Reach for the Stars or How to Set Goals and Reach Them

Posted by kat on Sep 22, 2011 | 0 comments

We often talk about the importance of identifying and defining our goals. This applies to both our personal and work lives. We set goals to lose weight, learn a new language, and land that new job or to make that change in our life or career that we have thought about so long.

Reach for the stars and land in the tree tops is one way of defining a goal. It’s wonderful as a philosophy, but too vague to be a project management tool. We need to find ways to bring the philosophy down to earth to make it soar above those tree tops.

First we need to define the end goal, and then divide it into smaller and attainable goals or steps to be completed so as to reach the end goal. And both the end goal and the interim goals should be SMART goals!

Setting SMART goals is a commonly used strategy in both project and people management, but can also be effective for your own job search strategy, or for implementing change. According to Wikipedia, the concept was first described by George Doran in the November 1981 issue of the Management Review magazine. It has grown increasingly popular since.

SMART goals are: S – Specific; M – Measurable; A -Attainable; R -Relevant; T- Timely. What does this mean for your life and career goals?

Specific: Set hands-on, detailed goals by asking the following questions: What, Why, Who, and Where, include a question on possible obstacles or requirements.  What job do you want? Why do you want to work in a specific organization? Who can help you get there? Where are the opportunities?

Measurable: Make the goals measurable so you can identify successes and needs for development. The core questions are: How much, How many, How often and How to know when I reached my goal? For example, how many networking meetings will I attend and jobs will I apply for weekly? How many hours a day will I spend on my job search?

Attainable: Are your goals realistic and meaningful? Are they achievable? The trick is to stay positive but realistic. Set reachable and challenging goals so you feel accomplishment when you succeed. Core questions are: do I have the necessary skills, experience and connections? If not, then focus on improving them so you can attain your goals.

Relevant:  Are your goals relevant to the life and career you have or want to have? If not, then reevaluate them and revise. If you have trouble assessing the relevance, ask yourself if the action will give you new skills, required experience and new connections needed to further your career and most importantly if it will meet your needs and passions!

Timely: A realistic time frame makes a difference! It keeps us focused as it prevents everyday urgencies and responsibilities from taking over our life. Core questions are: by when must I reach my goal? If I have not attained it by the set date, what then? What are the short-term and long-term goals I need to define and act upon?

Moving to a new country or city, finding a new job or changing jobs, or redefining my life and career balance requires not only skills and experience but also self-awareness and a plan with SMART goals. The concept of SMART goals can be beneficial for any creative, personal and professional project, plan or dream.

Fall – A New Beginning

Posted by kat on Sep 7, 2011 | 4 comments

Labor Day has passed and fall is almost here, this is the best time for new projects.

I always feel energized in the fall, probably a remnant from my school days when I looked forward to a new academic semester after a long and revitalizing summer. The abundance of sun, swim and plenty of vitamin D provided by the long white nights in Finland made a great platform for launching new projects and activities in September.

My creativity is always soaring in the fall. I burst with ideas and creative urges, for arts & crafts and home remodeling, and for my career. Perhaps it is time to write a book, look for a new job, pursue that promotion, and submit a proposal for a presentation or seminar.

How can we do the most with our re-energized mind and body and use it for our job search, career development or for making some long desired changes in our work and personal life?

1. Document your feelings, your dreams, plans and goals, before the busy schedule takes over. Write them down, dictate them to a voice recorder or share them with your 200 closest friends on Facebook. Sometimes sharing our plans with someone helps us follow through since it makes us feel accountable to others and ourselves.
2. Creativity is often associated with spontaneity and perhaps chaos, but just as we conserve the harvest of berries and fruit from the summer by freezing, drying or cooking jam we need to conserve our creative ideas for the long winter. Make a folder or portfolio of new ideas. Perhaps use mindmapping, an excellent tool to create a visual overview of a project, subject or plan. I use it often to help my career coaching clients brainstorm opportunities, goals and to prioritize. Take time to return to your mindmap or folder of ideas. Prioritize them and select which to pursue.
3. You may feel rested and energized right now, but as the rainy days come, the long days at the office or the challenging job search, you may feel less enthusiastic. To conserve and maintain your energy remember to take care of your physical and mental health. Try to eat healthy, exercise regularly and nurture your friendships. Recent research has shown that those who have enough close relationships, such as friends live longer and happier.

Finally, keep an open and inquisitive mind. While it may feel difficult and hard sometimes, try to look for opportunities instead of obstacles. What matters is not that we avoid any difficulties or challenges in our lives, but how we react to them, how we manage our feelings and how we seek to overcome the difficulties and challenging times.

Careers in Hedge Funds

Posted by kat on Aug 6, 2011 | 0 comments

How I Networked My Way into the US Job Market

Posted by kat on Feb 2, 2011 | 4 comments

I moved to the US over 12 years ago. I still recall my first attempts to look for a job. The economy was strong so there were plenty of jobs around. The New York Times job section was several pages long.

As I was new to the country my initial steps were not so successful. My main strategy was to apply for jobs posted in the NYT or online. I never received an answer. So a friend of a friend suggested I need to network more, but I didn’t have a network, at least not in the right industry.

What could I do?

I began to meet with friends who all happened to work in the financial industry, asking them for job search advice on how to find a job in human resources. Eventually my friends referred me to other people they knew, including their human resources representatives. After a few meetings my network of people began to grow.

None of these meetings led directly to a job, but I learned immensely about the work culture in finance, in HR and in New York. I received my best interview coaching ever from a friend working at one of the large investment banks. He advised me to write down at least 30 possible interview questions and prepare answers for each of them. Then he sat down with me and practiced my answers with me. I have never felt nervous about a job interview since.

For a Finn who had recently moved to NY, this was invaluable. The job interviews I had had in Finland were much more relaxed and indirect than the ones my friend prepared me for.  I learned how to be assertive, how to talk about my successes and mistakes and what I learned from them. I was learning direct communication as opposite to the Finnish more indirect communication style.

How did I find a job?

On the advice of another friend I signed up with a staffing agency as a “temp”, that is, a temporary administrative staff member to be assigned to short term jobs. My first assignment was in HR at a large investment bank, processing data. I did well and was assigned to another assignment in the same bank, this time working in the Controllers Office processing sensitive data on initial public offerings. I stayed there for four months and was offered to stay on longer but decided to leave to pursue a job that I liked better. At that point I had US work experience and great references.

I wanted to go back to working at a university or a non-profit. So I began applying for jobs at the local universities and colleges and eventually landed an interview at Columbia University. My diligent interview preparation and great references from the investment bank helped me get a job I loved and start a career in my preferred field.

Lessons learned?

When you move to a new country, be prepared initially to adjust your expectations. I did feel my data entry job was below my expectations; I had a master’s degree after all.  Consider accepting a job that you may be overqualified for, do it well and make sure your bosses support you. Doing a great job processing data and getting good references eventually opened doors to more interesting jobs later. Learn the local culture, job search strategy and interview culture. Work hard. You are competing with the locals who have home field advantage. Do not be afraid to ask for help.

Rites of Passages- a New Year’s Eve Meditation

Posted by kat on Dec 29, 2010 | 0 comments

This time of year we often look back at the past 12 months. What took place in the world and in our lives? It has been a turbulent year in many aspects. The global economy continues to be wobbly, there has been social unrest in many places and also Mother Nature reminded us of her powers through earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

Add to that your own personal experiences. Maybe you lost your job, found a new one or were promoted?  Maybe you left what had been your home for many years, or a short time and moved far, or not so far away?  Perhaps someone close to you passed away or is no longer in your life? Maybe someone new has entered your life: a friend, a child or a spouse? Whatever it is, we tend to want to look back at our life and find meaning and purpose in it as we approach the transition into a new year.

I find it fascinating that we as humans have a need to create times of transition and celebrate or mark them with rituals, so called rites of passage; such as end of summer celebrations (Labor Day in the US, Venetian Evening in Ostrobothnia in Finland where I grew up), coming of age rituals (Bar and Bat Mitzvah, Sweet 16, Confirmation), or funeral traditions. It seems to be an innate need we have as human beings, but why?

I lost my father recently and the meaning of a funeral as a rite of transition has been on my mind. What is the transition in a funeral? The funeral is the rite when we by remembering and honoring the life of the deceased simultaneously allow the surviving family and friends to openly grieve the loss of the loved one and thus help them move on. The grieving process is longer than a funeral, of course, but the role of the funeral rite is to encourage us to mentally and emotionally begin the process of letting go of the deceased. The funeral is really the beginning of a new phase in our lives.

New Years Eve celebrations are also a rite of passage when we mark the end of a phase in our personal lives and the beginning of a new one. We will add or celebrate another anniversary of our birth in the New Year, we will file taxes according to the annual cycle, our society is constructed around our concept of time and would not function without it (remember the panic at the New Year transition 1999-2000?). But it is really a human creation, created by us to help us understand and create meaning in our existence.

Now let us adapt this concept to more common events in our personal lives, such as leaving a job or moving to a new region or country. They are both significant events in our lives, but sometimes we fail to remember that. We are used to seeing weddings, childbirth and funerals as significant lifetime events, but ignore how important the more mundane times of transitions are.

Losing a job is significant. It entails missing colleagues who also are friends, it entails the loss of core aspects of our identity and for many the loss of the feeling of being part of a group, a community, and the society at large.  Not to mention the loss of financial security and plans for the future.

We need rites of passages for losing a job! Maybe some of you have them? You go out for drinks and dinner with colleagues and friends; you take time off to travel or focus on a longtime dream project, such as building a boat.

If you have lost or left a job or relocated globally, have a rite of passage! Create your own!  Next allow yourself the time to miss and grieve your previous life; your friends, the house, the climate, the job, your office, and perhaps your daily routine. Then begin the processes of creating a new life for you. Explore your opportunities; be open to your thoughts, feelings and dreams and, experiment.

Not all career transitions and global relocation are painful. Maybe you were excitedly looking forward to the change, to a new beginning, just as many of us look forward to a New Year with new possibilities. Seize that positive energy and conserve some of it (keep a diary of thoughts and feelings, for example) for times later in the transition when life may feel like an uphill battle and the first enthusiasm for the New Year, the new career, new home, new country or new project has waned.

The Art of Story Telling

Posted by kat on Oct 15, 2010 | 0 comments

Tell me about yourself! What is your story? Where have you been and where are you heading?  How many of us have not been caught by surprise when someone we just met asks us to introduce ourselves, or stumbled at the common first question in a job interview: Tell us about yourself?

Why is the question so dreaded? Why does it take so much work to prepare the so called elevator speech or 90 / 20 second professional yet personal self introduction? After all, it is about me and who knows me better than I do?

That’s exactly the challenge. You know yourself too well. You are too intimately aware of your strengths AND your weaknesses, your achievements AND your failures. To prepare a unique and memorable self introduction you need to first step back and try to look at your self from afar. Sounds difficult? It doesn’t have to be.

One way is to look at yourself and your life as a story. Imagine that you are writing a novel about a character that’s you. What are the core traits and personal characteristics of the main character? What does he like to do? What are his interests, dreams, values and core beliefs?  What is his occupation and what successes has he reached during his life?

If you can answer all these questions, you are on your way to developing a captivating life story. Because just as every person is unique, every story is unique.

Now how do we turn it into a short “elevator speech”? That dreaded introduction that is supposed to not last longer than 90 seconds.

What makes a great story or a great speech so great?  The rule of three (3)! Yes, three is the magic number; it has a nice rhythm to it. Think about the great memorable speeches over time? …”and that government of the people, by the people, for the people…” the Gettysburg address by Abraham Lincoln (1863).

The same applies to story telling, a good story usually have the following structure:

1. A beginning; 2. Middle; and 3. an end. How do you apply this to your “elevator speech”?

The beginning is your past (who are you? what have you done? What is your professional identity? ); the middle or the body of your story should explain what makes you special, what are you good at, what is you area of expertise?; finally the last section of your story should include why you are here? Where are you going / or want to go? What can you do for them?

Try to follow these guidelines and you will see that it becomes easier to talk about yourself. Use the same rule of three when you prepare your interview answers. It makes your answers easier to remember both for you and the one who listens to you!

Good Luck!

Be Too Connected to Fail

Posted by kat on Sep 14, 2010 | 1 comment

In one of my workshops for expatriate spouses in the NY area we discuss networking or the concept of creating and maintaining career connections.

We usually launch the workshop by sharing what “to network” means to me, how it is defined and what the networking do’s and don’ts are in my country of origin and compare it to how networking is defined and done in the USA . In the process we also learn to better understand how culture shapes how people look for and find work.

Here are a few examples: According to a spouse from Nigeria, networking is an open secret. This means that in general everyone knows that jobs are found through networking and relatives help each other, but it is not openly talked about or recognized (as in the US).  My Kenyan, Bulgarian and South Korean participants agreed. Networking for a job is semi-hidden and indirect were words they used to describe it. The Swedish and British participants agreed with it being carried out indirectly, and that friends and family play an important role. They even mentioned that contacting people you do not know well directly and openly to ask for career advice and job leads would result in losing face or making a fool of yourself.

Who is it appropriate to network with as part of your global job search, according to my workshop participants?  In South Korea the school or university you attended plays an important role in defining your network together with your hometown or region. The same seems to be true for Nigeria.  Family, close friends and relatives are the pillars of your network in Bulgaria, Kenya, Sweden and Britain.

So with this anecdotal story in mind, how do we create and maintain global career connections?

A. RELATIONSHIPS

1. By nurturing the friendships we have developed over the years, especially if as an expatriate we have moved several times across the globe.

2. By maintaining family ties, so important for our own mental and emotional well-being and, as the examples show, our careers.

3. By keeping in touch with alumni from schools we attended and colleagues from previous jobs we held.

B. CULTURE

1. By being open and curious about others and reaching out to fellow expatriates and locals as we arrive to a new duty station or destination. By being mindful about our own assumptions and heritage.

2. By researching the local cultural patterns through books, workshops, movies, art and with the help of a cultural informant.

3. By knowing the structure of the local job market, where to find jobs, how to identify the key players in a specific industry, organization or office, and understanding specific hiring practices.

C. TOOLS AND STRATEGY

1. Use the Internet! LinkedIN, Facebook and multiple online communities have revolutionized how we live and the nature of our relationships, intimate and distant, personal and professional.

2. Be careful about blending personal and professional online networks. You may wish to use LinkedIN for professional contacts and Facebook for personal relationships. If your personal and professional online networks are intertwined, be mindful about what information you share. How much do you want a possible future employer or colleague to know about you?

3. Create new face-to-face connections at meetings of local professional associations, your religious congregation, your gym or soccer league, or by volunteering your time or skills at a cultural, social, or academic non-profit organization.

D. NETWORKING IN THE USA (a brief intro)

1. It is OPEN and DIRECT (search Amazon, Google or your local bookstore and you find thousands or resources and handbooks).

2. It is acceptable to reach out to an acquaintance or a friend of a friend of a friend to ask for career advice (but it is advisable to have a spokesperson to introduce the two of you).

3. It is based on a WIN-WIN philosophy.  If I help you now, you can help me later and so forth. This is the core idea of the American business culture. As popularized by Maria Bartiromo in her latest book The Weekend that Changed Wall Street, the banks in financial trouble were Too Connected to Fail. Your career should be the same!

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