Preparing to Get Ahead: Alicia Miner Practical Approaches to Advancing Your Career

Preparing to Get Ahead:
Practical Approaches to Advancing Your Career
Alicia Miner
VP Strategic Operations & Implementation
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Objectives
Career Exploration
Career Readiness
Career Launch
5.
5 Steps of Career
Planning
Job search &
interview prep
4. Prepare your resume &
cover letter
3. Build your personal brand
& network
2. Develop skills &
competencies
1. Explore
interests
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Career
Exploration
Career Exploration: Know Yourself and Your Career Values
What are my long term career goals?
Long term
career goals
What is the level of flexibility in
hours, location, telecommuting,
etc.
Level of
flexibility and/or
location
Leadership or
individual
contributor
Do I want to lead other people or
work as an individual contributor?
What is the level of
complexity and critical
thinking required?
Your individual
strengths and
opportunities
Level of
complexity
Do my natural strengths align
with the skills needed?
Do I enjoy interacting with
customers, subordinates, executive
leaders?
Levels of
interaction:
customers,
subordinates,
superiors
Day to day
responsibilities
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Are the day to day responsibilities of this job
something I find challenging and rewarding?
Career Exploration: Know Your Interests
Self-assessment: Career Interest Profiler
Assessing your career interests is an important factor in determining your career
path.
Phoenix Career Services offers a tool to help identify careers based on your
interests through the Career Interest Profiler.
https://www.phoenix.edu/career-services/explorer.html#4
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Career Exploration: Know the Market
Job Market Research Tool
Example
www.phoenix.edu/career-services/explorer/explorenow.html
Market data within 12 months priorcurrent
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Salary range
Education requirements
Experience requirements
Top employer
Related degrees (general and UOPX)
Example
Job Market
Research Tool
www.phoenix.edu/career-services/explorer/explorenow.html
Additional Job Details to
Understand…
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The skills required
What experience is desired
Where people went before and
after selected career
Similar education/skill
requirement jobs
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Career
Readiness:
Sharpening
Your Skills
Career Planning:
Developing Your Skills for Career of Choice
Start with a goal; have a reason to develop
Identify what you want to learn
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Identify the three most important competencies (skills, knowledge,
attributes) that you want to work on in order to achieve your goal.
Identify “development actions” and dates to address the
needs
• Take on a challenging assignment within your current job
• Learn from someone else (your manager, a coach, a subject matter
expert, etc)
• Get educated on the topic: take a course, read up on the topic
Discuss your plan with your manager, teacher, or someone
in your support network
Implement the plan, follow-up often, and reflect on what
you’ve learned
Keep your plan in front of you at all times. Check off
those items you complete, you’ll feel a sense of
accomplishment!
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Personal
Brand and
Networking
Your Personal Brand in a Digital World
You never get a second chance to make a first impression!
Tips:
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Google search your name to make sure you are aware of your perception on the Internet.
Remove anything that may negatively effect your job search process.
Update your voicemail greeting
Clean up your social media profile
o
o
Clean it up…or make it private
Remove anything you wouldn’t want a current or potential employer to see!
Social Media and Recruiting:
 80% of US companies use social media for recruiting
Jobvite Survey of Recruiters:
 42 % of job recruiters said they have reconsidered a job applicant, in both positive and
negative ways based on social media findings
 94% of recruiters indicate the social media avenues have become an essential tool
 47% reacted negatively when they found pictures of alcohol consumption
 51% reacted negatively when they found references to guns
 61% reacted poorly to spelling and grammatical errors
 65% reacted poorly to profanity
 71% reacted poorly to posts or tweets of sexual nature
 83% reacted poorly to references to doing illegal drugs
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Networking:
The Professional Network
95% of companies that use social media use LinkedIn
248 million individual users
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LinkedIn
o Build a professional profile that shows your value, especially to the field you are pursuing
o
Join relevant groups to view and participate in discussions
o
Search for jobs on the ASIS International LinkedIn group
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See how you are connected to people at companies you’d like to work at, even if they don't
have a job posted on LinkedIn. (Many companies are hiring but don't have jobs posted on the
site.)
Let the system work for you!
•Consider joining professional associations and groups and local ASIS chapters
•Academic organizations or clubs
•Use informational interviews to learn about organizations and expand your contacts within an industry
Career
Preparation:
Resume
Writing
Career Preparation: Resume Tips (DO)
RESUME DOs
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Keep to 1-2 pages
Consistent font style, size, and spacing
Keep the most important information in top half of 1st page
List your education, awards and honors
List military and professional experience
Simplify industry jargon
Cater verbiage and resume to specific targeted job and company
Show your work history “story” in a coherent form
Each achievement bullet should include what you achieved and the impact to
the organization
Duties and Responsibilities From Job Description
Accomplishment Statements on Your Resume
Responsible for a sales team in Northeast region.
Managed a team of three account executives and two inside sales
representatives. Produced $6M in new revenue in less than 12
months.
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Career Preparation: Resume Tips (DON’T)
Avoid…
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Lack of focus/too generic
Typos and misused words or grammar
Unnecessary objective statement
Unrelated information and details
Industry or job specific acronyms and jargon
Paragraph descriptions/ too lengthy
Formatting issues in transfer of documents
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Send your resume in a PDF format to ensure formatting doesn’t change on different computers.
• Unprofessional Contact Information (email addresses, web URL’s, etc)
• Lack of action verbs and actual accomplishments
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Call out accomplishments not job duties
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Interview
Success
Interview Success: Interview Tips
Preparing for your
interview
• Research the company, their
competitors, and the industry
• Dress appropriately and
professionally
• Always arrive early
• Anticipate common questions
• Know your strengths and
weaknesses
During the Interview
• Take your time
• Ask intelligent questions
• Smile and make eye contact
• Speak to what YOU have done
• Provide examples within your
answers
• Do a mock interview
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Interview Success: Behavioral-Based Interviewing
 The best indicator of future performance and behaviors is past
performance and behaviors
 Allows interviewer to focus on candidates that can DO the job; not
GET the job.
 Helps identify a candidate’s previous behaviors or actions taken
in a situation and the outcome.
 Focuses on the candidate’s past experiences as they relate to the
competencies of the desired position
Research-based behavioral interviews, achieve an accuracy of
over 80%, a four-time improvement, over traditional Interviews.19
Interview Success: Behavioral-Based Interviewing
As a candidate, it is important to understand the best way to answer
BBI questions
P-state the problem
A-explain the action you took
R-describe the result of your action
Sample Question:
 Tell me about a time you dealt with a difficult customer?
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What was the situation or problem at hand? (Where did I work, what was my
position, who was the customer?)
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What behaviors or actions did I take? (What did I say to the customer, what did
the customer say, was anyone else involved, did I do anything to take action)?
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What was the outcome?(What happened with the customer, was it resolved,
what did you do well, what could you have done differently?)
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Interview Success: After the Interview
 Make notes about the questions asked and answers you provided.
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Evaluate the possible questions behind the questions asked and
what they may mean about what’s important to the interviewer.
 Follow through with any information or tasks you promised to
provide during the interview.
 Send a “Thank You” note to everyone in the interview individually
within 24 hours.
 Accept rejection gracefully
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Final thoughts
“The way to get ahead is to start
now. If you start now, you will
know a lot next year that you
don’t know now and that you
would not have known next year
if you had waited.”
~ William Feather
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Questions?
Contact Me:
[email protected]
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