Taking Stock of Your Pantry and Your Skills

In today's crazy world of bombings, gas attacks, and natural disasters we should all take a few minutes to look at our pantries to see if we could last a couple of days with no outside contact. Here in Indiana there are many advertisements for "stockpiling" food, tornado shelters, etc.  Since I have been canning like a crazy lady I have quite a bit of food stored and I have some bottled water. I will check to make sure that I have batteries and matches as recommended.  This seems to be the norm here.  

But how many of us take stock of our personal and business skill sets?  Not many I imagine; which makes it difficult to tell someone what your skills are off the cuff when looking for a new position.  I mentioned  LinkedIn previously and this is a great place to start to take stock of your skills.  You can also just start an Excel spreadsheet, below I show how I have mine set up.  I started by just adding what I use and what I do on a daily basis, then I added the level I felt I was at, and lastly calculated how long I have been using it (this will help you determine the level you are at).

Type	Skill	Level	Yrs Used
Professional	Excel	Advanced	17
Professional	Word	Advanced	17
Professional	Internet	Advanced	17
Professional	Supply chain	Expert	22
Professional	SC Operations	Expert	22

I also have my personal skills included.  You would be surprised how your personal skills can be transferred to professional jobs.  As an example, if you are an artist and love to create things at home, say paintings and crafty things,  you would be a great candidate for a creative design job.  You can take pictures of what you have done, invitations, paintings, etc to use as part of a job application. Having it all down on paper or in excel makes it easy to see the transfer of skills.  

Another example could be that you are a great party planner, so good that other people ask for your help in planning parties.  Why not get paid for that skill? There are corporate event planners at most large companies and you can use your personal skill to help you land a professional position.  

Documenting your skills also shows you where you have a gap or weakness.  It can also boost your morale!  Most people have skills that they don't even think of as a skill and most are transferable.  Ask your friends what skills they think you have and include them on your list. You can then compare your skill set with job opportunities to see if you qualify for a position. 

Finding the right job is a job in and of itself, but if you take the time to do the work you will find you are more qualified for  positions than you think.  I am also  learning that it is more important to find the right fit with a company from culture to vision and values than it is to just find a job.  I am on a search for the best "last" job of my career, and it takes a lot of work to find the right company to fit into  my goals and values the same things I do.

I am off to write labels for the 19 quarts of tomato sauce I canned yesterday. 

Cabernet and the Cover Letter

I hope you are all seeing my theme here. I love wine so I am trying to weave my love of wine into my job search.  The past couple of evenings Jim and I have been sipping some nice light Cabernet, as it is still warm out I am not into the  heavy reds yet. On Sunday I opened a bottle of Raven's Wood 2011 Cabernet.  This wine has a very nice aroma and has hints of blackberry in it and it is very reasonably priced.

Okay, on to the job search. I will share some of my stats (remember I am anal and track everything!) Today I am 2 Months unemployed.  I have applied to 20 positions of which I have had no response from 13 of them, to be fair some of them I have applied to  recently.  I have been contacted by 7 recruiters for positions and 4 of them are still very active.

To date I have discussed the resume and how to use LinkedIn.  Today I will discuss the cover letter and what my research has told me is successful.  If you look up "cover letters" on the internet you will find lots of resources, so many in fact that it can be overwhelming.  I was looking for help in writing a cover letter that showed I was sincere in my job search and that I had researched the company and wanted the job.  Why those things? Because that is what I looked for when I was hiring staff members.  The resume tells a hiring manager about the person's experience, but the cover letter tells them why they are applying.

Based  on what site you go on and what type of position you are applying for you will find all kinds of variation in what the cover letter should say and what it should look like.  The best advice I have received from a recruiter was to not sell myself in the cover letter but to offer solutions to how I can help the company achieve their goals.  Not an easy task and when you write it the first time it kind of sounds like you are selling yourself.  The difference lies in how you phrase the sentences.  Remember, your resume outlines everything you have done, you don't have to say it again in the cover letter.

Here are some examples:
Selling yourself:

• I have 25 years in the healthcare industry
• I have managed 10 direct reports
• I reduced supply expenses by $10  million

Offering solutions:

• I can help XYZ company become a leader in the industry by using my network to bring talented staff in
• I will work to reduce your expenses by implementing successful strategies I have used in the past. For example, if you currently use xyz strategy, then I would work to covert it to ABC, which has been discussed recently in the news as the most cost effective way to manage this strategy. 
• I will mentor my direct reports in XYZ  company to become skilled in ABC which makes the company stronger.

Before you write your cover do some research and find out about the company you are applying to.  This is where you get to be a detective!  You want to find out the hiring managers name if possible.  One way to find this out is to see if the job description says who the position reports to.  If so, then go to the company website and look for a page that lists the leaders in the company.  I have actually found organizational charts on company websites.  If you get lucky that way, find out the name and address your cover letter directly to them.  Also, see if you can figure out the email address of the hiring manager and send them your cover letter and resume directly.  If you do this, you should also apply the way the company specifies, but state in the cover letter that you are sending this to them as well as through the website (or however you will be applying) so you are sure that they see your qualifications.  

If you can't find out who the hiring manager is, go to LinkedIn and search for the company.  See if there is anyone in your network that works for that company and ask them about the position and who the hiring manager is.  You can also find the email address this way.  If you can send your cover letter and resume directly to the hiring manager you have a better chance of it being seen!

I have actually been called directly by the  hiring manager using this technique.

So now that you have some resources for cover letters make sure you do your homework. Never send a resume in without a cover letter. Even if you apply online and there is no way to upload a cover letter use this trick.  If it appears that you can only upload one file here's what to do:

1. Create your cover letter
2. Open up your resume file and paste the cover letter at the beginning of the resume
3. Make sure there is a page break between your cover letter and resume
4. Name this new file: Yourlastname_companyname_combo.doc.  That way you know that this is a customized cover letter resume for that company.

Enough for today on cover letters.  A quick update on my job search.  I have 4 positions that I am actively involved with, all of them are from recruiters who have called me!  I hope to have something finalized in the next couple of weeks.  Keep your fingers crossed.

Cabernet makes the world go around, the world go around...LinkedIn helps get you hired!

Misss Smokey is home and still pretty drugged up.  She is in a daze but doesn't seem to be in any pain.  I am surprised at how easy she is taking her bubble gum flavored antibiotics!!  Yes I said bubble gum.   I would have thought it would be tuna or salmon flavored.  Talk about feeling bad when you are holding down a one-eyed cat and shoving a dropper full of bubble gum in her mouth.  And did I tell you I have to do this twice a day for 2 weeks!!  Yikes

Had a lovely glass of Cabernet last night, Toasted Head, 2011 barrel aged California Cabernet.  Yummalicious!  If you haven't tried it, you should.  Reasonably priced and very smooth.  I am looking forward to the fall when I will start opening up some of my heavy cabs and zins with the peppery flavors.  Add some stinky blue cheese and you have yourself a party!

It is Saturday so I am going to digress a bit.  I just have to say that homemade strawberry jam in Greek yogurt is the best!

Yesterday I talked about how I was always ready with my resume, being the anal retentive person that I am.  Well, that isn't enough it seems.  So many people are applying for positions that they are not qualified for that it blogs the hiring managers down and they may not get to your resume even if you are the most qualified.  I track my job search with an excel spreadsheet.  (Remember, anal retentive?) I list out the date, the company, the job, where I found it, if they responded, etc.  

I guess my statistics aren't too bad; I have had 14 responses back from 22 jobs that I applied for online. I have five jobs that recruiters called me for:

• ·        One I turned down, it was in NYC and the pay was awful.  I would only be able to afford an 8x12 apartment with what they were offering and how traumatic would that be for the cats?
• ·        One the company decided to hold off starting the division they originally wanted me to run
• ·        The other three I am in the process of interviews

So how do recruiters find you, you ask?  One of the best places for recruiters to look for candidates is LinkedIn.  If you are not on LinkedIn, you should be, even if you have a job. Remember, always being ready for that great opportunity? I guess I am an early adopter and have been on the site for years.  I get calls from recruiters all the time regarding jobs.  And if I am not interested in the position, I will generally see if I know someone who might be and I will forward their information to the recruiter (I always let the person know I did this too).  That is called networking and it is critical to your success of not only finding a job, but hiring good people yourself.  

There is a great articles on the web detailing how to use LinkedIn to its fullest.  Here is one site with a great discussion on maximizing the FREE site.

http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com/careerblog/2010/07/13/why-dont-candidates-use-linkedin-effectively/

Some of the highlights of this article written by Barry Deutsch include these tips:

Start to leverage all the great tools LinkedIn provides for your job search, such as:

• Ability to participate in Questions and Answers
• Ability to constantly evolve and change your Profile
• Ability to Get Testimonials/References to say good things about you
• Ability to share books/reviews/thoughts with others
• Ability to participate in group discussions
• Ability to post useful information into groups
• Ability to contact directly potential hiring managers and recruiters
• Ability to post rich content/media of PowerPoint presentations, white papers, video, and audio
• Ability to “LIKE” and comment on the status updates of people in your network
• Ability to easily build a powerful network to generate an abundance of job leads and referrals.
• Ability to include your twitter stream and blog postings

I belong to groups, I post on the discussions, and I interact with my network.  All of these are fairly easy to do once  you get in the habit of doing it regularly.  While employed, during the few lunches I had with no scheduled meetings, I would have my salad in front of my computer and update LinkedIn, network with old colleagues and read what was going on.  It kept me up to date on topics being discussed in my industry (healthcare) as well as others.

Ok, I need to get back to my canning, I have one more batch of beets to do until the tomatoes come out in full force, then it is sauce!!  Happy Saturday.