Posted by Chris Mursau on Fri, Jul 15, 2011 @ 04:17 PM
Marshall Goldsmith is one of the most prolific leadership authors of the past 15 years or so, and his 2009 book Mojo: How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back If You Lose It is one that should be on your shelf. Mojo means different things to different people, but Goldsmith's definition is meaningful to anyone looking for a new job. He defines it as, "That positive spirit toward what we are doing now that starts from the inside and radiates to the outside."
People with high Mojo are likeable. They are attractive, regardless of their physical appearance. They inspire others. They are considered role models.
As the subtitle states, this book is all about increasing your "Mojo quotient." Mr. Goldsmith and I have a goal in common. On the last page of the text he states, "My goal in writing this book is, in some small way, to try to help you have a happier and more meaningful life." That's one reason why this blog and The Right Fit System were created.
Get this book. At a minimum, it will inspire you to work toward happiness and reaching your full potential. For some of you, it may be life-changing.
The entire book is packed with great advice; here are some of my favorite points quoted and paraphrased:
1) "Be the optimist in the room."
2) "Reduce the time you spend criticizing and boasting."
3) Balance short-term satisfaction and long-term benefits at work and at home. Succeeding is doing things that do both...and that's life's goal.
4) "The thing we do more often than anything else - is continue to do what we're already doing."
5) "It's better to jump than be pushed."
6) "Differentiate (yourself), however minimally, from the thundering herd."
7) Work hard to string successes together, one after another, creating a pattern. People will notice.
8) "Move quickly."
9) Try to make the best of the situation rather than defaulting to the role of victim. Change your approach and mindset - always look for the benefit.
Mojo is not about being cocky, flashy, boastful, or just having swagger. It's about being positive, optimistic, and having a bias toward action. People with high Mojo tend to be energetic and can-do.
Work hard to become the engineer of your own Mojo train. People will beg to get on it just to be near you because you make them feel good about themselves. Goldsmith says that people with high Mojo send this message to others, "I find joy in my life when I am with you. Being with you - in this home or in this workplace - matters to me. You are important and what I am doing with you is important." He says there is no better message you can communicate to the people who trust, respect and love us, and I agree.
Mojo precedes success - start cranking yours up today.
Posted by Chris Mursau on Thu, Jun 23, 2011 @ 08:17 AM
Everyone knows the first thing you do when you want or need a new job is to update your resume. Or is it?
That's actually one of the most common mistakes job hunters make. The three-year old resume is dusted off, the current job is added, you surf around on Monster or Career Builder, and then you start sending resumes out.
Why doesn't it work? First off, that resume is the one that got you the current mediocre job or the job you just got laid off from or hate going to in the morning. The content is based on what you thought you wanted to do years ago. The resume was not created for a specific job in a specific industry or for a specific company or boss. In fact, that resume probably does not even adequately describe all of the things you do well.
The real first step for any job hunter is to take a little time and figure out who you really are if you are serious about your next job being a perfect job for you.
That doesn't mean long sessions on a therapist's couch, but it does mean going over your life and career with a fine-toothed comb to really understand all of your strengths, your biggest weaknesses, where you have been successful and why you have failed, people you liked working with and environments you liked working in, and the type of boss that can help you reach your full potential.
After interviewing for over 12,000 hours and observing thousands of others' interviews, two things are quite clear: people often underestimate their strengths and seldom have deep and accurate insights into their weaknesses (i.e. what factors have caused them to not reach their full potential every day).
An incomplete understanding of your strengths leads to not vying for opportunities where you could be wildly successful. Lacking deep, accurate insights into your weaknesses leads to chasing jobs where you will be a mediocre performer and unhappy.
Superficial does not cut it. In order to get a perfect job, you need to understand exactly what you perfect jobs are. In order to do that, the first step is to understand you. It is important and ok to be blatantly honest because you don't need to share the list of weaknesses with everyone. You don't have to put them on your resume because they won't matter...if you are following the right opportunities. That's the idea - only go after jobs if your weaknesses won't have an affect on your achieving expected results and fitting in with the culture and people.
Wait a second...aren't aptitude tests and personality tests, cheap and fast? Depending on your persepctive, they are relatively inexpensive (usually under $100 bucks) and you can do them quickly (less than an hour). You get fast and cheap but there are two significant components missing - accuracy and thoroughness.
Every one of you have tens or even hundreds of factors that make up your personality (and hence, your fit for a job). Personality tests tend to give you "insights" into 5 - 15 of those factors and aptitude tests draw conclusions about the best field for you based on the same number of factors.
Further, these tests largely depend on your mood when you take the them (though the purveyors of these tests will disagree and state validity and reliability statistics...which are all meaningless relative to your goal of getting a perfect job). Without a lot of effort you can skew the results any way you choose by how you answer the questions. Even if you are trying to be completely honest, who cares if you would rather cook dinner for friends or go out to a restaurant? Drawing conclusions from the answers to silly questions like that is not going to get you a perfect job.
Base your conclusions on reality (what you've actually done well) and conservative extrapolation from reality. If you are a math buff, you know what extrapolate means. For the rest of us, here's how dictionary.com defines it:
ex·trap·o·lateVerb/ikˈstrapəˌlāt/ 1. Extend the application of (a method or conclusion, esp. one based on statistics) to an unknown situation by assuming that existing trends will continue or similar methods will be applicable. 2. Estimate or conclude (something) in this way.
I'm not saying that because you have worked in finance roles in the automotive industry for your entire career you can only be successful in an automotive or manufacturing company. It is ok and encouraged to extrapolate your experiences, skills, and strengths into other industries and functions. The idea here is to extrapolate conservatively so you are only taking small risks. Big risks can occasionally pay off big, but they often result in big failure.
Posted by Chris Mursau on Thu, May 12, 2011 @ 10:01 AM
A Perfect Job - 1) A job where you can reach your full potential every day and be happy doing it. 2) A job that fits your skills, what you like, and who you like doing it with. 3) A job where you can be a happy superstar. 4) A job where your weaknesses have no bearing on your ability to deliver expected results or job satisfaction
The article A (vesus The) is very important in these definitions because there is not just one perfect job out there for you. When people think about "perfect," they generally think about one thing. That makes striving for a "perfect" job seem like trying to find a needle in a haystack. The fact of the matter is that there are many perfect jobs to choose from...so finding a perfect job is not as hard as you thought it was.
Although there are many perfect jobs, there are many more jobs that are not perfect. If you accept one of these positions you will probably not be happy at work. You may be thinking, "So what? Work isn't really supposed to be fun. That's why it's called 'work' and not 'play.' I just want a job that pays well."
Here's the "so what." It is impossible to reach your full potential if you are not happy and satisfied. In other words, you will not perform as well if you are dissatisfied with your job as you will if you love what you do. If you want to be considered a high performer, a superstar, you need to chase jobs that will make you happy.
What factors into happiness at work? Here are some of the important factors based on numerous research studies:
Management Quality and Relations
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Fit with a boss you admire
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Mutual respect
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Inspiring and competent leadership
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Challenging work assignments
Organizational Effectiveness
Job Characteristics
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Freedom and autonomy
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Exciting work to feel passionate about
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A sense of accomplishment
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Recognition
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Having appropriate authority
Development
The italicized bullet points are those that are most personal to you. You need to figure out what kind of boss you want to work for, what type of work assignments challenge you, what your values are and what cultures you like to work in and perform best in, the kind of work you can feel passionate about, and what you need to feel accomplished. Figure those things out and only pursue jobs that fit those criteria.
What makes you happy will not necessarily make other people happy. The definition of perfect is specific to you, and it is your responsibility to figure out what that definition is before you begin searching for a new job...or you will probably end up with another job that drains your energy instead of energizing you. (Incredibly, research shows that only 25% of people are considered high performers in their current jobs and only 45% of employees are satisfied in their current positions.)
The non-italicized bullet points are less about you and more about the company. Is the senior leadership team competent? Is the organization making money and delivering high-quality goods and/or services? Is compensation based on performance and if it is not, are all employees held accountable to the same high standards? If the answer to any of these questions is no, the chances of your becoming frustrated should you accept a position with that company is increased.
It's up to you to figure out how you define "perfect" at work and then work hard to find jobs that fit those criteria. I'm a big advocate of only taking jobs where you can be a happy superstar. However, that takes some courage, especially if you are out of work or will be soon. If you need to pay the rent, by all means accept a job that isn't perfect for the short term, but do that job as well as you possibly can while continuing to search for jobs that are perfect and will allow you to reach your full potential. Don't settle until you are satisfied and happy.
Posted by Chris Mursau on Mon, Apr 25, 2011 @ 10:57 AM
I've read thousands of resumes in my career. 10% were great, but most of them weren't even good. Some were so bad, I often wondered how the person made it past HR's initial screening. What's even more bewildering is why so many resumes fail to present people's stories in a compelling way in this world of of free and cheap resume writing advice.
Here's some more free advice...that actually gets your resume to stand out from the crowd. Don't do the following 5 things and you really increase your chances of getting that first interview.
5 Common Resume Mistakes
1. Including an opening paragraph telling prospective employers what kind of job you are looking for.
Employers, and especially managers, don't care what kind of job you are looking for. They care about what you can do for them; problems you can solve, value you can add, and generally how you can make their lives easier and better.
Put yourself in the managers' shoes. Look at life from their perspective. Then write your resume in a way that speaks to that person. They are first concerned what you can do for them, second (or third) concerned about what they can do for you. A little pessimistic, but that's reality.
2. Describing what you were responsible for, not what you actually did in a job.
"Responsible for managing a team of six financial professionals." A statement like that is pretty common on resumes, but it begs the question, "So what?"
Were you a good manager? Was the team stronger when you left? Did you have a successor? How did the team's results change while you were managing them?
A resume that includes responsibilities without listing accomplishments in relation to those responsibilities is light and superficial. A resume that is rich in accomplishments gets noticed. Prospective employers don't have to make assumptions or guess what happened; they know because you tell them. Don't get caught up in the "I was responsible for..." game; you won't get many first interviews if you do.
3. Using the same font from start to finish.
Resumes are scanned in about 15 seconds; the information on your resume needs to catch screeners' eyes so they stop and read it. Varying the font (just a little) will do that. Similarly, using bold and underlining a bit will increase your resume's visual appeal. Eyes are drawn to contrast.
Use a smooth font for headings (like Arial) and a font like Times New Roman for the content under each job. A word of caution - don't get too cutesy with your resume, even if you are trying to get a job that requires originality and creativity. Include examples of your work with resumes if you need to display creativity - make your resume interesting...but professional.
4. Typos.
For the love of God, proofread your resume. Be sure it is 100% error free - the goal here is spelling and gramatical perfection. (For those of you thinking, "Wait a second Mursau, you're not the best linguist I've ever read," I agree...but this isn't a resume). Also be sure spacing, font, bold, and underlining is consistent throughout.
After you proofread it and think it's perfect, ask at least two other people to check it for you to be positive you did not miss anything.
5. Using words when you could use a symbol and using a paragraph when you could use a bullet point.
Symbols catch the eye. Words don't. Where does your eye go first - to $ or to dollars? Use symbols to stop the readers eye and pay attention to the words around that symbol. When possible, combine them to increase power.
Does "Increased revenue 122%, resulting in $235,000 additional net income" get your attention?
Resumes are scanned quickly, too quickly for someone to slog through a paragraph about your responsibilities to pick out the accomplishments. Don't use a paragraph anywhere on your resume. You may not even need any complete sentences. Think clear and concise...because that is what will convey the most information about you in the shortest amount of time.
You'll notice there no links to free resume samples or templates. That's because they don't work. People notice if your resume is canned or written by someone else (you can pay someone to write a resume for you). Be yourself, get in your audience's head, catch their attention.
Posted by Chris Mursau on Thu, Mar 17, 2011 @ 02:08 PM
Seriously.
This isn't a clever title just to get you to read more. Unfortunately, there is no punchline here. Research shows that having a bad boss can really kill you, or at least increase your chance of having a heart attack. An article on WebMD.com cites a 2008 Swedish study published in Occupational and Environmental Medicine that concluded that bad bosses can be hazardous to the health and longevity of people who work for him or her.
The group tracked 3,000 employees over almost 10 years and found that the more competent an employee rated his boss, the less chance he had of a heart-related problem (all of the subjects were male).
What does this mean for you?
If your boss is incompetent, mean, a poor communicator, or just a general jackass, you should begin looking for a new job as soon as possible...if you want to live a long, healthy, prosperous life. The study didn't mention anything about prosperity, but how can you reach your full potential working for someone you don't respect? In my experience, it's nearly impossible for anyone to reach their career goals while reporting to a bad boss.
There is going to be a common theme running through a lot of the posts, and here is the start of it - if you have a bad boss, start doing something about it today. You 2 have choices.
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If you like the company you work for and it's big enough, you can transfer out of your current department to work for someone who is a better coach and mentor.
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If you don't really like your company or it's too small, start looking for a new job today.
Life is too short to be at the mercy of the whims of a bad boss, and the Swedish study shows that it can be even shorter if you continue to work for that person.
How do you ensure that you don't have to report to an incompetent weenie or insecure tyrant ever again?
Do two things. First, go back to the first boss you have ever had and describe that person. What were his or her strengths and weaknesses? What did you like and dislike about working for that person? Then do that for the next boss and the next until you describe your current supervisor. Look for the themes in boss' management styles over your career and then describe your perfect boss. Now you know what you're looking for.
Then start looking for that person inside or outside your company. When you interview, ask about the prospective boss' management style. Try to talk to his or her current employees and ask them what they like about working for that person. Don't expect them to give you a lot of dirt on the boss (though you may be surprised when you get some people talking!) - you will usually have to read between the lines and listen for what people don't say.
After describing your perfect boss and asking a lot of questions about prospective bosses, look for patterns and trust your gut. If something doesn't
"feel" right, either keep asking questions until you get all of the information you need or decide to stop pursuing the opportunity.
Bad bosses can kill you and a great boss can propel your career. Don't work for jerks.
Posted by Chris Mursau on Tue, Feb 22, 2011 @ 09:28 AM
Because everyone deserves to be a happy superstar at work...and too few people are truly happy and really successful.
First, the Bad News
You have all gotten some really awful advice on how to get a new job and manage your careers.
Too few people realize their full potential every day at work and many people wake up every morning dreading the day ahead.
Research shows that fewer than 50% of employees are satisfied with their jobs and only 25% of all employees are considered high performers by their employers.
People don't think hard enough about where they could be a high performer. Candidates don't ask enough questions about what the company culture is like. They don't really know what they will be held accountable for after they start a new job. And they don't figure out what the prospective boss' management style is like.
Even though a lot of companies have something in their mission or values about how much they value the people who toil for the organization every day, few are actually great at managing their talent. There is a lot of guessing going on when they pick people -
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Guessing about what the job is like (because few HR people are really considered business partners)
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Guessing about a candidate's strengths and weaknesses
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Guessing about whether or not a candidate will fit in the company's culture
I've spent a career analyzing organizations' hiring and promoting procedures and am just sick and tired of seeing great people offered jobs that suck the life out of them (and you know, when someone is offered a job they tend to accept it).
Job hunting is a lot like gambling - people rely on luck and everyone loses at some point (i.e. everyone has a bad job now and again). But, it doesn't have to be.
Now, the Good News
In fact, it's spectacular news. So spectacular that it could have a significant impact on the world, and can certainly have an impact on your career and your life.
The good news is that there is one right way to get a job. A process that works nearly every time. When followed, people don't just get a job, they tend to get a perfect job. The Right Fit System is the way. It shows you:
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Exactly where you will be happy and successful
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How to target those opportunities and ignore the jobs that don't fit
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How to create powerful cover letters and resumes so you get interviews
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How to ace every interview you get
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How to choose the right job where you will be a happy superstar
If you are already happy and successful at work, congratulations and wishes for continued success.
If you know you aren't reaching your full potential every day and wish you could, The Right Fit System was created just for you.