type fast enough on that damned tiny iphone virtual keyboard.

3. Goal: Increase readership & recognition. MIT: Continue commenting on career & related blogs; expand to working mom blogs.

Yep, doing this and nope, not doing this as much as I want to. See comment above.

What’s on deck for next week?

1.  Goal: add more great content.  MIT: write write write write write write. Also, mix up shorter & longer posts.

2.  Goal: increase readership & recognition: MIT: comment comment comment guest post comment comment comment comment.

3.  Goal: add more great content.  MIT: write the next two interview question sets and send along to the interviewees.

Resume

The resume is updated! Check it out on the page link above.

Cool Orderly Not-Mess

Team, as you know I’m a hot jumbled mess this week.  But I’m taking steps to fix it, so here’s some crack for you organizing junkies out there: how I organize my career files.

Admin: administrative stuff like job descriptions, compensation comparison calculator, salary survey results, etc.

Accomplishments: I like to have things easy to find at my fingertips come review-writing time.

* Feedback – written feedback on my performance & contribution.

* Flash Status -  a short status document we produce at work highlighting our major accomplishment, learning and regret each week

* Goals & Objectives – my long-term and current-year GO (both job-specific and developmental), my boss’ and VP’s GOs, any recaps of GO accomplished.

* Reviews – mid-year and annual reviews.  I keep my self-review write ups & my boss’ write up if I have it in electronic form. I keep a hard copy of all reviews, with signatures, and compensation change summaries as well.

* Wins – tracking of major projects and key accomplishments throughout the year.  In order to dissuade myself from tracking every single minute task, I call these Wins to help me keep focused on the key accomplishments.  (The flash status could, and probably should, replace this. It’s faster & easier.)

Branding: Let’s face it, interviewing is just a type of personal branding, and personal branding is about way more than just resumes, interviews and job searches.

* Bio & Elevators – occasionally I’m called on to write a short career bio blurb for panels I’m on or other such uses.  And we must always have our elevator speech (who you are, what you’re working on now, how you add value) at the ready.  I update/re-write my elevators on a regular basis.

* Interview Prep – I save, if I can, copies of interview forms I’ve encountered over the years, and I have an extensive question set of possible interview questions.  This helps me practice my answers, and is also handy when I’m called on to be an interviewer.  Sadly, I think I may have to re-consolidate my enormous question set. Back up your files weekly, people!

* Presentations Portfolio – I save copies of really great presentations and writings I’ve done, in case I ever need to provide samples or a portfolio to prospective employeers or collaborating partners.

* Resume – I have writing-focused and a project-management-focused versions of my resume and of the internal resume format that my company uses. While each resume is tailored to showcase different talents and focus, they all have key components in common: highlighting my strenghts, showcasing leadership & people management, and showcasing steady promotion/progression. I also keep all prior copies of my resume in an archive, as well as sample resumes, action-word lists, and even job postings I find exciting/compelling (to copy the language used).

Career Library: Copies of really useful or inspiring articles and presentations — because you can’t always count on things staying in place on the interwebs.

Development: All things career-advancement-, skill-development-, and assessment-related.

* Career Statuses - notes and agendas from career development meetings with bosses and mentors.

* Diagnostics – tools, inventories, tricks, tips for diagnosing or clarifying aptitude, interest, values, vision, work style, preferences, etc.  And results of the diagnostics I’ve done that I find most helpful.

* Learning Journals – notes/postmortems from key learning moments. I haven’t used this technique lately, but have found it very helpful in the past.

* Networking – copies of networking correspondence, contact tracking and networking to-dos.

Job Searches: cover letters, correspondence, one-time tailored versions of resumes, and all other schwag related to specific job hunts.

Weekly Review 11/07/08

First, to recap this week’s performance:

1.  Goal: Increase Placeholder name recognition. MIT: Make 10 comments on other career and related blogs.

Not accomplished.  I think I’ve made a total of 3 comments, and on blogs I usually haunt, as well.  I will blame it on my election angst this week, and on hanging out all day with a cute three-month-old.  I just haven’t been reading the career blogs at all this week.

2. Goal: Get ready for opportunity knocking. MIT: Update that resume!!

Not accomplished.  Small catastrophe accomplished instead.

3. Goal: Share my background with Placeholder readers. MIT: Post a masked version of my resume. (Masking out information that identifies me or the F50C while still accurately describing my experience and value proposition.)

Sigh. See #2.

Now on to next week:

1.  Goal: Increase Placeholder name recognition. MIT: make at least 5 comment on career and related blogs.

2. Goal: Expand Placeholder content to interviews. MIT: prep question sets for two interviews and send them to the interviewees.

3. Goal: Smackdown Mr. Angst. MIT: get psyched up and calmed down to return to work next week, and share my process with Placeholder readers.

Hot Jumbled Mess

I am a hot jumbled mess and the only career advice I have for you today is to please, please back up your home computer on a regular basis. Oh, and also don’t keep important personal documents on your work computer.  Duh, right?

As you know, my main MIT this week is to update my resume. I’m returning from maternity leave soon and will be engineering a change in role.  It pays to arrive prepared with an updated resume.  As well my LinkedIn profile is several roles out-of-date and I will use my resume language to update that.

Prior to my leave, I spent considerable effort purging and organizing my career development files.  These include an extensive library of articles, my reviews over several years, current and prior resumes, accomplishment and feedback tracking, interview prep materials, goals, official job descriptions and more. Until this point, I had them stored mainly on my work computer as that’s where I mainly used them; part of organizing them involved exporting them to home, as that’s just the smart thing to do.

And my file structure on the home computer was a hot jumbled mess.  Random crap. Really old versions of important documents, but no current versions. The kind of jumbled mess that stems from an aversion to wanting to deal with career issues when at home on “me” time.  The kind of jumbled mess that comes from keeping every random thing “just in case,” but finds keeping a current resume or being prepared to interview at any time a chore.

You’re a smart bunch. You see where this is heading, don’t you?

So I go to access my current resume in order to update and find only a version from 2006.  Two years ago, people!  Shortly before my maternity leave, but after all my hard purging and organization work, my computer crashed.  And I restored from an outdated backup.  Because I don’t back up often enough.  And of course any current versions of my resume, reviews and feedback documents are still on my work computer. If I didn’t erase them entirely when exporting home.  And did I mention I’m locked out of my work files while on leave?

Is this the outcome of a savvy, responsible, truly talented and rockin’ leader who is going places? No, not really. But I’m going to make it right.  We now have a Time Capsule networking the house and backing up both computers hourly, with a side benefit of wireless printing.  I am reworking my file structure to be more simple and user-friendly than ever.  And I will update my resume (and post a masked version for you) after I return to work, in hopes that I’ve got the most recent version there.  I will commit to updating by November 30.

For you organization junkies out there, I’ll share my simplified file structure in a future post.

Onward and upward!

Resume Schmesume

Oh, why do I find updating the resume such a chore?

Here is the plan: I update it annually, immediately after my review at work.  This is a great tactic — I’ve just thought though my recent accomplishments and seen my strengths & weaknesses both through my eyes and my boss’ eyes. I’ve gone to the trouble to summarize my wins in my self review, so it should be a simple cut-and-paste into resume format.  Neat, tidy, fast & done.

How many years in a row have I had this simple plan? Five

And how many years in a row have I executed this simple plan? None.

And how many months has it been since my annual review? Seven.

I really need to hop to it, for four reasons:

• Scary, scary external economic environment.  Be like a boy scout – always prepared!
• Am planning an internal move in my company and will likely need a resume
• I hate having a seven month old item on my to-do-list
• The resume published on my LinkedIn profile is even further out of date

Maybe I procrastinate because updating my resume is really updating two resumes.  I do two tailored versions to allow me to quickly pursue two different types of opportunities — writing & communications work, and project management work.  Each version shares many common points, like my ability to build teams and coach employees, but each is also tailored with specific language and accomplishments.

If you’re going to answer opportunity’s knock, you’d better be ready to come to the door at a moment’s notice.  A well-written, always updated resume is part of staying ready.  So this is a goal I’m going to have to stop putting off.  Time to start looking at it as an positive step that will net me rewards, not as a chore!