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Free Resources for Mental Toughness

May 16, 2012 By Caroline Ceniza-Levine Leave a Comment

I am so excited to be the closing speaker in the 2012 Mental Toughness Telesummit!

My friend and coaching colleague, Renita Kalhorn, is a Juilliard-trained pianist, Insead MBA, martial arts black belt, and now a peak performance coach, including work w/ Navy SEAL candidates.  She’s brought together 10 speakers on various areas of mental toughness — leadership, sports, arts, career — for a free online series airing next week.  I’m up on May 25 to cover mental toughness and career:

“Raising Your Mental Game for Career Success”

  • How to prepare for interviews, performance reviews and other high-pressure situations
  • How to handle tough questions and critical moments
  • The surprisingly practical daily tool for developing long-term resilience

You can see the full line-up of speakers and register at http://ow.ly/aUXoB.

This is my affiliate link so she knows I sent you.  (The live calls and 24-hour replay are FREE, but recordings are extra.)

Filed Under: career coaching, Company news, life coaching, motivation, overall job search skills Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Cold Calling For Jobs, Not Just Sales

May 15, 2012 By Caroline Ceniza-Levine Leave a Comment

This post originally appears in my Work In Progress blog for Forbes.com:

Much has been written about how critical networking is to the job seeker. I don’t dispute that networking is helpful to identify jobs early, even before they are posted, and helpful to warrant a second look by the prospective employer, as I’ve seen many times firsthand as a recruiter. However, networking takes time, and sometimes you can’t wait for a warm introduction. Maybe you have to reach a fast-growing company NOW because they are building up their new location. Maybe your dream company is a start-up with a small team or just the founder so you don’t have a lot of options of people to know. It’s okay and can be very effective to reach out cold to decision-makers. Cold calling is not just for sales anymore, but can be very effective for jobs.

 

Identify the decision-maker. Unless you are looking for a job in HR, you do not want to cold call recruiters. They are not the ultimate decision-maker, and they get called all the time. So their fuse is short, and they’re not the most direct route anyway. Instead you want to identify the person who would hire for the specific role that you want, most likely the person who would be your boss. So if you want to be a finance manager somewhere, you need to know who runs the finance department.

 

Approach the decision-maker ideally by email. While I use the term cold “call” to denote this action of contacting someone with whom you have no referral or other introduction, you don’t literally have to call – i.e., use the phone. In fact, I don’t recommend the phone as the first point of contact because it’s disruptive for the person on the receiving end, and it’s harder for the candidate because you are live – no drafts, no copyediting. With email you can refine your approach, checking for brevity, clarity and the correct tone. You also can include your LinkedIn hyperlink with your email signature, which effectively forwards your resume without the presumptuousness or potential virus of an actual attachment.

 

Customize your communication to match the decision-maker. When I coached a client who was interested in venture capital on how to cold call a portfolio manager, he sent a brief, 3-line email about an investment area he wanted to discuss. The 3 lines was appropriate because venture capitalists are notorious for brevity, so anything longer would have been out of place. The choice to pitch an investment idea, rather than himself as a candidate, is appropriate because his job would be to identify and evaluate investments so his email effectively serves as a sample of what his contribution on the job could be.

 

Follow up. Just because you finally muster the courage to make that first contact doesn’t mean you’ll actually make contact. Your email might not reach the sender or might get drowned out by other pressing business and then forgotten. You want to follow up after a week to ensure that your contact stays front of mind. Since there is a chance that the email might not even reach your recipient, you may want to try different media – telephone, snail mail, Twitter or LinkedIn.

 

As I continue my own dream job search to land a guest spot on Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me, I would incorporate the above for my own cold calls. I would research the show’s cast and crew to identify the producers. I would plan for links I could include in my email. A LinkedIn profile wouldn’t be the best choice in this case because it’s not a traditional job situation; a better choice would be links to writing samples or video. I would customize my communication to ensure I can reach the hard-to-contact, over-pitched producers. Craig Schwalb, a media content executive, advises a strong subject line with the producer’s name to distinguish it from mass email and with a reference to a recent episode to distinguish it from just any other pitch. As Wait, Wait has a very specific show outline, I might customize my communication even further and write in the style of a show segment.

 

Cold calling is not just for sales people or just for sales job. Every job seeker can benefit from using cold calling to reach their dream companies.

Filed Under: career coaching, marketing yourself, networking Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Are You Responding Or Just Reacting?

May 14, 2012 By Caroline Ceniza-Levine 2 Comments

I led a workshop last week on Resilience, where we covered ensuring peak performance, recovering from mistakes, and maintaining long-term focus. This was for a group of type-A research analysts at a leading financial institution, so they were already operating at a high level. One of the senior participants asked a great back-to-basics question:

 

I’m inundated with emails – several hundred. I understand the importance of focusing on my other work and not checking email all the time. But part of my job is to be responsive (to market news, to client requests). So if I keep responding, I don’t get my other work done, but if I don’t respond, I’m also not doing an important part of my job. How do you handle email overload?

 

A lot of the advice on email management is tactical – chunk your time, only respond at certain intervals, use folders, tags or filters, etc. Tactics are great, but if you don’t have an overarching strategy for managing your emails, you won’t stick to even the best tactics. Here’s an overarching strategy tip: you need to be responsive, not just reactive.

 

Checking emails is necessary during the business day, but can be disruptive with all the start and stop. This is why it is recommended to check at pre-set intervals so that you minimize the disruption. HOWEVER, when you have a business where response time is of the essence, these intervals might be frequent. In this case, you need the discipline to only check for those time-sensitive messages and only respond in real-time to those messages that are truly time-sensitive AND important, while tabling the other emails for after your more important work.

 

This requires the discipline to stick to the pre-set intervals. More importantly, this also requires that you have the judgment to know what is truly time-sensitive AND at the same time what is important, what emails can be reserved for later, and what other work is more important than the emails at hand.

 

In the case of someone covering a market like a research analyst, when the market is particularly volatile or clients are particularly demanding, responding to emails may warrant a higher priority, and emails may be the exact thing you should be working on. But sometimes emails are a procrastination tool, enabling us to feel productive when we are really ignoring more important clients and goals.

 

So whatever email tactics you choose, you need to first establish who the most important clients are and what the most important work is. You want to be responsive to your most important clients and be less reactive in the moment.

 

While responding, not reacting, is so fitting for email management, its importance extends to all aspects of how we manage our time – how we select our activities for the day, when we make exceptions at a client’s behalf, even how we manage our emotions:

  • Are you responding or just reacting?
  • Do you know who your most important clients are?
  • Do you know when to make exceptions, when to do “rush” jobs?
  • Can you get back on track when you’re interrupted?
  • Do you know the most important work you need to get done today, this week, this month, this quarter, this year?
Filed Under: career coaching, entrepreneurship, philosophy, reader question, time management Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Trouble with the Rules of Engagement Protocols For Demographic Affinity

May 11, 2012 By Caroline Ceniza-Levine Leave a Comment

I wrote a guest blog for The New America Series on Adweek: Trouble with the Rules of Engagement Protocols For Demographic Affinity

In my previous post, I talked about the joke rule that mandates you can only joke about your own race, gender or ethnicity. Yet, in a recent career advice article, I used American Idol’s Jessica Sanchez as an example of what not to do in a job search. The comments included a heavy dose of “how could a Filipina-American criticize another Filipina-American?”

So, we can make comments, but not critical ones?

At a recent professional women’s event, Sylvia Ann Hewlett, head of the Gender and Policy Program at Columbia University, talked about her latest research into sponsorship, noting that executives of color (Blacks, Hispanics and Asians) are hesitant to sponsor up-and-coming executives of color for fear of being seen as playing favorites.

So, while we need to support each other, we can’t look like we’re actually supporting each other?

It’s hard to keep up with all the protocols regarding relating within our own demographic. How are we going to relate with everyone else?

Asians are the fastest growing race group with 46 percent of growth from 2000-2010 according to the 2010 US Census. But Asians are still less than 6 percent of the total population. Are we realistically going to move into the mainstream all by our own bootstraps?

Read the rest of my guest blog for The New America Series on Adweek: Trouble with the Rules of Engagement Protocols For Demographic Affinity:

http://www.adweek.com/sa-article/trouble-rules-engagement-140047

Filed Under: Media | Press Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Should You Send A Resume By Email or Mail

May 10, 2012 By Caroline Ceniza-Levine Leave a Comment

Demand Media invited me to contribute for their eHow Career Smarts video series and answer questions received from their audience. In this video I answer: Should You Send A Resume By Email or Mail

 

This is one of ten videos in the series, so stay on past the first question and you’ll hear all 10!

Filed Under: career coaching, Media | Press Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

10 Ways To Be More Productive At Work

May 9, 2012 By Caroline Ceniza-Levine Leave a Comment

I am quoted in US News & World Report on 10 Ways To Be More Productive At Work:

Counter interruptions. You must have a strategy for dealing with interruptions. Caroline Ceniza-Levine of New York career coaching firm SixFigureStart says, “When someone comes in, all of your strategies shouldn’t go out the window.” If a colleague comes in and asks for a minute, you can say, “Not right now. Send me an email, and we’ll set up some time.” One caveat: Don’t try it with your boss.

Read the other 9 tips in Daniel Bortz’ latest piece for US News & World Report: 10 Ways To Be More Productive At Work:

http://money.usnews.com/money/careers/articles/2012/05/04/10-ways-to-be-more-productive-at-work?page=2

 

 

Filed Under: Media | Press Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

The 3 Things Recruiters Look For In Every Hire, Regardless of the Job

May 8, 2012 By Caroline Ceniza-Levine Leave a Comment

This post originally appears in my Work in Progress blog for Forbes.com:

 

I have recruited for over 15 years in diverse industries (media, financial services, management consulting, pharma/ biotech, education) at different levels (interns through senior executives) and in different roles (strategy and operations, creative and business, freelance and permanent). The searches would differ, of course – in terms of where I would look for candidates or how competitive the field would be. However, regardless of industry, level role, or how the search was conducted, I was always looking for a positive answer to these 3 questions:

 

Can you do the job?

This is what most candidates already focus on – aligning their skills and experience with what the job description says. A well-prepared candidate goes line-by-line through a job description and has specific examples to demonstrate each requirement and job responsibility. The best candidates don’t assume that the job description is accurate or exhaustive. The job posting could be outdated or merely a template that the hiring department didn’t fully customize. Make sure you confirm during your interviews the exact requirements for the job and expectations from management so you can highlight exactly what the decision-makers are seeking.

 

Can you do the job HERE?

You might be able to functionally do the job and even do the job better than most, but can you be successful with the environment, culture, team and expectations that this particular employer offers? To effectively answer this question, you need to know, not just the job, but the company and how that job fits into the overall organization and objectives of the specific company. Many candidates ask about culture and environment during the interview process, as if it’s just part of the decision after the fact. However, your ability to navigate the prospective employer’s culture is a competitive advantage you should be highlighting throughout your interview process. Research culture in advance and as you select examples to highlight your skills, make sure to include examples that match the culture and environment of this particular employer.

 

Can you do the job here NOW?

Sometimes I would find a talented candidate, who would also be a great fit for the company I was hiring for – i.e., the candidate affirmatively answers questions 1 and 2 above. But the candidate’s interest level or current objectives were not aligned with this particular role or this particular company. The candidate might be interested in more responsibility than this role offers. Or the candidate needs more support – a bigger team, a more hands-on manager – than how the company is currently structured. Or the candidate clearly has eyes for a start-up when my company is a Fortune 50 (or the other way around). Regardless of how well-suited the candidate is to the job and even to the company, the timing is such that the position overall doesn’t align with where the candidate wants to be. In addition to proving that you can do the job and that you fit with the company, you have to demonstrate that you want the job right now.

 

As a job seeker you might be overwhelmed by the many things you have to do to land your dream job. But you can break this down into manageable parts. It’s not about being able to answer every single variation of every possible interview question. Prepare to answer these 3 questions well, and you’ll be a very convincing candidate.

Filed Under: career coaching, interviewing, overall job search skills Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Your Job Search Questions Answered on CBS Moneywatch Ask the Experts

May 7, 2012 By Caroline Ceniza-Levine Leave a Comment

I returned to CBS Moneywatch Ask the Experts to talk with host Jill Schlesinger and LinkedIn’s Nicole Williams about the 2nd quarter 2012 job market picture and answer audience questions:

 

Filed Under: career coaching, Media | Press, overall job search skills Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Spring Cleaning For Your Career

May 4, 2012 By Caroline Ceniza-Levine Leave a Comment

On the May 1 episode of our Blog Talk Radio Career Coaching Show, I talked about how spring cleaning relates to your career:

  • Why May/ June is a great time for the job search and therefore a great time to spring clean your career;
  • What spring cleaning means for a career — physical environment, mental inventory, emotional assessment;
  • How do you take stock of where you are in your career and decide on the best next moves to make.

Listen to internet radio with SixFigureStart on Blog Talk Radio

I also answered audience questions:

  1. How to prepare for my next career at age 46 – Karen
  2. How can I articulate my diversity without seeming scattered?  I’m a jack of all trades but master of few – Kris
  3. I just wanted to know what is the best way to introduce yourself in an interview when asked to do, what to include and what not to – Bashir
  4. How can I leverage a temporary executive position I have now to transition into a C-Level, C-Level Direct Report, or Product Manager role in a young but growing company – Kelly
  5. Does starting your own business make it impossible to get a job later because you seem unmanageable, or does it show creativity and initiative – Britt

If you’d like to submit an audience question, Contact Us.  We’d love to hear from you!

 

Filed Under: Blog Talk Radio Show, career coaching, identify your job targets, interviewing, marketing yourself, overall job search skills, reader question Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

How Do You Build A Wall Street Career

May 3, 2012 By Caroline Ceniza-Levine Leave a Comment

Demand Media invited me to contribute for their eHow Career Smarts video series and answer questions received from their audience. In this video I answer: How Do You Build A Wall Street Career

 

This is one of ten videos in the series, so stay on past the first question and you’ll hear all 10!

Filed Under: career coaching, Media | Press Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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