I hate to break it to you, but you are just like everybody else.  There are hundreds of people who do what you do. Whether you are a sales person, a personal trainer, a massage therapist, a lawyer or a dentist, in your service area there are hundreds (maybe even thousands) of people with your occupation who provide exactly the same services and products you do.

The problem with being like everybody else is that it makes it difficult to answer the question, “Why should I hire you rather than that other person?”  If you can not demonstrate why you are unique, the only thing that sets you apart is your price. So you cut your margin. Or you are wiling to take a smaller salary. Or you lower your price. Once that happens, everybody loses because you can’t compete on price. Someone is always willing to go lower.  Instead, you have to compete on value (or perceived value).

How will someone distinguish YOU from everybody else who does what you do?  If everyone else is just like you, then why would someone hire you rather than that other person?  How will you set yourself apart from those other people so you can find the perfect clients or land the perfect job?  THAT is the challenge.

Here’s the good news. . . There may be hundreds of people who do what you do, but there is only one YOU.  You have a unique set of skills, abilities, knowledge and experiences that make you different from everybody else who does what you do.  The secret to finding the perfect clients or landing the perfect job is to set yourself apart from the others who are just like you.  What makes you irreplaceable?  What specific and exclusive traits distinguish you from everyone else who does what you do?  What is your one-of-a-kind, distinctive, exclusive, unique value proposition?

When you can discover and leverage your unique value proposition you are on the way to the perfect job. When you can set yourself apart from everyone else your business will begin to grow like crazy!

So I ask you once again, what makes YOU so special? Figure that out and you’ve got it made!

Happy Hunting!

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Has this ever happened to you? At the end of the day your spouse or your boss asked you, “what did you do today?” and you had no answer. Of course it has. It’s happened to all of us!

It wasn’t that way when you started the day. You set out to do something good or important. In your efforts to search for a job or complete an important business project you threw yourself into it heart and soul. You were busy all day long and yet, at the end of the day (or week, or month) you wondered if you really accomplished anything important. How did that happen? You were busy, but not productive.

One of the problems many of us face is that we don’t have a system for defining, achieving and measuring our effectiveness.  We haven’t set specific goals for our business, project, or job search. Because we have not set specific goals, we don’t know when we have been successful at achieving your goals. . . or even if we HAVE achieved them.

A professor of mine in business school famously said, “if you can measure it, you can improve it.”  I wasn’t sure what he meant at the time, but as I have spent more time pursuing both life and business objectives I have begun to understand.  Setting specific goals allows us to measure our effectiveness at our work. Having a system to measure the outcome of our activities allows us to improve on what we have done in the past or achieve want to get done in the future.

Here are some tips that will help you develop a system for defining, achieving and measuring goals.

1. Make time to set goals.  It is said that every hour spent on planning saves 5-6 hours in execution. The simplest way to get something done is to set a goal to accomplish it.  For your business you want to set chronological goals (annual, monthly, weekly and daily goals) as well as project goals. The same is true of your job search – and here’s an important hint: applying to jobs on the Internet is NOT a goal you should set for more than 30 minutes per day! Schedule time for planning and goal setting. I recommend you block out a couple of days each year for strategic planning and setting annual goals; a half day each month to set monthly goals and a few minutes each week to set weekly goals. Be sure to make your goals specific and achievable.
2. Define clear objectives.  Objectives are the steps required to accomplish a goal. They formulate your action plan for accomplishing your goals. Your objectives should be measurable so you know when you have accomplished them. They should be realistic and time bound as well.
3. Keep track of your progress. What metrics or benchmarks will you use to mark your progress.  Set the tracking mechanism up before you start, that way you will be able to prioritize and focus on the parts of the project or goal that are the most important. If you need to let something fall between the cracks, make sure it’s not the most important thing. Setting metrics and tracking your progress will help you keep the first things first.
4. Make mid-course corrections as needed.  Things seldom go exactly as planned. Life happens. Things break or need to be replaced. People get sick. Money runs out before the project is complete. The successful person is able to step back and make course corrections if necessary to accomplish their goals.  In order to be effective at this you must focus on the ultimate goal or objective – not the action itself.  Remember, it’s easy to forget your objective is to drain the swamp when you are up to your eyeballs in alligators!

A mentor of mine used to say, “plan your work, then work your plan.”  He was a wise man! If we follow that advice we will have fewer days (weeks, months, years. . . ) where we get to the end of the project and say, “gee what HAVE I accomplished?”

Happy Hunting, friends!

Dr. Sean Harry
Career Management Solutions

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“I’m not smart enough to start my own business.”
“I don’t have enough experience to get this job.”
“I don’t deserve to be successful.”

Are you plagued with thoughts like these?  If so, they are probably keeping you from moving forward with your job search, business plans or even the ability to deepen important relationships.  Negative thoughts can be discouraging or even debilitating, but you don’t have to let them rule your actions! You can beat negative thoughts and negative self talk with a few simple steps.

In his recent book, “Change Your Brain, Change Your Life: The Breakthrough Program for Conquering Anxiety, Depression, Obsessiveness, Anger, and Impulsiveness“, Dr. Daniel Amen calls this negative self-talk the “fortune-telling ANT.”  These ANTs (Automatic Negative Thoughts) can cause anxiety, stress, inaction and even problems with our physical health.  If you are a job seeker or an entrepreneur you are, no doubt, intimately familiar with ANTs.  They are the little voice inside your head that tells you that you aren’t smart enough or good enough or experienced enough.

The good news is that these ANTs can be killed quite easily.  Here’s Dr. Amen’s recipe:

Step 1 – write down the event that is causing you stress or anxiety.

Step 2 – Notice and write down the automatic negative thoughts that come to your mind when you think of this event.

Step 3 – Label those thought as a fortune-telling ANT. Amen writes, “Often, just naming the thought can help take away its power.” (Amen, p. 98)

Step 4 – Talk back to the ANT – or squash and kill it. Chances are that the negative thought is only partially true. Squash the ANT by bringing in as many positive responses as possible.  For instance, if the ANT is telling you that you don’t have enough experience, make a list of the experience you DO have.  Counter the ANT with facts.

Dr. Amen offers the above 4 steps to kill ANTs.  To that I add this fifth one:

Step 5 – Make an action list of 2 or 3 things you can do TODAY that will prove the ANT wrong.  Being proactive will help you prove to yourself that the ANT is wrong and you are right.  Thus, the ANT stays dead longer!

You don’t have to be held hostage by your negative thoughts.  You can beat your negative thoughts with these few simple steps.  Now, go and kill those ANTs!

Happy Hunting!

“What do you do?”

Does your answer to this question stop the conversation cold or does it take the conversation to the next level? Whether you are looking for more clients or searching for a new job, the way you answer this question is vitally important for getting the other person to talk to you.

As a small business owner who is looking for more clients, you want your answer to engage the listener so they can determine whether or not your product or service can help solve their problems.  Most of the time, however, our answers make the hearer feel like you are trying to sell them something. That will turn them off quickly!

If you are looking for a job, your answer to this question will determine whether the listener helps you uncover job leads or whether they offer you sympathy for looking for work in a time of unprecedented high unemployment. You don’t want sympathy!  What you want is a hot lead to a position that will provide satisfactory work and a good salary.

Here are a few tips for answering the question, “what do you do?” These tips will help you keep the conversation moving forward rather than stop it dead in its tracks.

1. Pepper your answer with action words. Since the question is “what do you DO?” your answer needs to be verb heavy.  Don’t give a title (“I’m as insurance sales person” “I’m an accountant”).  Right or wrong, titles place you in a box in the other person’s mind. Action words, on the other hand, will allow the listener to put themselves in the place of a person who may need your products or services. Action words will allow the other person to say, “that’s interesting. Please tell me more.”
2. Strike a familiar chord. Use language that meets the needs of your perfect client or prospective boss. We too often use the technical language of our field. That’s great if we are talking to professionals who do what we do. It’s rotten if we are trying to pique the interest of someone who needs what we have to offer. Use the language of your clients to explain what you do.  It will open many doors!
3. Focus on the problem, not the solution. Our clients all have a problem that needs to be fixed. However, most of them do not know exactly what the problem is, let alone how to fix it. If you jump to the solution too quickly you run the risk of shutting down the conversation. Remember, people don’t really care what you know until they know that you care about them. Focusing on the problem keeps you from sounding like a used care salesman.

The next time someone asks you “what you do”, I hope you will be able to keep the conversation moving forward. Work on these three tips and you will get some amazing responses!  I guarantee it!

And for those of you who wonder what I do, well . . . my job is to help you answer the “what do you do” question. I help people discover, develop and promote their personal brand so they can find more terrific clients or land the perfect job.

Yep, that’s what I do. What do YOU do?

Happy Hunting, friends!

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In an article published June 29, 2010, Chris Brogan listed “19 Presence Management Chores You Could Do Every Day” to help increase your online presence. As a career and small business coach I train people how to use both face-to-face networking and social media to enhance their personal brand and find the perfect career or the perfect customer.  Thus, Brogan’s list is of great interest to me.  He’s the king of using the web to build trust and strengthen relationships.

I’ve always known that “if we can measure something, we can improve it.”  Brogan’s list gives us a way to measure something that is a bit intangible — how we use social media.  It is possible to waste an incredible amount of time on social media, thus many people (including job seekers and small business owners) are reluctant to spend any time there for fear of watching the day go by unproductively. But Brogan gives us a model for measuring our activities to get maximum impact.

For my own purposes, I have created a spreadsheet from Brogan’s list and plan to keep track every day.  Every item simply gets 1 point, and my goal is to get 10 points per day. I’ve even added a couple of items of my own (i.e. writing a blog post gets 5 points). This system keeps me on track doing the things that are most important to me.

I encourage you (whether a job seeker or an entrepreneur) to do the same.  Develop your own systems (or borrow them from your friends and colleagues). Systems will help you track, measure and improve your actions so you are doing the right thing at the right time for better results.

Happy Hunting!

I just read a recent Harvard Business Review article which discusses the “Power of Positive Failure.” The author (David Simms) had hosted a panel of non-profit leaders and had asked each panelist to share a failure from which they had learned a valuable lesson. They did, and the article goes on to share with us what each one learned from that experience.  I highly recommend you go read it NOW, especially if you are searching for a new job.  More than one of the respondents gave examples that fit the job search.  This is certainly NOT an area you want to make mistakes because you haven’t done your due diligence.

It got me thinking. . . what can I share with YOU, so that YOU can learn from my past mistakes that will make THIS job search better for YOU?

1) If it doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t. I remember taking a job that I felt wasn’t right from the day I started.  However, I was too stubborn to quit, so I “stuck it out” for several weeks.  At which point I was frustrated and my boss was frustrated with me because he knew I didn’t want to be there.  When I left that position there were hurt feelings and some negative experiences all around.  I don’t want to do that again.

2) Negotiate up front. I once took a job with substandard pay and a promise that my salary would increase after a certain amount of time in the position.  Needless to say, the time for a big raise never came.  I should have negotiated a better compensation package going in.

3) Don’t take any job for granted. Most of us live in “employment at will” states, which means that we can be terminated for any (or no) reason at any time. There is no longer any such thing as a “social contract for life” when it comes to the employer/employee relationship. That may be good, or bad, or just the way it is.  At any rate, once you have a job you need to work hard and show your supervisors that they have done the right thing in hiring you.  If work slows down, you don’t want to give them any reason to allow you the opportunity to be the first out the door.  In other words, show up and work hard.  Hey, your employer is paying you to do your best, so give it to him/her.

4) If you lose your job go find another one. I have a good friend who worked for me a while back.  When business slowed down and I had to let him go.  I was very apologetic and felt bad, but my friend said, “I was doing something else when this job came along.  Now I’ll go do something else.”  It was a great attitude! I appreciated it and it helped him find his next job in nothing flat.

What about you?  What have you learned from your previous jobs that will help you in your current job search?

April is in full bloom.  The trees are budding. The flowers are blooming. Allergy season has kicked in. I LOVE this time of year! One of the things I love most about Spring is the opportunity to go through my closets and drawers and do some spring cleaning. I find it rewarding and energizing to get rid of the old and make room for the new.

If you’ve been unemployed for longer than 4 months you probably need to do some spring cleaning on your job search. The resume you wrote months ago has probably become stale. Your LinkedIn profile is probably showing some gaps that you will turn off potential employers. It’s time to revise your resume, update your LinkedIn status and get back into gear.

Recruiters are predicting a hiring tsunami sometime around Q3 or Q4 this year. Are YOU ready?  Here are 3 things you can do to spring clean your resume:

1. Add in any volunteer activities you have been doing since you wrote that resume a few months ago. You want potential employers to see that you haven’t been idle during your unemployment. Go ahed and list the duties accomplishments you’ve had while working at the Children’s museum, leading a fund raiser for your local church, or grading papers in your son’s 3rd grade classroom. (Haven’t done any volunteering?  Well guess what should be on you “To Do” list for today!)
2. Include books you have been reading into your LinkedIn Profile. LinkedIn has an app entitled “Reading List by Amazon.”  This is a great way to show potential employers you are an expert in your field.
3. Revitalize your network.  How long has it been since you talked to the people in your network who have actual jobs?  If it’s been more than a month, you need to “ping” them soon.  You want to keep your name on the top of their mind for when something opens up in their company.  Reach out to them with a pertinent article or website you have found that will help them in their business.  Let them know you are still around!

These three steps are so simple we can ALL do them today.  With the weather changing and the flowers blooming, it’s time to reinvigorate your job search.  Clean up your resume and get back in touch with your contacts.  You will be surprised with the results!

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