Posts by Topic: business pain RSS feed
Job-hunting? Look for business pain
By Liz Ryan
CEO & Founder, Human Workplace
My young friend Mikayla is a brilliant chickadee, and she's been that way as long as I've known her. Mikayla is my daughter's friend, and the two of them are sophomores in college now. Back when the girls were in eleventh grade, Mikayla pitched me on a summer babysitting assignment. "I can just imagine that it's hard for you once school gets out, with your second-grader underfoot," she wrote to me. "Do you want me to pick him up at the end of daycamp each day, take him for pizza and a dip in the rec center pool, and bring him back exhausted to have dinner and fall asleep?"
That was a summer babysitting offer I couldn't refuse. The reason I mention it in this column is because Mikayla put the whole thing together herself; I never mentioned to her that I really like to work until five or five-thirty, or that day camps tend to end at three or three-thirty. I never told her that my workdays were truncated because of the daycamp schedule.
She put herself in my shoes as a hiring manager, if that's the right term for a person in my situation. The truth is, I hadn't given three seconds of thought to the idea of summer babysitting before Mikayla wrote to me. If someone had asked me the direct question, "Looking for a summer babysitter?" I would have answered, "Thanks, but no," because summer babysitting was the last thing on my mind. Mikayla used a critical job-search technique (and consulting business-development technique, and sales technique) that I call Pain-Spotting(TM). She put herself in my shoes. She thought, "What would it be like to be a working mom with a little kid who needs attention after daycamp and has tons of energy, while that same mom has work to do and deadlines to meet?" She saw the pain first, then devised a solution. She presented the pain and her solution to me and created her own summer job. Read more…
Categories: Job Hunting, Work Advice
Forget the cover letter; write a pain letter, instead
As much as we feel sorry for job-seekers (and I do, in spades) I feel sorry for hiring managers and resume screeners, too. Can you imagine reading letters all day that begin with "Dear Hiring Manager, I saw your job ad and I was intrigued…?" We read about Motivated Self-Starters and Results-Oriented Professionals and Leaders of Cross-Functional Teams until we want to stick pins in our eyes. It's atrocious. A stack of resumes attached to cover letters a foot high might yield two micrograms of actual human spark, if we're lucky.
Let me be quick to acknowledge that it's not a job-seeker's fault the stack of cover letters and resumes (See Resume, attached!) yields so little life or individuality. Job seekers have been trained to write a cover letter and a resume in Zombie Language, or what I call Boilerplate Corporatespeak. It's the language Darth Vader writes in, and every bureaucrat on the planet. It's the language job ads are written in, and the language policies are written in (you know the ones: "Effective April 15th, it will no longer be permissible to use the back entrance between the hours of eight and six…").
That's a horrifying way to communicate, and as bad as it is to read that stuff in corporate life (or to get a Zombie memo from your kid's school) it's even worse to read about a person described that way. Zombie Language is not the way to bring across a brilliant and vibrant job-seeker's heft and spark.
We don't have to use that kind of language to describe ourselves. We can put a human voice in our resumes, for one thing. And when it comes time to write a cover letter, we can ditch the tired cover letter format and write a Pain Letter, instead. Read more…
Categories: Work Advice
Got a 2014 Career Plan? Start Here!
Networking: what's all the buzz about?
Is "overqualified" code for "too old?"
Your assignment: Get good at pain-spotting
I love my work! It's the politics that wear me down
Business Guest Blogger
Follow @humanworkplace
Liz Ryan is a former Fortune 500 HR vp and the CEO of Human Workplace, an online community and consulting firm focused on bringing mojo into the workplace. She teaches career...
SchoolingTheSchools on Five ways to trash your credibility on LinkedIn
Barry Shurtz on Put a Human Voice in Your Resume (with Examples!)
ieatstars on Got a 2014 Career Plan? Start Here!
Maria del Mar on Got a 2014 Career Plan? Start Here!
Kenneth Moore on Got a 2014 Career Plan? Start Here!
General Workplace
Work Advice
About The Human Workplace
Liz Ryan is a former Fortune 500 HR executive and the CEO of Human Workplace, an online community and consulting firm focused on reinventing work and career education. She is working with the Denver Post to bring the best expert advice on work place issues and tips to improve your career. Note: Liz Ryan was selected for her expertise, but her opinions are solely her own. We are not endorsing or advocating her business.
The Human Workplace RSS feed