January 2, 2023January 1, 2023

New Year, New Career Goals

Welcome to 2023! The past few years have happened in a blur, and I’ve heard a lot of hope that 2023 will be the year things finally return to normal. This year, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about my personal and professional goals, and I am excited for what is to come!

January is a big month for setting career goals, personal goals, and New Year’s Resolutions. As we move towards new beginnings, people are inspired to set new goals for the year, personally and professionally. Unfortunately, a lot of times, these resolutions don’t last. Take the gym; in the “before times,” January was the busiest month at the gyms. Waiting 20 minutes to get a treadmill, lots of new faces, long lines, and the best of intentions. Come March, the buzz has gone, classes have shrunk, and you can take your time without feeling rushed.

We have some tricks to help you stick to your goals so they don’t get ignored come March. You probably already have a career goal in mind; it could be a completely new role, changing industries, a horizontal move in a company, or maybe a promotion. While you might not know how exactly to get there, you probably have some idea of what you want to do.

Dream Big

For some people, it helps to start with your big-picture goal. Especially now, it can help lift your head above the clouds and look long-term. Picture the job you want to retire from and imagine what that looks like and where you’d like to be. Are you running your own business? A C-Level executive? Maybe you are a technical expert. It could be that your goal is to be in a comfortable position that allows you the flexibility to focus on other life priorities. Whatever that goal is, envision your future self in that role. It’s okay if it seems far away or ambitious and if this goal changes over time.

The big picture method allows you to set long, mid, and short-term goals to help you achieve that ultimate goal. By working backward, you’re able to identify more and more tangible things that you can do to move toward that outcome. The long-term goals you set should look at what you need to accomplish in the next ten years to progress toward the big goal. From there, you can place 2-5-year mid-term goals and dive deeper to set up goals for the next six months to a year. Ask yourself what three to five things you can achieve in the next year to help you accomplish those mid-term goals.

Still Deciding What You Want to Be?

If trying to picture yourself at the end of your career terrifies you, that’s fine too. It’s not uncommon for people to change jobs, industries, or career paths multiple times in their life. Instead, focus on the next two to five years for your career. Are you a recent graduate looking to break into a field? Maybe you feel stuck where you’re at and want to move forward. Imagine what that looks like and set some mid-range goals around those ideas. Then build some more tangible shorter-term goals to help you get there.

Short Term Goals

Your short-term career goals are where you want to focus most of your attention. You can accomplish these things this year to move your career forward. One way to help develop these goals is to use the SMART goal methodology. SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. When your goals encompass these components, they become much more actionable. Phrasing your goals in this way gives you a solid plan on how to approach and move forward to accomplish them.

Think of your goals as living documents. Goals are flexible, and you get to make updates as your priorities change. If you want to change directions mid-way through, revisit your career goals to adjust or replace them with your new targets.

Write Your Career Goals Down

Write down your career goals

It’s not enough to develop career goals at a major transition point. After you’ve gone through all the work of coming up with SMART goals, don’t hide them away in the corner of your mind or desk drawer. By writing the goals down, you’re more likely to achieve them. A psychology study by Dr. Gail Matthews out of the Dominican University of California found that students who wrote down their goals and provided weekly status updates to accountability buddies were much more likely to achieve them. While only 43% of the students who wrote down their goals had accomplished or were halfway to meeting them, 76% of the students providing the updates had accomplished or had made significant progress toward completion.

Need Some Help?

If you need some help with making progress toward your career goals, we can help. Sound Interview Professionals can help you polish your resume and develop your brand. We offer custom coaching to help you accelerate your career. To learn more, visit our career services page, or send us a note at info@soundinterview.com.

November 30, 2016October 18, 2016

Resume Accomplishments

mona-lisa-leonardo-da-vinci-la-gioconda-oil-painting-40997 Leonardo da Vinci is the man responsible for the first resume, created over 500 years ago while he was seeking employment as a military engineer in Milan. A lot has changed from that da Vinci’s resume, and etiquette is always evolving. When I was in college, the career centers recommended using a resume to provide high-level information on job duties. They also said I needed an objective, but that’s no longer the case either. Most of the bullets on my first resume started with “responsible for” and went from there. Admittedly, that was over a decade ago. Nowadays, just listing job duties isn’t enough to get you hired. Hiring managers want more than what you did each day; they want you to tell them about what you were able to accomplish. Strong resume accomplishments will help you to stand out amongst the competition.

Show & Tell

Resumes are filled with buzzwords: team player, flexible, strong multitasker, great communicator, etc. While you probably have these skills using these words doesn’t help your resume. Buzzwords are general statements that don’t come with proof, and hiring managers tend to ignore them. Instead of using empty buzzwords, show employers that you have these skills through your accomplishments. While anyone can say that they’re a great multitasker, think about what you can put on your resume to prove it. There are three great ways to present resume accomplishments on a resume: numbers, annual goals, and awards & recognition.

Numbers

Numbers make your resume stronger. Take advantage of any chance you have to show your accomplishments with numbers. Using numbers is a lot easier if you work somewhere that tracks metrics and measures results. I know that it’s not always easy to measure your impact and sometimes it’s hard to remember the numbers that you influenced. These bullets will fall in one of three categories: dollars, percentages, or hours. Keep track of the number of team members, budgets and hours saved as you work on future projects so you can quickly update your resume later.

Managed all aspects of the $1.5M program budget including membership benefits, events, project development, and staffing.
Launched three successful campaigns in 2015 in new industries resulting in 150% grow
Developed a tool to update and track data entry transactions, saving 40 hours of weekly labor.

Annual Goals

Chances are you go through some goal setting at work each year. Goals are fantastic tools for resume writing so pull out your previous reviews and see what projects you were working and how you performed. These are the big-ticket items that you should include on your resume. As a project manager, your resume should highlight how you effectively led teams to deliver ahead of schedule, under budget or exceeding the requirements.

Led two teams through bi-yearly employee survey action planning, increasing survey response rates from 37% in 2009 to 68% in 2011.
Organized and oversaw a multi-day trade show for vendors in the food and beverage industry at the Hospitality Expo in Las Vegas.

Awards and Recognition

Awards or recognition make great resume accomplishments Any recognitions or awards are potential resume accomplishments. Since you are using your resume to highlight your achievements, awards and recognition are an excellent way to go about it. If the project is outside of your normal scope but matches a skill that the job is looking for, then it’s worth including. When you use your resume to highlight accomplishments you’re showing that you’re willing to go above and beyond.For my superstars out there who have lots of awards under your belt, be selective and choose the most impactful awards.

Recognized as Employee of the Quarter for organizing a community-wide food drive and overseeing 15 volunteers to advertise, collect and deliver non-perishable goods to the local food bank.
Selected as 1 of 12 Executive Advisors out of a class of 250 nationwide. Donated over 200 hours of management consulting to a student team over a three month period.

Functional Bullets

Sometimes it’s not possible to focus solely on resume accomplishments. Sometimes you need to demonstrate skills for the job, and you don’t have an achievement that relates. This is where the functional bullets come in handy. They focus on the general responsibilities of the job. A resume has limited space, so do your best to keep these items to a minimum. Don’t repeat them, and only list skills that you’re not able to cover in other areas.

Responsible for reporting and ensuring compliance with federal, state and local laws
Built and managed project schedules using both waterfall and agile methodology
Used HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS to design the internal company website.

Frequency of Updates

The good news is that resume updates get easier each time you do them. After awhile making updates becomes more about fine-tuning your resume. As your career grows, you want to revisit your resume every six months to a year, even if you’re not looking for a job. Set up a calendar reminder and set aside an hour or two to update your current job responsibilities. That way your accomplishments stay fresh, and you capture them before you forget. It’s okay if this version of your resume is long, you’ll be customizing it for each job you apply for in the future 🙂 This just provides you with more material to choose from when you become an active job seeker.

November 30, 2016August 14, 2016

Interview Tip: How to be a STAR

The next time you find yourself in a behavioral interview, draw a little star across the top of your paper. No, I’m serious. STAR is my favorite acronym. It’s a formula for job applicants to use when they’re answering interview questions. STAR stands for Situation, Tasks, Actions & Results. It is well-known by Human Resources and hiring managers, but we’ve found that a lot of our clients haven’t heard of this interview tip before. Let’s break it down:

Situation

Anytime you are telling a story to someone; you have to give them a little bit of context, so they understand what’s going on. Imagine you’re telling your friend about an experience at a restaurant. If you dive into the conversation saying “The food was awesome, we had crab cakes and pasta.” Your friend is going to be caught pretty off guard. The same goes for an interview. The situation helps set the scene. Instead of jumping right into what you had for dinner, you should mention the restaurant name, when you went, who you were with and even a little bit of info on the restaurant.

It’s important to set the scene when answering interview questions, especially if you aren’t currently working at the company. Help the interviewers understand the circumstances surrounding your example and more context. Just recently I coached a client who was telling me about a story leading a team. The example was okay but not incredibly impressive. Once I started asking more questions, I learned his role, the team size, and the budget associated with it. These three things (Director, 150+ employees, and a lot of $) added significant weight to the example.

Tasks

The task is the assignment you are given. In most cases, the situation and task run pretty close together in your significant. In the restaurant example, the task becomes pretty simple, to eat food. However, maybe your friend wanted seafood, or you had to find a gluten-free restaurant that could accommodate dietary needs.

As an applicant, you want to be very clear and concise about what the assignment is. Share where the task came from (boss, owner, co-worker asking for help) and what it was. Explain the scale of the project – how big was the team, what was the timeline, what were some of the significant challenges that you needed to overcome. You want to help the interview panel understand the importance of the story.

Actions

The whole reason companies use behavioral interviews is that a person’s past behavior is a good indicator of how they will behave in a similar situation in the future. The actions in the STAR format are where you get to show the hiring manager that you are capable of handling workplace situations well.

Actions should be the bulk of your story. As a hiring manager, I want to hear about what YOU did. One of the biggest errors we see in interviews is people use “we” instead of I. While this is okay when you’re explaining to your friend about your dinner, “We ate crab cakes, pasta, and ice cream” it doesn’t play well during an interview. Instead, be very clear about your role and the process you took to solve the problem. Don’t get lost in the details and be specific about your role in each example. Hiring managers are looking to hear about your process and how you resolve the story.

Results

Results are where you get to shine. So many times people forget to discuss their results, and it hurts them in an interview. As a hiring manager, I try to ask probing questions in case the job applicant forgot, but usually, I won’t keep asking if they continue to leave out the results on more than one example.

The biggest interview tip on this topic is to avoid using a story that is currently in process. It’s incredibly hard to demonstrate results on a project that hasn’t finished, and hiring managers care about the results. They want to know if your actions were effective or not, and if not what you learned and how you would do it differently.

The next big thing to try to do is to quantify your results. A story is much stronger when you can prove it through numbers. Did sales go up by a certain percentage? Were you involved in increasing customer satisfaction? Did you reduce the number of hours it takes to perform the task? Sometimes it can be hard to put numbers to a story, especially if it’s been awhile since you were in the situation. Try your best to recall but don’t make the numbers up. Honesty is important, and hiring managers might use their networks to fact check your examples.

“What do you do if the outcome wasn’t good?” Proceed with caution. One example with a negative result isn’t necessarily going to hurt you in an interview. I only recommend using this type of story in a couple of situations.

You can explain that the adverse outcome was to no fault of your own
The question is about a time you failed/made a mistake etc
As a last resort, and you can’t come up with another example

In all of these situations, you need to be able to explain what you learned from the example and how you would do things differently.