Getting the Recognition You Deserve

Getting the Recognition You Deserve

Get what you deserve

Feeling like you’re still missing out on the recognition you merit at work? Follow these seven tips to get the appreciation you deserve from your bosses and co-workers.

Publicly congratulate your co-workers for their accomplishments

Be sure to point out any accomplishments that might be a little off the manager’s radar, Ventrice suggests. By complimenting others, hopefully one or more of these people will mention your contributions, too. Even if they don’t, Ventrice says, praise them anyway – it will make it more palatable when you praise yourself.

“If it isn’t always about you, people will be more willing to see self-recognition in a positive light.”

Tell your boss what you’ve accomplished
Be brief, to the point and do it privately, Ventrice says. Remember to share the credit.

“Most of the time, you didn’t accomplish what you did in isolation,” Ventrice says. “Others helped, even if it was by taking up the slack while you got the project done.”

Ask for the tough assignments
They will give you visibility while letting you grow, Ventrice says.

“If you’re invisible, you aren’t in the running for promotions, raises or new opportunities.”

Ask for feedback
Don’t get defensive when it isn’t all positive, Ventrice says. “Negative feedback can be recognition. If feedback is offered with good intentions and framed as a development tool, most employees appreciate learning the hard lessons,” Ventrice writes in her book. “Thank him or her regardless.”

Describe what you learned from an experience
This turns the conversation into a development conversation rather than an opportunity to brag about you.


Have a conversation that describes the recognition that you would most like to earn This way, you aren’t whining about the past, but looking toward the future.

Compliment your boss

“Middle managers are the most under-recognized group out there. They are operating at a recognition deficit. Give them a little praise, show them a little appreciation, and they may recognize you and everyone else a little more frequently.”

Tips to Make You a Better Manager

Tips to Make You a Better Manager

Unless you are brand new to the business world, chances are you have encountered someone in a management position who should not have been there. Unfortunately, individuals who are the best performers are often promoted to leadership positions without much formal management training. But being good at the job does not always translate into being a good manager. It takes a great deal of skill and knowledge to be able to motivate, evaluate and manage a team. A manager must have a firm grasp of the business, but also must be able to communicate well with others, a skill that does not always come naturally.

There are some basic rules of being an effective manager, says Rich Moore, a senior organization development specialist at AAIM Management Association, an organization that provides training, networking and education to St. Louis-area businesses. He says that being an effective manager is all about people. "Good managers get their work done through, with and by developing their people." Managers who are most effective "know their people's talents, and take the time to get to know their people."

If you are taking on a management role, or want to do so in the future, take a proactive approach to learning the management ropes. Here are six ways to get started.

1. Examine your own knowledge. Sometimes, knowing what you don't know is the best place to start. Examine what you do and do not know about management. Think back to experiences you have had and managers you worked for. What worked in your past professional relationships, and what needed to be changed? You will probably find that you can pick out some of the good and bad traits of managers in your past and use this knowledge to your benefit.

2. Find a mentor. Another important early step to take is finding a mentor who is in a leadership position in your workplace. Moore cautions that you need to make sure you find someone who is not just doing the job, but doing it well. Make sure you are able to learn from someone who can teach you good habits.

3. Go back to school. Many organizations offer courses in management development. In addition to his organization, Moore says that associations and businesses like the American Management Association, Padgett-Thompson and SkillPath offer a variety of resources. He suggests asking your company to send you to a seminar. "These seminars are great places for a new manager," he says, adding that they cover topics such as how your role changes when you become a manager, how to delegate, and how to get your people on board.

4. Hit the books. Another way to take your management development into your own hands is by reading books on the subject. Moore says that four of the "must read" management books are First Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, Good to Great by Jim Collins, It's Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy by D. Michael Abrashoff, and One Minute Manager by Kenneth Blanchard.

5. Learn to listen and understand others. The secret to being successful in any management position is knowing how to relate to, communicate with and honestly evaluate your people. Moore says that this part of management is the most challenging for professionals who find that they have gone from being friends with their coworkers to being in a position of authority. When it comes to establishing a relationship with a new team, it is important to be up front and honest, he says. In addition, take a real assessment of how your employees are performing, and communicate with them about their quality of work. This means not just accepting that the work is getting done, but requiring that it gets done right.

6. Put your people first. The bottom line about being a good manager is this: If your employees don't perform well, you don't perform well. Every good manager must learn how to train, support and motivate his or her employees. If you don't take the time to support your staff and ensure their needs are being met, all of your work will be useless. After all, says Moore, "If you don't develop your people, you have nothing."

Resume Strategies

Seven Executive Resume Strategies

A resume isn't designed to get you a job. A resume can't make you qualified for positions outside your area of expertise. A resume won't, all by itself, open up doors or knock down obstacles in your path.

But there is a lot that a good resume can do... and those job seekers with them have an edge in the job search.

To be competitive, your resume needs to communicate more than just your work history, job duties, and even key results of your efforts. At the executive level, hiring authorities want to know more than just "what" you did; they want to know "how" and "why" so they can better assess your fit within the organization and its goals.

Compared to entry-level or mid-level resumes, executive resume tend to be longer (two or even three pages is the norm), a bit more detailed, and emphasize strategic contributions. Everything in the resume should support a specific career target, and the entire document should present a sharp, focused, cohesive picture of who you are and why you're valuable.Consider these strategies for a powerful executive presentation of your capabilities.

1. Start with a summary rather than an objective. Objective statements on résumés are passé. Instead, begin with an overview of your strongest selling points -- those things about you that will make a reader sit up and take notice. Make sure this summary clearly indicates the type and level of position you're interested in, and be certain to include highlights of your career contributions.

2. Show your chronological work history. If you're sending resume to recruiters and responding to print or online ads, you'll do yourself a huge disservice if your résumé shows a confusing career history. Nearly all executives are best served by a traditional reverse-chronological format introduced by a powerful summary. Even if you're trying to downplay some less-than-stellar recent experience in your work history, be certain to show job titles, employers and dates of employment. Otherwise, you risk being quickly eliminated in a flash.

3. Don't write "job descriptions." Your resume should be more about what you did than the duties of the job itself. Briefly describe your scope of responsibility, and then highlight your achievements and contributions -- things you did that improved revenue, profitability, productivity, customer satisfaction or contributed to other business objectives. As an executive, you should be more focused on strategic contributions than day-to-day administrative duties: Be sure you're communicating the "big picture" in your resume. Keep in mind that résumé readers are pretty intelligent. They can make assumptions based on job titles and general descriptions; they don't need to have every task spelled out for them.

4. Be specific. Avoid vague qualifiers such as "substantially" and "significantly." Instead, use hard numbers to lend credibility to your accomplishment statements.

5. Describe context and challenge. Your accomplishments will have even more impact if you present them in context or in relation to a specific challenge. Instead of writing "increased revenue 23 percent," it might be even more meaningful to write "reversed a five-year declining-revenue trend by focusing business development efforts on niche markets; grew revenues 23 percent and achieved profitability for the first time since 2002."

6. Be concise. Even though a two- or three-page resume is acceptable for an executive job search, it's still important to use a tight writing style so that you can communicate important information without losing your reader in a sea of text. Edit ruthlessly to remove information that isn't essential to your message.

7. Use format to increase impact. Make it easy for readers to skim through your resume to pick up important information. Use type enhancements, bullets and indentations to create an organizational hierarchy that makes your information easy to absorb. Above all else, make sure you don't make spelling, punctuation or grammatical errors.

Finall your resume is important. If it's powerful and focused, it can help advance your career. If it's vague and unconvincing, it can leave you languishing in a protracted job search. Time, energy, thought and care spent on resume development is an excellent investment in yourself and your career.

BEST REGARDS,

Jeetu Ramchandani

Seven Ways to Reduce Your Stress at Work

Imagine working only four hours a day, nine months a year and earning all the money you need to do exactly what you want with all your free time. Does that sound like your life?

That's the life a futurist of the early 20th century predicted the average worker would be living by the 21st century.

Research found that by the 1990s people were working the equivalent of one month a year more than they did at the end of World War II.

It seems that whenever a significant new "labor saving" product or service is developed we use it so much our workload actually increases. After all, wasn't our work supposed to be made easier by voice mail, faxes, cell phones and e-mail?

Instead, many of us find we are constantly on-call, frequently interrupted and overwhelmed with communications that people expect to receive immediate responses to. That's on top of the already heavy workload existing in most organizations. For some workers, the best way to deal with the overload is to take an extended stress leave.

If switching from double lattes to decaf isn't enough to reduce your stress at work, here are seven ways you can get your workload under control:

1. Work on things that are important. This may sound obvious, but many of us are tempted to work on easy tasks first so we can have a sense of accomplishment. Time spent on those "easy" tasks can quickly add up, creating even more stress when there does not appear to be enough time left for the important work.

2. Keep an "activity log." This will help you figure out what your time is being spent on. Every time you start and end a new activity, including taking a break, make note of the time. Most workers who charge by the hour have learned to do this automatically. If you are not used to tracking your time it may be a bit of an adjustment, but within a few days you should be able to notice any time-wasters you might not have been aware of.

3. Set daily goals. When scheduling your time, assume that something unexpected will come up and build in a cushion of time to deal with it. To minimize the stress of meeting self-imposed deadlines, avoid making promises about when tasks will be completed. If you must commit to a date, be conservative. If you consistently underpromise and overdeliver you could earn a great reputation while reducing your stress.

4. Be gentle with yourself. Aim to meet or even exceed expectations, but don't try to achieve perfection. Wherever possible, delegate routine tasks, even if you think you can do them better than someone else.

5. Avoid interruptions. Unless you are expected to be on call, select a time of day when you will return phone calls and e-mails. During other times, let your voice mail take messages for you. You can also create an auto reply for your e-mail to let people know their message has been received. If your e-mail says you will respond within 24 hours if a reply is required, it may deter someone from repeatedly trying to contact you in the meantime.

6. Don't let other people's problems become yours. As Richard Carlson, author of Don't Sweat the Small Stuff at Work, says "If someone throws you the ball you don't have to catch it." When someone comes to you with a problem that isn't yours, try limiting your contribution to advice instead of taking on the task yourself.

7. When you are feeling overwhelmed, say so. Companies want to keep good employees, so most bosses will want to know when you are having difficulty. However, instead of saying "I can't do it," offer some possible solutions. For example, if you won't be able to get a major report completed by a particular deadline, you might tell the boss you can either: (1) complete a condensed version by the deadline, (2) complete the entire report by a later date, or (3) meet the deadline if you get some help from co-workers or temporary staff.

These techniques probably won't help you enjoy the life of leisure envisioned by those early futurists. But they can make your work more manageable, and might even reduce your stress enough to let you go back to drinking double lattes.

Love Light Life................

Jeetu Ramchandani

Answers to the Seven Toughest Interview Questions

Answers to the Seven Toughest Interview Questions...............

There you sit, waiting to be ushered into your interview. Your suit is pressed, your shoes are shined and your resume is top notch. But, as the minutes tick past, you feel a mounting sense of doom as you anticipate the questions that will cause a deafening silence during the interview.Want to avoid an interview disaster?

Check out these tough interview questions and their suggested responses:

Q: "What are your weaknesses?
""Don't take this literally and go into a detailed explanation of your weaknesses,"
Take a potential weakness and putting a positive spin on it.
A: "I am very detail-oriented and in some industries that may not be a good fit. But for this accounting position, I think this trait truly will help me excel.

"Q: "How would you solve this problem?"
Challenger says that these kinds of hypothetical questions can be risky. First of all, they may not like your answer; if they do like it, there's a chance they will steal it. That's what happened to Dipika fernandes when she interviewed for an activity director's position at a long-term care facility. When asked about marketing ideas, Dipika laid out her entire plan. Well, she didn't get the job, but later recognized some of her strategies being used by the facility.

A: "I think you can increase product awareness by enacting some marketing strategies that could employ advertising, direct mail or media placements.

"Q: "Why did you leave your last job?"
Again, Challenger suggests presenting everything in a positive light. An interview is not the time to dish the dirt on your previous employer.

A: "The company just wasn't a good fit for my innovative personality. But what I learned is that organizations have distinct personalities just like people do. Now I know to concentrate my job search on companies who value independent thinking and alternative methods."Q: "Why do you want to work here?
"Questions like these require you to do your homework before the interview.

A: "I want to be a part of a global company that last year alone invested $1.4 million in research and development of eco-friendly industrial processes.

"Q: "Tell me about yourself."

A: "This is a chance for you to shine -- but not to tell your life history. Begin by listing your traits and accomplishments you feel are relevant for the position. Don't delve into personal information unless it relates to the position you're vying for.

A: "I am very creative and resourceful. I have been a sales manager for the past five years and used my creativity to devise unique incentives to keep the sales representatives motivated. Because of this my sales team earned numerous company awards.

"Q: "Tell me about the worst boss you ever had.

"Take the high road and don't give into the temptation to vent any past frustrations.

A: "While none of my past bosses were awful, there are some who taught me more than others did.

"Q: "What are your goals?

"This is best answered by reiterating your objective statement on your resume. Keep your aspirations to be a vice president of marketing, own your own company or retire at 40 to yourself.

A: "I want to secure a civil engineering position with a national firm that concentrates on retail development. Ideally, I would like to work for a young company, such as this one, so I can get in on the ground floor and take advantage of all the opportunities a growing firm has to offer."

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