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Mark Anthony Dyson ★ Career Writer ★ Speaker ★ Thinker ★ Award-winning Blog & Podcast! ★ I hack and reimagine the modern job search!

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by Mark Anthony Dyson 2 Comments

Is Your Career a Fad, Hit-Record, or Classic

Is Your Career a Fad, Hit-Record, or Classic

 

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What people like about music is personal. Many people love the familiarity of hit records because they could hear them over, and over without tiring. That doesn’t mean it’s a great record (whatever that means) but it will likely last through the test of time.

Your career goals must be that hit record. Terrible cliché, but true to the core.

I am not a fan of clichés, and never will be. I may use one scarcely, but don’t like them. Most people use them egregiously because they feel obligated to say something.

So, saying things like having “a proven-track record” without doing little to impress employers. It’s self-declarative filed under “who cares?” Perhaps a sub-folder of “I wasted my time!”

Your “hit-record” career goals must contain some passion for you to present an enthusiasm that interest employers to listen. But you should cry “Uncle!” if you no longer want that career path. That hit-record is your career as fad, not a classic that will be played for decades. I’m not saying your job must be the sole reason you’re passionate enough to pursue. Let’s save that discussion for another day.

It’s a sign.  It’s a trigger. At least it should be. Did you give up and didn’t tell your career? Here are some signs that you don’t care anymore:

1) You are no longer emotionally attached to succeeding. You have lost that “Loving Feeling” that you used to entertain. The fire and desire, the passion, and the tireless planning has receded. It might be time for a new dream, especially if your career goals lack any visible or monetary changes.

2) You have discontinued personal development. You haven’t renewed your industry newsletters or read them in a while. Remember how inspired you were looking at the newsletters? This has subtly occurred over time and quite frankly, your collection has grown. You don’t want to read where you left off.

3) You have lost touch with the network and affiliation contacts. This has gone both ways as you no longer attend meetings, and with you being AWOL, well what else is supposed to happen.

4) You are no longer encouraging others in your industry to succeed. Your progress has stifled along with your interest manifest to not cheer for other people’s success. The focus in your life is just about you, and expectations have lowered everywhere else.

5) You no longer update your resume. The zeal of updating your training has waned, and you pass on company paid training when it’s deemed as “optional.”

Did you give up and not tell your soul? It is time for a soul talk. Look at the purpose of your career and reconcile yourself to a new goal or career.

Complacency is a career killer! No wonder that your goals don’t matter anymore. It was a fad, not a classic.

About Mark Anthony Dyson

I am the "The Voice of Job Seekers!" I offer compassionate career and job search advice as I hack and re-imagine the job search process. You need to be "the prescription to an employer's job description." You must be solution-oriented and work in positions in companies where you are the remedy. Your job search must be a lifestyle, and your career must be in front of you constantly. You can no longer shed your aspirations at the change seasons. There are strengths you have that need constant use and development. Be sure you sign up to download my E-Book, "421 Modern Job Search Tips 2021!" You can find my career advice and work in media outlets such as Forbes, Inc., Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, Glassdoor, and many other outlets.

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Filed Under: Career Tagged With: Career Advice

by Mark Anthony Dyson 2 Comments

Career Advice From a Tech Expert: Interview with Forough Ghahramani

Career Advice From a Tech Expert: Interview with Forough Ghahramani

What career advice can you give to engineers that hope to reach management levels in managing their careers?

Top ten tips include:

1. Obtain management and project management skills both through education as well as professional experience – technical skills coupled with business/management skills are critical to success in management.

2. Understand how to gather, analyze, and manage data – data analytics is a very important skill for all professionals, especially for managers. Information is power and therefore, understanding the significance of data and having the expertise in data analysis to convert data into information to make knowledgeable decisions is the key to successful management.

3. Develop strong verbal and written communication skills.

o To be effective communicators, engineers, scientists, and researchers must learn what it takes to translate – the language of technologist/engineer/scientist into concepts and analogies that can be easily understood.

4. Work collaboratively with a wide range of internal and external stakeholders.

 

5. Employ a novel and adaptive thinking approach to your role, and continually create new solutions and ideas beyond that which is rote- or rule based.

 

6. Become skilled in cognitive load management. Become adept at sifting through large amounts of information to eliminate “noise” and focus on what is most pertinent.

 

7. Recognize the importance of an organization’s ability to be nimble and therefore, continually try to get the team out of doing things the same way just because that is how it has always been done to “how can we do this better and more efficiently.”

 

8. Capitalize on the strengths of each team member and try to mix up the different groupings of team members. This helps make the team more dynamic as well as promotes individual development.

9. Develop the ability to see the organization in relation to the wider environment and stand outside the organizational culture to come to conclusions and actions that keep the organization responsive and healthy.

10. If you believe in the work that you are doing, you will be motivated to work hard to accomplish the goals.

 

Should students starting out in school or their careers focus on a specific technology or take a broader approach to the industry?

It is important to pursue an academic field that will make one marketable to get a job. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, students who pursue “STEM” (science, technology, engineering and math) related disciplines are in high demand right now.

It is important to note, however, that while having the technical skills required for the job is an important factor in getting the first interview and ultimately the first job, the following attributes and skills are significant factors in reaching career success:

* Novel and adaptive thinking

* Analytical skills

* Computational thinking – ability to translate large amounts of data into abstract concepts

* Understanding and communicating across multiple disciplines (known as transdisciplinary)

* Virtual collaboration

* New media literacy – visual, audio and virtual media are surpassing traditional text-based media

* Demand for blend of project management and technical skills

* Cross-cultural competency – be able to operate effectively in different cultural settings

* Communication skills (oral and written) – employers recruit those who are articulate, concise and have strong written skills. Verbal skills are important, while the new generation does most of their communicating without talking, “talking” has not gone away in business

* Leadership and team skills

* Time management

* Conflict management and resolution

* Facilitating and managing change

* Social intelligence and empathy – connecting to others in a deep and direct way

 

Therefore, it is important to develop the broad base of skills to complement the specific skills for the student’s’ discipline. Soft skill traits can be just as crucial as the technical skills.

 

What opportunities are you seeing most unfilled in the industry, and any insight into why?

 

The opportunity for a better collaboration between industry and academia to enhance student’s and educators’ learning/teaching experience.

* Mentoring opportunities from industry to educational institutions – involving both students and teachers.

o For example, in healthcare and biotechnology, early partnerships with local pharmaceutical, medical, healthcare, and biotechnology institutions is key to developing the necessary workforce and successfully placing students.

* Promote summer education workshops for teachers and guidance counselors in the industry with the ultimate goal of raising awareness in major influencers of future generation of scientists and engineers.

* Given the gap between public understanding and public perception of biotechnology, genetic engineering or gene mapping, researchers should take an active role in helping to educate and inform the public.

o Not all scientists are in the teaching profession, but all scientists can teach by sharing their knowledge and expertise with others. Whether it’s giving a presentation to students in on ‘career day,’ serving as a mentor for an aspiring biologist or talking to a local civic organization – being able to communicate effectively about your research and your scientific discipline is essential.

 

What type of work should students look to perform as part of internships?

I believe any type of exposure to a professional setting will provide valuable experience for the student. It is important that the organization has made a commitment to dedicate resources to spend time with the student, provide meaningful work to the student, and therefore, there is a specific outcome expected of the experience so that the student has something to show for their time.

 

Keep the following in mind:

* Goals are defined

* Work experience is varied

* Experiential learning is accompanied by discussion with professionals

* Access to mentors is available

 

It is when learning is infused with examples from the biotechnology/engineering/scientific/business setting, and students are able to practice hands-on technical/management skills on a regular basis that a program has the greatest impact on a student pursuing a job in their field of interest.

 

Biotechnology has been one of most popular fields when discussing job growth and opportunity. In your role as an educator, have you seen a large number of career changers entering the field? Are they finding opportunities after school as readily as traditional students?

We have several health sciences programs at DeVry University, including health information technology (HIT) and neurodiagnostic technology (NDT), and those areas seem to attract career changers.

Other popular fields generally include healthcare as well as pharmaceuticals and biotechnology and the types of jobs these offer range from a medical writer to a product/process developer to a bioinformatist.

Career changers oftentimes tend to be more mature, have more confidence as well as experience, while not in their current field of study necessarily. However employers are gravitating towards these types of students due to those characteristics described earlier that differentiates them from their less experienced academic peers.

Therefore, many times the career changers have a competitive advantage. In addition, the HIT and NDT programs engage students in practical settings and not only enable participants to develop high levels of competency in basic industry skills, they also provide participants with the opportunity to understand different aspects of the field.

How important are advance degrees in the biotech field?

Interdisciplinary skills including biology, information technology, mathematics, and analytics are all extremely important for success in the biotechnology field. There are few degree areas that offer all or a subset of these in one undergraduate degree, such as bioinformatics. Therefore, advanced degrees are necessary to acquire a combination of these necessary skills.

For those who aspire towards management, advanced degrees in management and business administration are also necessary for complementing the science/technology expertise with management skills.

How competitive is biotech for the mature career changer? If any, what challenges does an older group face?

As I mentioned, in response to a previous question, a mature career changer in many instances has a competitive advantage over traditional students in biotech and healthcare, based on maturity, confidence, communication and leadership skills.

 

The challenges include:

* Proficiency in use of technology

* If they have not used their math and analytical skills for a long period of time, this serves as a challenge for them

* Requirement for interdisciplinary skills

 

 What are the top 3 things a 2013 graduate in this field should be doing now to prepare for his or her job search in this field?

* Develop a network of contacts (professors, friends, parents of friends, friends of parents, family, and neighbors, etc.)

o Inform people know that you are about to graduate and are looking for a job before you actually graduate

o Create a professional social media profile (i.e. LinkedIn)

o Look into professional organization memberships

o Good networking is about building solid, trusted relationships that are long-term, not short-term

* Develop and market your brand: what are your key differentiators, how do you want people to perceive you

* Think ahead – create a 3-5-year plan

For more information on careers of the future and ways to advance in your job search, visit www.devry.edu/know-how.

 

Author: Forough Ghahramani

 

 

Forough Ghahramani A transformational business leader, engineer, and entrepreneur, Forough Ghahramani is an associate dean of the College of Business and Management and the Keller Graduate School of Management at DeVry University and is the founding director of the New Jersey Center for Innovation, Creativity and Entrepreneurship.

Prior to her current role, Forough was a senior systems architect at Hewlett-Packard. Forough’s diversified career experience includes higher education management, strategic planning, management consulting, business analysis and organization-wide information technology planning.

Forough has a bachelor’s degree in mathematics with a minor in biology from Pennsylvania State University. She also holds a master’s in business administration from DePaul University as well as a master’s degree in computer science from Villanova University.

About Mark Anthony Dyson

I am the "The Voice of Job Seekers!" I offer compassionate career and job search advice as I hack and re-imagine the job search process. You need to be "the prescription to an employer's job description." You must be solution-oriented and work in positions in companies where you are the remedy. Your job search must be a lifestyle, and your career must be in front of you constantly. You can no longer shed your aspirations at the change seasons. There are strengths you have that need constant use and development. Be sure you sign up to download my E-Book, "421 Modern Job Search Tips 2021!" You can find my career advice and work in media outlets such as Forbes, Inc., Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, Glassdoor, and many other outlets.

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Filed Under: Career, Interview, Jobseekers Tagged With: Career Advice, Interview, Jobseekers

by Mark Anthony Dyson Leave a Comment

Interview with Leigh Branham, Author of The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave

I feel fortunate to receive a response to some questions I asked   Leigh Branham, Author of The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave.  You may remember my review a couple of weeks ago of the book. If not, you can read it here.  This book is a good read for job seekers, as it helps to know and pursue the work environment you desire. Branham’s book will also help you understand what employers generally expect.

What ideas were you testing before giving the survey?

I was curious to know if employees were leaving for the same reasons as I previously identified in analyzing 19,700 third-party exit interviews the Saratoga Institute conducted prior to 2005 when the first edition of The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave was published (which reported my analysis of the surveys). I also wanted to find out some things Saratoga didn’t ask, such as whether there was a turning point in the employees’ decision to leave, the predominance of push vs. pull factors, how long employees stayed after first thinking of leaving, the avoidability of the reasons, and how their reported productivity was affected.

What was the most surprising about the results?

I was actually surprised how consistent the findings were when compared to the pre-2005 surveys.

The same 7 reasons held true in 2012 as in 2005 with small differences–not feeling valued was still the main reason, but lack of trust and confidence in senior leadership was mentioned far more frequently, probably owing to more consciousness about senior leaders due to all the negative publicity associated with leader behavior and the Wall Street collapse.  I also found that nine out of ten root-cause reasons for leaving were avoidable push factors as opposed to pull factors, such as an attractive job offer.  There was a triggering event that precipitated the decision to leave in 64% of the turnovers, compared to 66% found by Dr. Thomas Lee at the University of Washington (who has spent his entire academic career studying employee turnover).

 

Did any of the results tell you anything about job seekers? If so, what did it tell you?

 

The data indicate that many job seekers experience disillusionment in the first few months on the job but stay, and disengage for several weeks or months before finally beginning to look for a job.  Finally, a “last straw” event occurs that moves them off dead center–an “I’m outta here” moment, so to speak.

To avoid disillusionment, job seekers need to have a mindset of “I’m hiring my next employer” and ask more questions about company culture as they network and ask to speak informally with future peers before accepting the position.  It’s also advisable to take on a consulting assignment or project before accepting a full-time job so you  can have first-hand experience of the company before making the decision.

 

Did any of the results change what you would advise job seekers?

 

Not really.  I’ve always been a huge advocate of networking in a way that helps you uncover hidden needs in your target companies as well as hidden skeletons.

 

Can you elaborate a little on the interviewing process of how employers can screen job seekers for a better fit? In what ways do you think that candidates can find out about the culture of the workplace he or she is interested in pursuing?

 

As I mentioned, ask to speak with your future colleagues without your future manager present so they will feel free to talk openly about the manager’s style, culture, internal career advancement, senior leadership, work-life balance, teamwork, and other issues that are important to you.  Recruiters, former employees, suppliers, contractors, consultants,and glassdoor.com are also good sources to check out.  And you can always ask the hiring manager directly about his/hermanagement style, priorities, the culture, and the team you’ll be working with.

 

Two questions I would always ask are:

1. Can you tell me what results you would be looking for me to have completed after six months and one year? and

2.What traits or talents do you consider most important in the person you hire for this job?

 

 

About Mark Anthony Dyson

I am the "The Voice of Job Seekers!" I offer compassionate career and job search advice as I hack and re-imagine the job search process. You need to be "the prescription to an employer's job description." You must be solution-oriented and work in positions in companies where you are the remedy. Your job search must be a lifestyle, and your career must be in front of you constantly. You can no longer shed your aspirations at the change seasons. There are strengths you have that need constant use and development. Be sure you sign up to download my E-Book, "421 Modern Job Search Tips 2021!" You can find my career advice and work in media outlets such as Forbes, Inc., Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, Glassdoor, and many other outlets.

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