Feinberg: Growth Self-Assessment Checklist

 

By answering the questions below you can get some idea of your growth during the past year—in your working life and in your personal life. Whenever the answer is yes, check the appropriate box.  In judging your own responses, remember the first principle of maturity: Accept yourself! The number of checks you make is not significant. What does count is the quality of progress you have made in areas that you yourself select as important to your life.  Check off the list. Put it aside. Then, in six months, check it again.

Growth Self-Assessment Questions (1 Year Span of Interest)	Work	Personal Life
Did you take training or instruction to further your progress?
Did you step up your reading?
Did you increase your participation within group activities?
Did you improve your ability to handle routine and repetitive activities?
Did you at any time review what you are doing, asking which activities should continue, which should be dropped?
Did you find it easier to deal with people?
Did you have fewer emotional flare-ups?
Did you get greater enjoyment out of periods of R&R?
Devote more time to thinking about why others behave as they do?
Were you more likely to concentrate on one activity until it was complete?
Did you devote more time to helping others solve their problems?
Did you get greater satisfaction out of helping others?
Did you improve any of your skills?
Did you develop any new talents?
Any new conclusions about yourself, your personality, or your habits?
Did you seek more varied activities?
Did you develop new friendships?
Did you find yourself making more independent decisions?
Was it easier to live with problems that had no immediate solutions?
Did you change some of your opinions and feelings about things?
Did you show a willingness to open yourself to new experiences?
Did you gain a clearer conviction and/or a better understanding of the basic truths (religion, philosophy) in which you believe?

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How To Avoid Becoming A Hiring Mistake

By Elena Bajic

Hiring mistakes can be costly in terms of employee morale, project delays, severance costs and additional hiring costs.

While the cost of employee turnover varies widely by industry and job type, studies by the American Management Association and others report a range between 25% and 250% of annual salary per separating employee, with higher level, more skilled management employees pushing the upper edges of that range.

I recently had to part ways with a senior member of my team after only a month on the job.  He was the wrong fit for many reasons, but mostly because I’d rushed to fill the position.  I was so eager to fill the position I ignored my reservations and made the offer.  As a manager you will make hiring mistakes when filling a position becomes more important than the person you hire. I certainly did.

What puzzled me most was that this senior executive didn’t execute even the most basic onboarding success strategies in the four weeks he spent with us.  If he’d done these things, he might still have his job.

What should you do to successfully onboard at a company at a senior level?

Here are some recommendations:

1. Check your ego at the door and keep the ‘been there–done it before” attitude under wraps.  You may have truly been there and done it, but that doesn’t mean the new work environment won’t have its own ‘flavor of the day’ that will require you to dream up unique solutions.
2. In your early days on the job, dig into the nits and grits of the business you’re running.  Roll up your sleeves.  Get your hands dirty.  Build your own understanding of your department, function, and areas from the bottom up.
3. Spend one on one time with key team members – top to bottom and listen to what they have to say.  Assume everyone you meet is a potential teacher.  Be humble.
4. Ask questions.  Lots of questions. Big strategic questions.  Small procedural ones.  Be curious.
5. Venture out beyond the confines of your office or the executive floor.  If you team is remote, visit them.  Learn people’s names, their faces, a little bit about them – beyond just your administrative assistant and your direct reports.  Know who’s who and who’s doing what.  Observe.
6. If your boss gives you advice/suggestions, take them seriously. Implement them as best you can if they make sense.  They are windows into your boss’s thinking and expectations of you. If they don’t make sense, then circle back and have that conversation with your new boss.  The first few months are a get to know period – so expect a lot of back and forth.
7. Take notes on your findings, your conclusions and possible solutions.  You should be building your plans for your areas from the moment you step in the door, defining your value add in this new role along the way.
8. Be honest – with yourself, your people, your boss.  Make it one of the hallmarks of your operating style.

If you follow these steps, you can improve your chances of holding onto your senior position long enough to add value and become a hiring success story – a “keeper.”

How To Land A Job When You’re Over 55

By Elena Bajic

A common theme I hear from candidates in their mid fifties and older, is that being out of work when you are over 55 is the proverbial “kiss of death” to a career.

I hear from these candidates that they feel overlooked and passed over, that their resumes go into the dreaded black hole and they don’t get calls — let alone interviews — solely because of the their age and nothing more.

And I say, “Nonsense!”  I am a firm believer in the old adage, “where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

Beyond some of the advice you’ve probably already heard about having an up-to-date resume and making sure your skills and credentials are current, here are 5 tips you might not have heard before:

1. Project energy and optimism. A can-do, energetic attitude is the single most important thing you can do to improve you odds of landing a job. A light walk (or having a bounce in your walk), a sparkle in the eye, and no sighing, will help. Always focus on the opportunities, and find the silver lining in every situation. When you talk use positive words, and make sure to use uplifting words to describe yourself and even your job search.
2. Create an online presence.  Be an active LinkedIn user.  Check out XING.  Tweet every once and awhile.  Make sure your online profiles are up to date.  If you can, create a blog and actively post on your blog.  Build a following.  These are easy things you can do to build a personal brand presence that is searchable by potential employers, and that also indicates you are in touch with current technologies.
3. Check your ego at the door.  Be able to demonstrate your potential for value add – humbly.   If you present yourself as “been there and done it” — it doesn’t sell.  If you belabor the “history” lessons, you won’t get the call back.  You have to present yourself as knowledgeable AND willing to learn and embrace the new.  Accept that your teachers AND managers at the company may be a decade or two or three younger than you. And, most importantly, project the willingness to learn and the enthusiasm to climb learning curves – whatever they will be.
4. Be current on current events.  Know what is going on in your industry, in the world.  Who are the disruptors?  Who are the movers and shakers?  Who are the thought leaders?  How do global trends and events impact your industry?
5. Be flexible.  This is the hard one to swallow.   You may need to lower your compensation expectations and/or be prepared to work on a contract basis until you prove yourself. Titles will become less important in the whole scheme of things – when you have to choose between paying the mortgage and having a job.  You just cannot afford to be overpriced and overqualified.

Your job search may take a little longer, but it is not impossible.  You just need to be resolved, resourceful, and optimistic, and things will happen.

About the Author

Elena Bajic is the founder and CEO of Ivy Exec, a selective online career network for top performers.