Today was an amazing day. After over 17 years with Novell, I am moving on to find a new opportunity as a business professional. I always thought that when this day came, I would feel differently. I loved working for Novell. I believed in what we were doing for the world, and I was surrounded by amazing professionals. Now as I move on, I simply feel grateful for past experiences and am ready to dive in for the next set of experiences.
Tonight I attended a presentation by Enoch Chapman. It was very energizing. There were several points made in his presentation that I feel are very important for anyone looking for career opportunities. I plan to put as many of these into immediate practice as possible.
1) It is so important to have some happiness. You can generate this by talking to people. He had us go through the exercise of just talking to someone we did not know by saying: "Hi, my name is Dean. I love to xxx. I also love to xxx." What was amazing is that a bunch of tired business professionals started this exercise and almost immediately, everyone was smiling. This was a very well made point.
2) Remember that you are a Business Professional
3) As a business professional, the value you add is by generating revenue for a company, either directly or indirectly. It is critical that you understand how you can do that and be able to communicate it.
Here is a four step process he gave us on looking for the next opportunity.
1) Make a list of the companies, or types of companies you would want to work for.
2) Think about how you can help a company solve a particular problem or drive additional revenues. Reflect on this from your skillset.
3) Look for companies where you can provide the greatest worth.
4) Practice 10 in 10. This means 10 phone calls a day and 10 face-to-face meetings a week. I realize that they teach the 10 in 10 in one of the career workshops so I will make it a point to attend one of these workshops in the near future.
During the workshop, I asked the question about salary negotiation. We received some great advice about leveraging power statements in that conversation.
We then turned the rest of the focus of the seminar to leveraging linked in. The information shared was very good. Here are some notes from that training.
- Think like a business professional.
- Jobs are found through conversations.
- Most often, to talk to anyone in the world, you only need talk to 2-3 people in your network to get a connection. This is called the degrees of separation.
- Strive to be an "Expert in the Industry" for the industries that you want to participate in. This means joining groups, asking questions, and providing comments.
- Your profile is very important. Focus on these three things. 1) Make sure you have a picture that depicts how you want to be seen. 2) Always change your default message when inviting someone to join your network. 3) Never do a generic search. Always try to narrow your search to get 5 targets.
Other linkedin points that I found important.
- Apply for jobs from within linkedin where possible because this carries over you profile information and already qualifies you for a job. Remember, that employers pay $127 to post a job on linkedin.
- Point to your public profiles on your business cards and your e-mail signature
- Make sure the URL for your public profile is something simple and clever.
- In your overview, try to show something that shows you in 17 seconds. Kind of like a me in 30 seconds only online, it should be only 17 seconds.
- Know your audience when you create your profile. Use the language of that audience in your profile. Very important as this gives you credibility with your audience.
- Following a company is a good way to get research information on those that you are interested in. Remember, that you want to accept a job from a company that YOU are interested in.
- Remember that groups can showcase your expertise.
- When you ask for recommendations, ask for recommendations around a specific skill/area.
Anyway, not sure if anyone will read my blog but myself....but I felt that these items above are very valuable.
