Advancing Your Career

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Advancing Your Career

• Leslie Lum
• Bellevue Community College

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Achieving your goals

• What is your career goal?
• Have goals because if you dont, youll never
  achieve them. Write them down.
• Let everybody know what your goals are.
• Tell your family, friends, and classmates. Tell
  people your goals. Theyll help.
• Make sure that you have all the pieces in place
  to achieve your goals.
• Education, certification, experience, etc.

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Skills Employers Look For

• Management Control, cost-effective, financing,
  forecasting, goal achievement, goal setting,
  initiative, judgment, negotiating, organizing,
  planning, policy making
• Problem solving analytical, integrate/consolidate
  , perceptive, problem solving, trouble shooting
• Attitude Assertive, confident, conscientious,
  decisive, ethical, energetic, enthusiastic,
  flexible, leadership, motivated, optimistic,
  persistent, reliable, quick study, responsible
• Communication Articulate, listening,
  motivational, persuasive, presentation skills,
  public speaking skills, training skills, writing
  skills, ability to communicate to diverse groups
  and teams
• Creativity Creative, inventive, resourceful

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Thirty Second Commercial

• Also called the elevator speech. You have 30
  seconds to tell a complete stranger about
  yourself
• Give your name.
• Characterize your experience.
• In one or two sentences, describe the unique
  focus of your experience. How are you different
  from other people?
• Give your goal.

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30-second commercial

• Hello, I am Leslie Lum. I have managed all
  aspects of a small business and overseen the full
  range of business development from start-up to
  mature organization. My strengths are getting
  diverse teams to perform at extraordinary levels
  and improving business processes. Im looking for
  a position managing a small business.

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30-second commercial

• Pair off
• Write your 30-second commercial
• Read it to your partner and get feedback
• Revise it
• Read it to the class

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Accomplishments

• Accomplishments are the things youve done that
  produced benefits for the organizations that you
  worked for. They are things that you are proud
  of. You may have been rewarded for them. They
  demonstrate your achievements and your ability to
  make things happen.

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Why are Accomplishments important?

• Employers hire people who can solve their
  problems.
• They dont care about job titles.
• They care about what you can do for them.

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How to identify and write your accomplishments

• They are really tough to write. (We dont like to
  brag.)
• Write a job description for each position you
  held. Make a list of the things you did that were
  of benefit to the organization.
• What was the reason you did it? What was the
  problem that prompted your action that led to the
  result or benefit?

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Questions to generate accomplishments

• What actions did you take that produced benefits
  to your employer?
• Did you identify a problem and solve it? What
  were the benefits?
• Did you introduce a new system or procedure that
  made work more efficient?
• Did you save money or time?
• Did you increase productivity, reduce down time
  or improve morale?
• Did you effectively manage people?
• Did you initiate a sales or incentive program
  that worked?
• Did you author or develop reports, promotions or
  newsletters?
• Did you improve processes?
• Were you part of major decision-making?
• Did you reduce risk?
• Did you achieve outstanding sales?
• Did you receive any awards, bonuses, or
  promotions?

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Write forceful accomplishments
Action verb
Action
Comma
Transition verb
Result
Quantifier
,
Ending in ed
Who, What, When, Why
Ending in ing
saved customers
Benefit
Restructured staffing mix, standardized benefits
and developed performance appraisal system based
on profitability, increasing staff retention by
300.
To be most effective, an accomplishment should
take up two lines or about 22 to 25 words.
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Check List for Accomplishments

• Have I provided enough background to understand
  the nature of my accomplishment?
• Is it really an accomplishment, or is it a
  description of a responsibility?
• Does the accomplishment support me in my goal?
• Does it start with an action verb?
• Does it describe the result I obtained?

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Tips

• Use short, simple words.
• Include only relevant facts.
• One line is too short. More than three lines is
  too long.
• Shouldnt tell the whole story. Just give
  highlights.

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How to use accomplishments

• Have at least 10 accomplishments
• Pick and choose accomplishments depending on who
  you are giving your resume to

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Accomplishments?

• Red Hat, Inc. Project Manager (www.redhat.com)
  Sunnyvale, CA, USA
• February 2000 to August 2002
• ? Managed projects involving software development
  tools (GNUPro), embedded Linux and its tool
  customizations. My projects clients were major
  high tech companies including Sony, Motorola,
  Toshiba, Lucent, Panasonic, Vitesse
  Semiconductor, Ubicom and NEC. My largest
  project grossed 4 million in revenue and the
  team consisted of fifteen engineers.
• ? Attended negotiation meetings with customers,
  drafted contracts, managed customer relations and
  expectations.
• ? Communicated with both internal and external
  groups by voice, email, project web portals, and
  meetings in both Japanese and English.

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Your accomplishments

• Look at your resume and write five accomplishments

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In preparation for kick-off meeting

• Clean up your resume
• Have a copy for the business owner and your
  mentors