The Truth about Reliability in Resume Writing

‘When you are honest and ethical and live with integrity, your rewards are guaranteed’.
- Zig Zigler.

In my over two decades as a human relations professional, I have had the privilege of coming across quite a number of so called ‘stars’ ruining their careers and consequently their lives as a result of being economical with the truth when crafting their resumes.

The other day, one of my mentees called me up to seek my opinion over an issue that had been boggling his mind. You see, he had been recommended for a top management role in a multinational company. He was then asked to submit a copy of his most recent resume. Being the one that helped him craft the resume he then wanted to seek my opinion on some issues in the resume which he claimed did not quite add up. He therefore wanted to seek my opinion on whether to re-craft the resume and straighten up the facts bearing in mind that he had at one time had his hands burnt and forced to resign over a similar matter or leave it the way it is.

Without mincing words, my straight answer was that he should re-craft his resume and present the facts the way they are. I then went on to relate the story of a certain John (not real name) a certain medical doctor who got hired as the resident doctor in the clinic of a textile company. During recruitment, the resume was properly polished and so professionally written that he was the first to be shortlisted for interview. Fortunately, he was able to match his claims with his performance during the interview and he was eventually employed. However, unknown to the employers, he was not a qualified medical doctor as claimed in the resume. He was a fake. It took the employment of a new Human Resource Manager to discover the truth. The new HRM while going through his file one day discovered some anomalies in his resume. He found out that some things did not match and therefore invited him for a chat to clear things up. It was then found out that he never qualified as a medical doctor. He lost his job and a battered image in tow. All these could have been avoided if he had presented a reliable resume, but he did not. He wanted to cut corners.

Whether you want it or not, prospective employers often do background checks after employment to determine the veracity of the claims of candidates in their resumes and during interviews. You see, your CV is a mirror of your personality to a prospective employer. It shows the hirer your real personality. Presenting a reliable resume to a prospective employer therefore presents the picture of a reliable prospective employee. The hirer will visualize a candidate that can be relied upon and can add real value to their organization if given the opportunity to serve and that says a lot about the individual. Further, presenting a reliable CV to a recruiter will present the picture of a candidate with integrity. It will present the picture of an honest candidate, dependable and a person of impeccable character.

If this is so, why then do most job seekers pack lies in their resumes? The answer is to achieve the objective of being shortlisted for an interview of course. By claiming to possess skills, attributes and achievements they do not actually possess in their CVs, they stand better chance of being shortlisted. However, the lie will not endure forever. The truth will come out anyway. If not discovered during scrutiny by recruiters, it would during actual interview. You see some things do not match so we experience recruiters often look for such inaccuracies in resumes. Sometimes when those lying in their CVs get employed, they usually do not match their claims with their performance. Also, the truth might be found out when employers contact the places of work or schools attended to verify their claims. So their untruths are eventually found out. Research has shown that candidates often lie about employment dates, job titles, gaps between employments and qualifications. In point of fact 86% of interviewers think that resumes and application forms are not wholly truthful.

Why Present a Reliable Resume?

1. A CV with a lie is an embarrassment or a dismissal waiting to happen in the future: 86% of recruiters have the belief that job seekers often lie in their CVs and do not present the facts as they truly are. Therefore when scrutinizing resumes, they always take the pain to separate the fake resumes from the reliable ones. An experienced recruiter cannot be fooled. It is easy to fool someone without experience but not so with an experienced HR practitioner who knows his onion in recruitment. We recruiters often look for that part of the CV that does not match. We most times look for inaccuracies, inconsistencies, distortions and omissions. Sometimes this is done during interview session if the candidate is successful in passing through the short listing. Therefore whatever doubts we might have we always try to clear up during the interview session. Chances are that if you are able to scale the short listing with a resume filled with half truths or untruths, you will have to clear these up during the interview session.
2. Truth will eventually be known: Lying in your CV is a very daft thing to do because the truth will eventually come out if not during interview sessions it could be after references might have been sent out to confirm the veracity of the claims in the CV. It is therefore sensible to present facts as they truly should be. After all the worst that could happen is not to be considered for short listing in one placement and that does not mean you will not be considered again. Research has shown that about 85% of employers seek references from at least a previous employer. Therefore if you have made any false claim in your CV about your achievements in your past employment, chances are that the lie might be found out.
3. Integrity and reputation are more important than qualification: Lying in your resume about qualification is a risky strategy therefore it is better to avoid the temptation. It is better to be proud of who you are and what you have. Positive emphasis and strong presentation about self is good but falsehoods are not.

From the foregoing therefore it is not good to present inaccuracies or distortions in your CV. Rather than cover your CV with deceits it is better to show recruiters what you have learned from your mistakes. That way you will gain the respect of your prospective employer as you will come out as one who can learn from mistakes and develop from it. These are the kind of candidates that can add value to organizations and not the deceitful ones. Reliability adds value to your personality and further enhances your chances of employability. This is because the recruiter scrutinizing your CV will see you as one capable of adding value to his organization. If you therefore want to have an edge over most other applicants, tell the truth. This is because integrity is considered a vital factor among all good quality employers.

Thank you for sharing your time with me.

How to Cure Your Goal Setting DIS-EASE

In 1963 at Yale University in the United States, only 3% of the musical students were said to have set goals and plan on how to accomplish them. 97% of the students did not. By the year 1973 (10 years later), those 3% have accomplished 97% of their set goals.
Why did the 97% that refused to set goals do so? You see in life we have an incredible amount of choices. Therefore we may decide to set goals or not.

Zig Zigler gave some reasons which I believe may be relevant:
1. Fear factor: Fear is ‘False Evidence Appearing Real’. These students have been taught to belief negatively that goal setting could not work for them.
2. They have a processed image/identity: We act in accordance with the image /identity of ourselves that we have created in our head.
3. They have never really been sold on the absolute necessity of setting goals. They do not know that goal setting could work for them.
4. They do not know how to set and reach their goals.

Elaborating a bit more on this, a study was conducted with a group of 100 men who start evenly at the age of 25 years. Imagine what will happen to them all by the time they are 65 years. For a start they will all believed that they would be successful. However by the time they were 65 years, only one was rich. Four out of the 65 were financially free. 41 were still working while 54 out of the 100 were broke. So much for all of the 100 men thinking they could all be successful.

So what is success?

Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal. The only person who is therefore successful is that who is progressively realizing a worthy ideal. That is one who pursues something worthy and realizes it. Success is a woman who wants to be a good mother and makes a good job of it. Success is a man who wants to become a software developer like Bill Gates and makes a damn good job of it. Success is a thing you do deliberately and accomplish it.
If this is therefore so, have you ever wondered why some people dream of doing something but never achieve it? Or wondered why some people dream of doing things and successfully accomplish them over and over again. The reason is goals!!! People with goals know where they are going. They know their destination.

What are goals?

Goals are dreams we are willing to take action on and it must have a deadline. Goals have a beginning and an end. We all have dreams. We dream of buying cars or building houses for example. Supposing you decide to buy your car by December 2015 or pack into your house by May 2016, the dream has crossed the threshold of dreams and crossed into that of goals. This is because a deadline has been attached to the completion. Without a dream you cannot have a goal. Without a goal you cannot take positive action on your dream. Without taking positive action on your dream, nothing can bring you closer to your dream. We therefore set goals to accomplish our dreams.


BE --------- DO---------HAVE

Stretching the discussion on goals setting a bit further, after several decades of knowledge acquisition and experience I have come to the realization that the strategy I am about to discourse on is the most appropriate in curing goal setting disease yet. The three words above are at the heart of this strategy.

Goals are the ‘have’ part of this strategy. Your goals include such things like having a lean and slim body, having a great relationship, having a latest car, having a nice mansion or having a million dollars.

Once you figure out what you want to have (your goal), you begin listing what you have ‘to do’ to have it. This is basically the reason why people have ‘to do lists’. Consequently you set your goal and then start ‘doing’. For example many people believe that if you buy stocks, bonds, real estate or mutual funds (the way the rich do) this will make you rich and wealthy. However, doing what the professional investor do does not guarantee financial success. By doing this, you are only focusing on what investors have to do to get rich and that is erroneous. Rather, you should first focus on ‘being’ before doing. To become rich therefore, you have to first acquire the mentality, beliefs, attitude and mindset of the rich about money. Without this you will only be doing to have which won’t get you far. Rather than working hard to grow rich, you should think hard to grow rich. Rather than working hard to pay bills therefore you should work hard to acquire assets.

The same could be applied to the person who wants to have a perfect body. Most focus on doing what those having perfect bodied do, which is dieting and exercising. However this does not last long before they revert to what they have always been doing (indiscipline in their diets and fitness).

Think of setting standards and you will think of goal setting. Standards serve as our measuring rod for our progress in life. If you want any lasting change and progress in life you must set standards and you must set goals. With your progress comes your happiness. Human beings are happiest when making progress. Progress however is not automatic. You have got to work on it by setting standards, by setting goals.

To cure yourself of your goal setting disease, you must first acquire the mindset, attitude and beliefs of who you want to ‘be’ which will increase your chances of doing what you have to ‘do’ which will ultimately increase your chances of having what you want to ‘have’ (your goals).

If you want to survive and prosper in this rat race called life, you must emulate the habit of setting goals. Educate yourself about it. Make genuine efforts to practice it and seize the opportunities that come along with the discipline of goal setting to avoid the pain of regret.

Thank you for sharing your time with me.

To Thy Own Self Be True

Our mind is regarded as the one thing that can make or destroy us. Every great achievement therefore commence from the mind. Likewise every single thing that is bad commence from the mind as well. It is for this reason that procrastination (the harbinger of every delay in success in any human endeavor) commence from the mind as well. Take weight problem for example. It starts with the lies we tell to our minds and accepted by our bodies.
The article posted below is written by someone I greatly admire and respect. It deals with the issue of the lies we tell to ourselves which have prevented us from reaching our potentials and moving ahead in our lives.
I hope you enjoy reading it and learn from it as much as I did.

- Adekunle Agbaje
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The Biggest Lie You Tell Yourself
By Craig Ballantyne

Mike Whitfield weighed 300 pounds at just twenty-eight years old. Each night, after arriving home from his corporate job and while deciding what he was going to have for dinner, he'd eat a large bag of potato chips. After sitting on the couch and playing video games, he'd then make a large frozen pizza and finish it off with a big bowl of ice cream.

Mike's weight ballooned until one day he couldn't see his shoes. All of this happened because he kept lying to himself.

"I told myself, 'I can't stop eating chips at night. That's how I relieve stress after work.' And I also said 'I can't exercise because I'm too big and out of shape."

But then one day he just stopped thinking that way - and stopped lying to himself - and decided that he could do those things.

"I overcame these thoughts by going to the gym after work instead of hitting the couch and eating potato chips. I also signed up for a 10k run months before the event so that I had a deadline and pressure to train for it," he explained.

Within days he had stopped eating junk food before dinner. By the end of the month he'd lost sixteen pounds. In 6 months, he'd shed 75 pounds of fat. Two years later, he was down 105 pounds, and he's kept that off for over nine years. At the same time he's become a rising star in the fitness industry, earning the first ever Turbulence Trainer of the Year award at my annual fitness summit.

Mike's changed his life and it all started by telling himself the truth.

He went from telling himself the "I can't do that" lie to being able to handle the "Yes, I will do this" truth.

How many times have you told yourself a similar lie? Not just when it comes to junk food, but when it comes to changing any of your bad habits in life.

How many times have you said, "Oh, I can't go without checking my email until 9am"?

How many times have you said, "I just couldn't survive without my morning coffee and donut"?

How many nights have you said, "There's just no way I can get to bed before 10pm"?

The biggest lie we tell ourselves is "I can't". I can't do this or I can't do that.

Sometimes it's not your fault. Often other people initiate the lie, telling us that we're not good at something, and then we reinforce it year after year.

For example, in his excellent book, "What Got You Here Won't Get You There", Marshall Goldsmith recounts the story of how he was once told that he wasn't mechanically adept. He reinforced this belief on himself for decades without even trying to test whether this axiom was true or false. Finally, one day, he put himself through a course and found that he was in fact quite good at mechanics. But he had wasted years telling himself the lie that "He can't".

Like you and Marshall, I've told myself similar lies for years.

It used to be that "I can't get up before 6am" and "I couldn't exercise before lunch". Both of these small white lies were overcome by changing my thinking and putting the lies to the test. But we often don't challenge ourselves. It usually takes the intervention of others to get us to test the truth of our lies.

One day I made the mistake of trying to pass off a big lie while in the company of ETR Publisher Matt Smith. We were talking about the importance of live events in the Early to Rise world.

"I dunno Matt," I said, preparing to deliver my lie, "I can't do that. I just don't have the energy to answer questions all day."

Matt, the human polygraph, just looked at me with his patented incredulous look.

"Really?" he asked.

And then he raised the eyebrow and said again, "REALLY?"

That's all he needed to say. He called my bluff. The charade was over. I was caught in the lie. The truth was I just didn't want to do it. It wasn't that I physically couldn't do it. In fact, I hadn't even tried to do it.

And that's how it is for all of us.

It's not that we can't get up earlier, or go to bed earlier, or make time to work on our side business early in the morning or late at night. It's just that it's easier for us to say that we can't...and to use that as the excuse, rather than to put ourselves to the test outside of our comfort zones.

The worst part about telling ourselves the big "I can't" lie is that we aren't even trying.

It's one thing to quit. At least you started. But when we tell ourselves the "I can't" lie, we do so without even having had the courage to try in the first place. And that's the ultimate weakness. Not trying.

When you combine your ultimate weakness with your biggest lie you end up with a life of frustration, a lack of progress, and the dishonor of knowing that you are avoiding self-growth in order to remain in the safe confines of your comfort zone.

We lie to protect ourselves. And it works. It saves us from social and physical discomfort...in the short-term. But in the long run, it makes us weakened slaves shackled to a lifetime of unfulfilled potential.

"I can't move to another country and learn another language even though it promises me better opportunities."

"I can't go without bread at meals or my morning donut before lunch."

"I can't follow my dreams and start my own business even though it would allow me to help thousands of other people."

"I can't tell anyone how I feel even though it would strengthen our relationship and encourage more open and honest communication."

"I can't, I can't, I can't" really means "I won't, I won't, I won't even try."

I'm going to protect myself and stay safe from harm and I darn well plan on keeping it that way. That's what "I can't" really means.

But is it true that you can't?

Really?

REALLY?

The truth is you don't want to. At least be honest. Start with that. Then see where you can go from there. Take a tiny step into the waters of Lake Cant and see if perhaps it's not as cold, dark and deep as you thought it once was.

The legends of the bogeyman in the closet and monsters under the bed are fine for children. But they are expected to grow out of these fears and excuses. And they are expected to realize that their fears are all in their minds.

It's time we learned this as well.

The next time you say, "I can't", follow that up by yelling out, "Why Not?"

Do it and answer honestly.

Is it that you can't or that you won't?

You'll realize that the invisible brick wall between you and "can" has only been erected in your mind. It is almost never a physical limitation.

Your body is capable of surviving without bread, your mind can be trained to fall asleep before 10pm, and you can learn a new language at any age. You can make time for exercise and for working on a side Internet business at home, either before or after work.

You can, you can, you can. You are not too old to change.

It all starts with saying, "I Can, I Will, I Am".

Let's stop lying to ourselves.

Really.

How to Make a Success of Your Career Choice

‘God’s delay is not God’s denial’ I have always heard people say. How does affect your career choice you might ask?

You see making a choice of career is not easy. It is hard work. In point of fact it is not a mean feat. Beside you will encounter a lot of delays in the achievement of your career goals. Since it is something that affects your life and how you will want to live it, making a success of it therefore becomes a necessity. Why is this so?

It is a known fact that by making a success of your career choice it enables you the average career seeker discover your passion early and consequently your true calling in life. Also it makes for a happier and contented person who loves what he does for a living and is enthusiastic about it.
So what are those strategies you could utilize to make a success of your career choice?

1. Discovery of your primary aim: The number one key strategy for any smart young star aspiring for success is to identify the primary purpose in life. By this is meant a picture of the kind of life you which to live. What is it that you want to be most in the world? What is it that you love doing most and will not tire even if you continue doing it forever? You need to ask yourself questions to enable you find answers to how to discover your primary aim. Without asking relevant questions you cannot get enabling answers.
Every successful person must have asked such questions early in his life and discovered early that he wanted to be whatever he has become. Bill Gates wanted to become a successful software manufacturer and he became a programmer of repute and one of the best this world has seen. Think of Microsoft and you will remember Bill Gates. What is your own vision? What is your primary purpose in life? That is your purpose or your vision in a period of time. Your purpose or vision is a continuous thing. It is something that shapes your life and it is a life time thing. A young person who has not done this will only accept whatever career that is thrust upon him or her. You will never be happy in whatever career you might have chosen. Your career is your life. It determines how you want to live your life. You therefore need to have a picture of what you want your life to be like (your vision) and this will guide you into your choice of career. Primary aim helps your awareness about yourself. It helps you to get clear certain truths about yourself and how you should live your life.

2. Self Assessment/Personal Audit: The next strategy on making a success of your career choice is self assessment. Choosing the right career and one which you could make a success of requires conducting a personal in depth analysis of yourself. You should conduct a personal audit of yourself. You need to know what your interests are. You need to know your likes and dislikes. You need to discover your goals and aspirations in life. You must decide what you feel most comfortable doing. You should find out your skills and personalities. You should also find out your desires. In point of fact, desire is the starting point of all great things in life including choosing a successful career. This fact was alluded to by Napoleon Hill in his chart buster classic “Think and Grow Rich”. Therefore with the assessment of your desires, interests, skills and personalities you will be making a great move towards choosing a fitting career and making a success out of it.

3. Creation of Standards: This is another key strategy in the choice of career. By standard is meant benchmarks to measure your performance against. Without a clearly defined vision of your life, you will have no standards by which you can evaluate your role in whatever career you have chosen nor any criteria with which to gauge and measure whether you are in the right career (or considering to pursue one) which will work for you. No matter your primary aim, if the career you have chosen or intend to pursue does not mesh with your vision you can never be happy. That is where standards come in. The only way by which you could evaluate yourself therefore is by looking at where you are at each point in your career choice (work, time, money, culture, relationships) and measuring it against the picture of who you wish to be. It is therefore based on these benchmarks/standards that decisions and choices concerning your career should be made. This you can do by envisioning model(s) which will then serve as your measuring rod. A model is the prototype of the kind of life you wish to live. You will then create rules by which you will live your life. The rules and the standards should go hand in hand. You cannot have one without the other. The creation of these standards is however a continuous thing. They are required for each stage of your life.

4. Discovering your passion: This is another top strategy in the quest to make a success of your selected profession. By passion is meant that thing or activity you love doing and which you can never get tired of doing. Observe any successful person and you will see a person who loves absolutely what he does. In point of fact it is impossible to achieve long term success in any endeavor including your profession unless you love what you are doing. Therefore you can never be successful in your profession unless you passionately love what you are doing. Backed with enthusiasm and commitment making a success out of your chosen calling will certainly be achieved.

5. Narrowing down on your options: Having identified your interests, skills, personality and passion you should then endeavor to identify the occupations that are in conformity with them. You then narrow down your options by trying your hands on those selected to see which one will fit you the best and which one you will be most enthusiastic about doing. The idea is to choose the one you will love to repeat doing today, tomorrow, in a month’s time, in a year’s time and forever without your passion waning. You can try them on part time basis to know select the best.

6. Setting Achievable Career Goals: Another strategy is that of setting of achievable career goals. Eventually you will reach a stage where you would have identified a career you will love pursuing and want to be successful with. You should therefore start mapping out the strategies on how to achieve your goal. Whether you are still in school or you have left school and still job searching or you are already employed and want to make a career change, the process is all the same. If you are still in school, you will need to identify what course you will read to enable you achieve your goal. You will then plan on how long it will take to do so. If you are a school leaver or an employee desiring a career change, you will have to know what qualifications you must have if you already do not have one, how to craft a professional resume, how to write a cover letter, preparation for job interview and working on how to acquire the necessary professional certificate if do not have one. If however you desire being self employed, how do you go about it?

These strategies on making a success of your career choice are like a therapy to an employee who has been trying to find solution to finding his calling in life. This is because it makes choosing a career easier to achieve. By taking action on these strategies it can lead to incalculable success because serving by doing what you love is one of the surest ways to wealth.

You Get Paid for Implementation...

and not for your ideas.

In point of fact, ideas are two for a penny. There so many ideas out there that yet to be implemented. They are worthless without implementation. You can never make it without doing. The richest people are those who DO and not those who imagines. Imagination without implementation equals zero. Period.

Implementation however becomes a reality when you know how to manage your time better. Waste your time on frivolities and not on implementation of your ideas and you will see how penniless you will become. Manage your time better and you will discover how much you will achieve and consequently how successful you will be.

In the article below Dan Kennedy delivers a harsh reality about how time management propels or hinders our progress in life. Following it will lead to monumental success while ignoring it could lead to FAILURE

- Adekunle Agbaje



The Harsh Reality About Your Time
By Dan Kennedy

Having recently had another birthday click over on the odometer, time is on my mind. It's never far from it in my work-cave, because I have strategically placed more than a dozen clocks around the room and can't look in any direction without seeing one.

As I describe in my book, No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs, I organize everything with start and pre-determined end times. If someone has a phone appointment with me, they know in advance when it ends, not just when it starts. And it does end as scheduled, even if in mid-sentence.

I have trained and conditioned myself to be hypersensitive to time, and I train my clients to respect my hypersensitivity. Why?

Because your bank balance and your satisfaction or dissatisfaction with it is more a reflection of how you invest your time than a reflection of anything else.

This is the more dominant factor in wealth or relative poverty, success or failure, fulfillment or frustration than all externals combined -- whatever foreign country is in collapse, whatever volcano or oil spill is occurring, whether the economy is booming or struggling, whether your particular industry is healthy or diseased. These external things are fluid.

In my 40 years as a serial entrepreneur, made-from-scratch multimillionaire, and business advisor to thousands, I've seen all these things and worse come and go, occur and occur again. And I've seen some entrepreneurs surrender their attitudes and reality to them, while others defy them and thrive.

My primary area of specialization is "marketing," and most of my articles for ETR are laser-focused on that. But truth is, your ability to sell of goods, services, or concepts is sabotaged or supported by how much control you exercise over the investment, direction, and consumption of your time and, with it, your energy and creativity.

In reality, time is the asset the entrepreneur owns outright and has total control over. I don't really need to follow you around and observe how you use your time to gauge how you're doing in business. I only need hear about your philosophy of time. That is what governs your behavior and what you will tolerate or refuse to tolerate in the behavior of others.

For example, how do you determine which people you're going to spend your time with? One of my litmus tests: If somebody can't keep seemingly minor commitments, I know I can't trust them to honor important ones either. And if I allow myself to hang around with them, soon they'll be the cause of me failing to honor my commitments.

Another example: Do you actually handle time as money, not just give lip service to the idea? Can you tell me what your time must be worth per minute to achieve your income goal? The question I ask myself is: Will this use of my time move me measurably closer to my meaningful goals? Is there even a chance it will? If not, why do it?

It's difficult to find a clock in Las Vegas casinos, because those casinos are designed to separate you from as much of your money as possible -- to make you a loser. And that is best done by dulling your sensitivity to the passing of time. The same principle applies to your business life. The surest way to be a loser is to be casual about time.

I've worked up close 'n' personal with many, many entrepreneurs who've converted ideas and grit into fortunes. The difference between them and the majority of also-rans is never the originality or even the quality of their ideas.

As a matter of fact, I've seen fortunes manufactured from mediocre ideas and great ideas stillborn. This is important, because far too many entrepreneurs -- and, frankly, those who observe them, report on them, write about them, and glorify their success stories -- still hold up The Great Idea as the pedestal-worthy holy grail. That is worship of a false god.

When the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were first added to the NFL as an expansion team, they set records for consecutive losses and embarrassing performances. After one game, a reporter stuck a microphone in John McKay's face, and asked how he felt about his team's execution that day. McKay quipped that he was in favor of it.

That's reality. Execute or be executed. It's how business really works. Hardly anybody gets paid for ideas. Not even the Imagineers at Disney. We actually get paid for what we get done. To the ignorant, my area of marketing seems to be about ideas. The insiders know: It is about implementation.

The entrepreneur is in a situation that encourages poor productivity: He is his own boss. Often this produces an unproductive employee and a lenient, dysfunctional boss. A two-fer. That's why you must create a success environment for yourself. You must impose strict deadlines on yourself and be ruthlessly resistant to wasting your time. Hold yourself accountable, hour by hour.

If you aren't willing to work under such self-imposed pressure, I suggest you forget the idea of getting and staying rich as king of your own kingdom. Every great kingdom needs a ruler with an iron fist.

The Truth about Forming Productive Habits

‘When you choose a habit, you also choose the result of that habit.’
- Zig Ziglar

In the bestseller “The greatest Salesman in the World”, Og Mandino told the story of Hafid who was reputed to be the greatest and perhaps the most successful salesman in his time. Hafid, a supposedly poor fellow went from being a common camel boy to being a renowned salesman and a very wealthy person.

How did Hafid become so successful? Hafid realized early enough that the difference between those who are successful and the failures lies in the difference between their habits. He realized that good or productive habits are the key to all success, while bad or unproductive habits are the unlocked door to failure. He therefore formed good habits and became their slave. He went on to completely destroy his bad habits. He therefore spent a few moment everyday learning, imbibing and mastering good and productive habits while destroying his bad and unproductive habits. He mastered such habits like persistence, avoidance of procrastination, mastering of emotions, laughing at the world, taking action, avoiding self pity, goal setting etc, etc. With time he became the success he desired and wanted to be.

What is habit?

Steve Covey in his book “The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People” defined habits as “the overlap between knowledge (what you do), skill (how to do it) and attitude (knowing or why to do it or want to do it).” Horace Mann sees habit as “A cable or thread which we weave everyday and at last we cannot break it.” To Orison Swett Marden “The beginning of a habit is like an invisible thread, but every time we repeat the act, we strengthen the strand, add to it another filament until it becomes a great cable and binds us irrevocably, though an act.”

From these definitions I have come to the following deductions:
1. Habits are learned and can therefore be cultivated.
2. Once it is mastered it becomes part of you and therefore irrevocable.
3. Habits if not resisted soon becomes a necessity.
4. When you choose a habit you also choose the result of that habit.
5. When you gain control of your habits you gain control of your life.
6. You must denounce and destroy bad or unproductive habits.
7. If you are desirous of being successful you must therefore cultivate good and productive habits.

Productive habits required for your success

The man on top of the mountain did not just fall there. He must have taken some steps before getting there. Likewise success in any endeavor in life leaves clues. Some of these clues are in the form of right conduct and productive habits. Detailed below are some habits which I believe could move you ahead in life and fast tracking your success.

 Continuously beginning with the end in mind: Drawing up your personal vision, mission, creed, value statements and principles.
 Persistence: The habit of never conceding defeat in any endeavor until success is attained. This is the habit of trying and trying again until your goal is achieved.
 Enthusiasm: The love of whatever it is you are doing at the moment. This is the habit of enjoying whatever you do for a living.
 Mastering your emotion: Gaining control over your moods and feelings rather than allowing them to control your actions. Habit of taking positive actions.
 Appreciation: Being grateful for what so ever it is that is done for you. The habit of showing gratitude to God and fellow human beings.
 Goal setting: Being focused on what you plan to achieve. The habit of identifying what you plan to achieve and setting plans of action on how to achieve them.
 Planning: He who fails to plan is planning to fail. This is the habit of preparing on how to achieve your aims and goals.
 Multiplying your value: Making a choice on what you want to be and adding value to mankind through service.
 Pro-activity: Being responsible for your actions and taking control of your life. The habit of being self directed rather than being others directed.
 Putting first things first: Management of self and time. The habit of management of yourself.
 Continuous development: Maintenance of the spiritual, mental and physical self. This is the habit of continually sharpening the saw or continuous learning and personal development.

Now to the truth about all these talk about productive habits. It is one thing to know about them but without taking action about imbibing and using them it will amount to naught. Knowledge about them does not give you any power nor make you successful. It is applying the knowledge that is power. You have to avoid procrastination on them and commit your dreams and goals to action. Your dreams are worthless, your plans are dust and your goals will be impossible unless they are followed by action.

Cultivating and mastering these productive and unshakeable habits of the successful people is the only medium of achieving success. You should realize that failure is your inability to reach your goals in life. According to Jackson King, “The secret of success for every successful person lies in the fact that he has formed the habit of doing things that failure do not like to do.” A wise man once said “Men do not decide their future. They decide their HABITS and their habits decide their future.”

You should therefore cultivate and master these productive habits now if you desire to be successful because excellence of character is nothing but excellence of habits. You should therefore never take your focus off these habits if you really desire to be successful.

Has this post helped you in your quest to be successful? I will appreciate your comments please. Thank you for sharing your time with me.

Most Significant Interview Questions Prospective Employees Needs to Be Asking the Hiring Manager

‘A single conversation with a wise man is better than ten years of study.’

- Chinese Proverb

Recently I received a call from one of my protégées. For the purpose of this discourse let us call his name John. You see John whose career I have been monitoring over a period of five years is presently at crossroads career wise. I recruited him for one of our client organization sometime in 2011 as a human resource professional. Even back then I knew he was a ‘Star’. We have therefore remained close ever since.

John had since left the organization I recruited him for and is presently working with another organization. According to him, his employer recently employed a General Manager to head his department who after working with him for sometime saw the potentials and consequently felt threatened. According to my protégée, this GM is very shallow but tries showing off as if he knows. To avoid a situation whereby John would be getting glories for his accomplishments, this man avoids passing jobs to him. He prefers giving jobs to one of John’s colleagues with less ability and skills. The clear message was to frustrate John and get him to voluntarily resign his appointment with the organization so that he could plant a crony who would always do his bidding. Without going into the nitty gritty of the situation John wanted out of the organization fast and at all cost.


John had started seeking employment elsewhere and being a star he has been receiving invitations for interviews. One in particular was interested in employing him, but he was not comfortable with their set up. He had met with their management team and during the chat he was able to display his ability and they were convinced about his technical depth and practical knowledge. You see, the company wanted to set up their HR department and they wanted to employ an expert to make that possible. Having been uncomfortable with their set up he tried to drive them off with obviously outrageous compensation demands. In John they have seen that prospective candidate and of course invited him for a final chat with their MD. That was when John called me up to seek for my advice.


First, I told John to be wary of taking any decision that he would regret later. He wanted to leave his present place of employment where he is not appreciated at all cost. Yes. He wanted a more challenging job. Yes. He wanted a work environment where he can grow. Yes. I pointed out however that whenever he decides to move, he should seek employment in an organization where he could realize his primary aim in life. I then told him that there certain questions prospective employees should be asking during interviews that would make them elicit certain facts from prospective employers. These facts would help them decide whether they should join an organization or not.

Are you presently going through the same kind of challenge as my protégée? Or you are presently at loss as to what questions you should be asking during interview sessions? Or you are uncertain about what questions to ask the recruiter to learn more about a potential employer? Or you happen to be one of the job seekers who during interview chats get tongue tied when asked by hiring managers if they have any question to ask? We talent hunters have known it for a fact that most job seekers when asked whether they have any question to ask more often ask questions related only to salaries or irrelevant questions. The job interview is supposed to be a two way communication. Much as the employer wants to learn about you, the only way you as a potential employee can learn about a potential employer is by asking probing questions. It is by asking such questions that you can learn what an employer expects from a person that will occupy a position on offer. It is by asking the hiring manager questions that an interviewee can unearth the attributes, skills and experience expected of the person that will be occupying a position on offer.

The objective in this article is to highlight the kind of probing questions job hunters needs to be asking during interview sessions to enable them discover certain facts about an organization they intend to work for that can assist them in reaching decisions about their professional careers.

What therefore are those questions potential employees should be asking during interview sessions that can assist them in learning what they need to know about a potential employer? What questions can a job seeker ask to reveal whether he is a perfect match for a job on offer? What questions must a candidate ask a hiring manager during a job chat to show that she can perform well on the job?

The following are the six most significant questions I have come across that are likely to reveal to you the potential employee the relevant information required about a prospective employer or a particular job.

What is the next step in the recruitment process? This is one of the top interview questions a potential employee needs to ask the hiring manager. This kind of question when asked will enable the job seeker to know whether that stage of the interview session ends the interview or there is still more to be expected.
What are the key attributes the employer is looking for in a person who will occupy the position on offer? By asking this question, you will be able to know more about those special skills and talents required of the person occupying the position on offer. Whatever requirements stated in the job advert might not be detailed enough. Therefore asking directly will enable the hiring manager shed more light on this.
Can you tell me the characteristics of a person that has met or exceeded your expectation when occupying this position? This is another top interview question required to learn more about the strengths of a person that will occupy the position on offer so that it will assist you in your preparation.
Can you tell me what you will like best or least when one is working in this organization? This question is designed to help you learn more about the way to conduct and comport herself in the course of performing your duties when offered the position.
Can you describe the typical day/week for a person occupying this position? This is another top interview question that can be used to learn about an employer and is designed to learn about the typical tasks of a person occupying the position. It is designed to learn more about the roles you are supposed to perform when offered the position.
What do you expect me to perform in the first sixty to ninety days of engagement?: This kind of question when asked is supposed to enable you to learn about what is required of you during the period of probation. In most organizations, the probationary period is between two and three months, therefore asking this question will assist you in knowing what is expected of you and if you will be able to meet the expectations or not.
From the information provided above, the challenge of knowing the top interview questions prospective employees should be asking hiring managers can therefore not be over emphasized. This is because these interview questions when asked will allow you the potential employee to know whether you want the job on offer or not if you are eventually selected. Further, such questions will enable you to know whether you can do the job if you are eventually recruited. Finally, this kind of probing questions will enable you to know whether you want to work with this particular employer if eventually you are recruited. These interview questions are therefore designed to assist you in your bid to learn as much as possible about a potential employer and the job on offer in particular.

Thank you for sharing your time with me. I hope you have benefited from reading this post as much as I have benefited from writing it.

How to Write a Resume like a Professional Even If You Are Not One

Every job seeker knows how to write a resume. It is however only the professional resume writer that knows how to craft a resume that is attention grabbing. You see, the real problem isn’t about writing a resume. It is recognizing that you have written a CV that is great and one that market ‘You’ compellingly to a prospective employer. Take Jane (a former employee in a company whose staff was outsourced to our company) for example. After doing a critique of her resume and informing her of my opinion about her resume being unappealing, she told me she did not think her CV was that bad. In point of fact she did not believe me at all. Believe me or not, she has remained stuck in a job she did not like and consequently frustrated and dejected. So much for her distrust for my professional opinion and advice!
In my over 25 years plus as a human resource practitioner I have had the benefit of scrutinizing thousands of resumes. Some were good, many bad and the greatest number outright ugly. What do you say of resumes of 6 – 8 pages packed with a whole lot of irrelevant information? Or generic CVs not targeted to a job on offer? Or what do you say about resumes without any compelling career summary? Of course they would suffer rejection from the hiring manager because they are not attention grabbing and if not they cannot win the job seeker any interview invitation. The objective of your CV is to win you the prospective employee an invitation for an interview and nothing more. What therefore makes a job searcher a perfect candidate such that he gets invited for interviews over and over again? It is by crafting an appealing resume that is appealing and devoid of errors. Ninety- five percent of job seekers however present CV’s that are replete with errors and therefore becoming barriers to their being shortlisted for interviews. Most job hunters often do not bother to go over their resumes to find out whether there are errors before submitting them. This is why they do not command a second look from hiring managers other than the initial consideration. So how do you then know when you have crafted an attention grabbing resume the way a professional would? How do you craft a resume that is attention grabbing and therefore worthy of selection for an interview? 1. Conducting Proper research on self and the company putting a job on offer: Your CV tells your professional story. Without you the prospective job hunter having substantial information on your attitude, skills and achievements how will you be able to match it with the demands of the job put on offer? Likewise without you the job seeker having substantial knowledge about the company putting a job on offer, how will you be able to match your personal details with the needs of the company? That is where the benefits of research on self and the company come into play. It makes you the employment seeker identify those skills, attitude and accomplishments which otherwise might have been hidden. Likewise the job hunter will be able to identify those needs of the company putting the job on offer that otherwise might have been hidden. Matching the needs of the company with your skills and accomplishments and crafting a relevant and appealing CV will always win you the desired interview. Your resume must therefore be targeted to the job on offer and not generic. 2. Avoidance of irrelevant and inadequate information in your resume: This is another vital blunder employment seekers often make that prevent them from writing an attention grabbing professional resume. Ninety percent of job hunters concentrate on providing information on their personal details like date of birth, address, colleges attended, job history and their responsibilities leaving out the meaty details about what the employer actually needs. The employer is only interested in the value and benefits you can bring to his company and nothing more. He is interested in your skills and accomplishments and how they match his requirements. Similarly, you need to include a compelling career summary in your resume. Any information outside these is inadequate and consequently worthless. This is basically the reason why some job seekers write pages of worthless information! 3. Avoidance of structural errors: Nine out of ten resumes being considered for short listing by any recruiter are filled with structural errors. They are often so poorly written that as a hiring manager scrutinizing them makes you feel like sleeping. You must therefore avoid these errors (e.g. grammatical, fond size, fond type, balancing between white space and resume) when crafting your resume. Research has shown that recruiters spend less than ten seconds skimming through resumes because of these errors which often ease their task. 4. Subjecting the resume to a set of checklist: Further, to make your CV attention grabbing, you must subject it to a set checklist of course. The application of this checklist makes communication of what you have in your resume more concise and in the end makes reaching your goal of being invited for an interview more promising. Tactically, using a checklist makes writing your professional resume clear and logical. Furthermore, it also makes writing it more economical. The use of these checklists will also send some messages to recruiters. One is that you are an organized person. Two being that you have taken extra time to compose your resume and by doing so have given more than cursory attention to the employer’s requirements and consequently added more value. Above all therefore, the recruiter scrutinizing your resume will be tempted to give your resume a second look if it has been subjected to the test of the checklist. The following checklist should therefore be applied:  proofreading of curriculum vitae for errors  use of resume samples for comparison  appearance for aesthetic beauty  relevance of resume to the job on offer From the foregoing, the challenge of how to write a compelling resume the way a professional would must have been adequately taken care of. This is because the kind of mistake employment seekers often make when preparing their resumes must have been identified. Another reason being that it helps you to identify the best ways of avoiding such mistakes. I hope you have benefited immensely from reading this piece as much as I have in writing it. Thank you for sharing your time with me.

How to Use Unconventional Tactics to Enhance Your Job Search Effectiveness

‘To have unconventional success, you cannot be guided by conventional wisdom.’
- David Swenson

Hiring managers have realized that to get your dream job, you need to ditch the conventional job hunting techniques and utilize the unconventional job search tactics especially if you want your job seeking to be result oriented. Recruiters have therefore found out that the unconventional tactics (sometimes referred to as guerilla tactics) outperforms the traditional techniques in several ways.
1. The unconventional job hunting tactics are proactive. This is because when applying the tactics, you help set the pace of your search campaign through assertive weekly networking calls/emails plus weekly follow-up contacts with hiring managers concerning your most recent applications for both posted and anticipated job openings. This action will obviously increase the pace of your results.
2. Unconventional job search tactics are highly targeted in that they focus on specific industries, employers, geographic areas and positions which will assist you in increasing the number of interview calls and job offers you are likely to receive.
3. Further, these tactics are customized. This is because as opposed to the traditional techniques, the guerilla techniques stress touting your individuality by injecting your personality and career related attributes into your resume, cover letters and interview responses while also making use of industry related keywords that boost the odds that hiring managers looking for people like you will always find you.
4. They are also free and low cost. As a job seeker, you can take advantage of many of the job opportunities available on the internet these days. What are Unconventional Job Search Tactics? Unconventional job search tactics are those job seeking techniques that are unconventional, often radical and are always strategic. It means getting creative and conducting your job search differently from the crowd. You will have to introduce the element of surprise into your job hunting. Hiring managers have observed that most job hunters do their job seeking the conventional way which makes it boring and consequently often do not deliver the desired results. They conduct their job search either from the pages of newspapers or magazines or online just like every other person. These techniques are however worn out and no more delivering the desired result of invitation for interviews.
You see, job hunting is like selling and you the job seeker are the product. If the demand is therefore not there for “you” the product, you need to sit back study what is available in the job market and devise more effective ways of honing your job hunt. If need be, you might have to change whatever it is you are selling (your product- you). You might have to retool. Let us use the Pareto Principle (80/20%) to amplify this. For a start, only 20% of available job opportunities are advertised either online or in newspapers/magazines. Therefore 80% of available job opportunities are not advertised. 80% of job hunters scramble for the 20% of the jobs offers advertised online or in newspapers while the lucky and resourceful 20% of job seekers who use guerrilla tactics are the ones benefiting from the 80% of jobs that are not advertised online or in newspapers. These are the job hunters getting invitation for interviews faster and consequently getting employed faster. To make your job hunting more effective and consequently get employed quicker, you need to join these 20% getting access to the unadvertised jobs.
That is where the guerilla tactics of job search comes into play. Unconventional Tactics you can use to enhance your job search effectiveness 1. Use of your phone: Job seekers often do not do this. Only 1 – 2% does it. It is similar to cold calling in sales which most salesmen hate to do. However, by calling the hiring manager or a person that can influence your employment in any organization, you are not requesting for an interview but only starting and building a relationship. You should also try letting the person you are calling know the person that introduced him or her to you. Chances are that you might not be successful at your first try; you should however endeavor to persist by following up through emails and further phone calls. Try building a rapport with the hiring manager and a few others within your target company. That way you might stumble on some leads that would be of assistance during your interview.
2. Hunt for companies rather than for jobs: The joy in this style of job search is that hunting efforts is targeted. Having researched industries, companies and even people, you then focus your search on those industries and companies (and of course people) you desire to work in and work for. You should therefore target companies and not jobs in your search. Further, you need to research your target companies and start working for them before you are invited for any interview at all.
3. Network, network and network: You need to take advantage of all your network connections. At the end of your conversation with any new connection, ask this all important question “Who else do you think I should be talking to?” This way you get to expand your base and get introduced to those who could assist you with your search. Your networking should however be smart and creative. You can network with your alumni, ex employees, friends, career office etc.
4. Read newspapers and magazines to get leads: You can get leads for your job search through reading of newspapers and magazines. You can uncover leads by (i) monitoring the business sections for companies signing new commercial and contracts which portends a good sign for increased capacity. (ii) Search for companies receiving venture capital. Such companies are likely to have a viable business model and will inevitably need new employees.
5. Keep detailed records of your job search: You will need a detailed record of every company you have sent your resumes with a view to following up on your search. Each time you send your resume you should record the following (i) Title of post applied for. (ii) Company name. (iii) Name/title of person addressed in the cover letter. (iv) The source of job lead. (v) Date cover letter/resume was sent. (vi) Date of intended follow up.
6. Use temporary agencies to get full time jobs: Savvy employers use temporary agencies as screening device for needed talents. This is often used as a ploy to put temporary workers through trial/probationary period. A conscientious and talented employee could always get hired through this method. Therefore if offered a temporary job grab it with both hands.
7. Try not to lose contact with ex employers: If you left your old employers in good terms there is nothing stopping you from contacting them once in a while. You could send a short email or make personal visit to notify them that you are still available in the market. They might have clients or contacts that might need your service. They might even want you back too.
8. Try to commence working for potential employers from the interview session: Instead of being like other job seekers, try giving yourself a head start to get hired. Try doing something unusual during the interview. For example if you are applying for a sales position, try going with some sales lead for the company. On the other hand if you are applying for an editing position, try attending the interview with a copy of the publication’s article with your correction. This way you will be adding value to the company before you even start working.
9. Use social network to hunt for jobs: You will not use social network to hunt for jobs directly. You will only use it to build relationships and increase your network. Your network connections could therefore be of assistance when job hunting. They could provide you with leads. Twitter, Face book and LinkedIn could be of assistance here.
10. Send articles about a potential employer: In this guerilla tactic, you are only sending to a potential employer interesting articles about the company. You will attach a note to the articles saying “Thought you might be interested in these.” You could also let the hiring manager know that you are interested in the company and why you are interested in the company.
From the tactics detailed above and several changes being witnessed in job market in recent times, one will realize that the conventional method of job hunting alone no longer works. It is when combined with the unconventional/guerilla techniques that the desired results are achieved. This is because the guerilla tactics of job search penetrate the hidden job market. Further, it restores your life balance because it enhances the quality of your life by automating your job hunt.
I hope you have benefited from reading this article as much as I have in posting it. If you have my joy will be in your taking massive action on it because taking in the information without applying it is poverty.
Thank you for sharing your time with me.

How to Use Credibility to Hasten Executive Job Search Success

How does a ‘Star’ employee become a disenchanted employee in matter of 3 years? What could make a passive hard to find talent coveted so passionately a few years earlier become stuck on a job she dislikes today? What could have made a rare talent consider resignation from a job she was practically wooed to accept a few years ago? Such was the lot of Jane, a Senior Project Engineer we helped recruit for one of our clients a few years back. You our client did everything humanly possible to ensure that Jane joined their company. Recently I got talking to Jane to find out how she was faring. Her response shocked me. She said she had wanted to leave the company a long time ago but has not been successful in her job search. That was when she told me that she had even considered resignation until sanity prevailed. Without having another job she could not resign from the present one. She then requested for my assistance in her job search. Jane’s predicament then got me thinking. Here was a very talented and credible person stuck on a job she does not like and finding it difficult to secure something better. Are you an executive desirous of changing your present job which you are tired of but do not know how? If you are, then are you aware of the vital role your credibility can play in enhancing your job hunt? Talent acquisition professionals have noted the critical role credibility plays in executive job search. We have noted that it inspires the ‘can-do belief’ in potential employers having been aware of the past achievements of a prospecting executive. It also inspires confidence in organizations interested in your service as an executive having been aware of your previous professional accomplishments. My objective here in this article is to discuss on how you can use your credibility to hasten your job search. What is credibility in Executive Job Search? Credibility in executive job hunting “Is the ability to inspire belief in you as an executive by the organization requesting for your service.” It separates the truly successful executives from those yet to reach their potentials. To then use credibility to make a difference in executive job search, you need to proffer answers to the following questions: i. Who am I? ii. Why should they engage me? iii. How do they know whether I can deliver? iv. Can I deliver the results I have promised? v. Am I the person they are looking for? Credibility therefore becomes very important and critical for the executive who is just moving up the corporate ladder. How Can the Executive Develop the Credibility Essential for Job Search? Ray Smilor in his enterprising book “Daring Visionaries” pointed out that there are some effective ways of building credibility as an entrepreneur. I think it is equally effective in building your credibility as an executive. 1. Building credibility through inference: This is a very effective way of building credibility in your executive job search. Without employers personally knowing an executive, they can infer his credibility if they are aware of his key accomplishments or his past. Crafting a professional resume will go a long way in inspiring belief in potential employers. Having a compelling LinkedIn profile is another way of building your credibility. You can therefore build your credibility through inference by pointing to facts, experiences and credentials that will allow potential employers to judge you as competent, informed and a knowledgeable professional and expert. The key elements that can be used to infer credibility will therefore include: a. Academic credentials and professional certifications: Academic and professional qualifications which display expertise in a discipline will convey your knowledge about the subject. b. Previous successful experience as an executive or a manager: The “been there” or “done that” experience is a critical way to convince potential employers that you can do it again. c. Records of having directed completed projects: Having been involved in the direction of a completed project before, shows that you have demonstrated that skill and it could be replicated and applied to other projects. 2. Building credibility through reference: This is a higher level of building credibility in executive job search. It is connected to the personal traits you leave behind as you pass through life. The people who will provide references on you could be others in your previous or present places of employment, opinion leaders in your profession or industry, media persons who might have written about you or your accomplishments and customers, suppliers or employees whom you might have affected in your professional interactions. The more objective the information received from your references the more believable will be the impact it will have on your credibility. This is why it is absolutely important that you endeavor to leave good track record in your journey through your professional calling. The more reason why prospective employers request for referees why considering people for employment. They want people to give credible information about you. From the foregoing, the critical role of credibility in executive job search can therefore not be over emphasized. It has been demonstrated over time that it is an effective convincing factor in decision making on employment. Further, when built and it becomes convincing enough, it shortens the period of executive job hunting. Finally, being a credible executive hastens your market-ability. I hope you have benefited from reading this post as much as I have in writing it.

How to Use Personal Branding as Your Effective Tool for Personal and Business Success

Christopher Colombus was credited with discovering the Americas. So he was a discoverer of some sort. One who started the voyage of discovery through his transatlantic voyages. What most people however did not know is that he was a consummate salesman and leader. He had to sell his vision of transatlantic voyage in order to execute it. First let us consider the odds staked against him in his bid to fulfill this dream:

·         There was no market for transatlantic voyages.

·         Although he had made voyages as a passenger but never as a captain.

·         He was a foreigner (Italian) living in a foreign land, Portugal and then Spain.

·         He did not have enough money to fund his expedition.

·         His price for this expedition was not cheap. For a start he wanted 10% commission on all the trades between the discovered territories and the mother country. Second he wanted the title of Admiral of the Fleet. Thirdly he wanted a permanent position of Governor of all the territories discovered. Finally he wanted all the honors and rights passed on to his heirs after his death.

Despite all the odds stacked against him, Colombus was able to sell the expedition at his own price. How did he achieve this?

He did this through personal branding and marketing of course! He got the wealthy and influential citizens in both Spain and Portugal to invest in his dream, mission and vision. He however had to market his vision before he could begin the expedition. People first had to buy into him (his brand) before they bought into his vision. His prospects had to ask themselves whether he was convincing. Or whether he could pull what he was marketing off. This was a man who branded himself as a voyager and a discoverer before he actually became one. Colombus did pull it off. His success came through the finest form of salesmanship. It came about through personal branding.

Imagine you are in Colombus position and had to market yourself or your business today, how will you go about doing so? Or you are presently seeking an effective tool for your personal advancement? Or you are a business owner presently at loss on what tool to use to enhance your business? Or you are looking for ways of shortening the period of your hunt for work and do not know how? How will you go about achieving all these?

This is where personal branding comes in. Personal branding strategists having observed the agonies of most job seekers and business owners have come to realize the benefits personal branding plays in effectively positioning job seekers and in particular executives in their quest to land their dream jobs or for winning jobs for their business.

What is Personal Branding?

Meg Guiseppi defined personal branding as “Defining, differentiating and communicating ROI (return on investment) value you offer your target employers or clients over others competing for the same job.” From this definition, personal branding indicates the chance to “stand out” among the crowd of job seekers or competitors. In this world of increased competition and globalization regardless of age, position or business, it is necessary to understand the importance of branding. Successful organizations like McDonalds, Nike, Microsoft, Apple, Nokia, Dell Computers etc are known for their branding. Like these successful organizations, to continue to be relevant in business today, job hunters and business owners need to make personal branding their most important job. To these successful organizations, their brand is their Unique Selling Points (USP). To you a job seeker, personal branding should be your Unique Selling Attribute (that is the attribute you could use to market yourself to prospective employers).

Tom Peters who coined the term in 1997, in his own contribution on the importance of personal branding said “Regardless of age, regardless of the position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of personal branding. We are the CEO’s of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be the head marketer for the brand called you”.

Using Personal Branding for Personal and Business Success

Stretching this a bit further, how can you then use personal branding for your personal and business success? Since branding is all about identifying what makes you unique and relevant and communicating it to targeted audience or potential employers so that you could reach your career and business goals faster, how do you go about doing so?

1.      First, you need to find out what makes you different from others (i.e. your competition).

2.      Once you have identified your strengths, passions, skills, interests and values, you can therefore use the same information to separate yourself from your competitors. Branding yourself therefore sends a clear message about you and what you have to offer. Consequently, it makes you more unique and more successful in your job hunting and business life. Your brand is therefore your personal DNA.

3.      After identifying these qualities and characteristics within you, you will then bring them all together and communicate it in a crystal clear and consistent message across multiple channels both online and offline (that is what differentiates your unique promise of value and these will resonate with your target audience).

According to William Arruda another personal branding expert ‘Your brand resides in the minds and hearts of those around you.’

Personal branding

·         Helps you optimize your strengths and consequently enhances your self-awareness.

·         It helps you clarify what you want and how to set your goals and reach it.

·         Once you have identified your strengths, it makes it possible for you to use it to create visibility among those who will assist you in reaching your goals.

·         It helps you in differentiating yourself from the crowd.

Just imagine what properly branding yourself or your business on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook could do to advance and enhance your market-ability. Branding yourself as an expert in a niche and disseminating valuable contents to solve people’s problems or satisfy people’s wants will go a long way in advancing and improving your lot or that of your business and consequently your market-ability. 

From the foregoing, the importance of personal branding to personal and business success could therefore not be overemphasized. Branding creates wealth. This is because strong brands charge a premium for their services since people know their value. Further, strong brands are usually successful despite challenges and downturn in the economy because of their uniqueness. Consequently branding makes job hunting more successful in whatever capacity but most especially as an executive or business owner.

I have always used personal branding to enhance my USP, and I believe you could too and also benefit immensely from consistently using it. You can never regret doing so.

What Drives a Great Company: The People or the Process?

Running a company is not an easy task particularly if it is being run by  a tyro businessman. Making it great on the other hand is such a herculean task more so when he has so many things to put in balance failing which it will fail within the shortest possible time. The share number of companies that have started and collapsed all over the world is alarming. How then do you build and run a successful company in a free market system that provides us all with more opportunities to fail than to succeed? Is there a template or model of greatness the presence of which in any company would indicate with a degree of certainty the success of such a company and the absence of which would indicate a company that is not likely to pass the test of time?  

There has therefore always been a contention as to what distinguish a great company when emphasized between the people producing the result or the process of producing the result for the company. Is it the talents within the organization that drives it that makes it great or the system that drives it? Research on organizational behavior has shown that identifying what truly drives a company between the people and the process goes on to make it outstanding. It is what will make it outlive the founder. It is what will make it a profitable company.

Let us first put the two in proper perspective and then critically identify which out of the two can make an organization thrive and outstanding.

What is a people dependent company?

David Ogilvy in his book ‘David Ogilvy on Advertising’ advised that people should use the ‘Russian Doll Principle’ while hiring. What this translates to is that when hiring talents, you should always hire people bigger and better than you to run your business, adding that if this is done you’ll end up with a company of “giants’. However, on the contrary if you hire people smaller than you, you’ll end up with a company of “dwarfs”. By saying this, Ogilvy was not referring to physical size but the skills, integrity and ability. Therefore if you hire great people, your business becomes great and your life becomes easier. Hiring the wrong people on the other hand will make life and work harder and more frustrating for your business.

A people dependent company therefore is one that depends on its talents to thrive. It is one that is driven by its people. It is the technicians that practice what they know how to do best that makes the company outstanding. The outstanding results produced by the business are dependent on the work of the abundance of talents and experts within it. The company therefore makes it a duty to engage the right talent.  They will go to any length to employ the best. In people oriented companies the people are therefore the most important assets.

What is a process/system dependent company?

The process/system is said to be ‘a set of procedures or steps that you build into your business to ensure a predictable outcome each time and every time.’ Michae E Gerber observed that ‘by working on your business as opposed to working in it, you will develop processes/systems in all areas of the business – sales, production, marketing, distribution etc.’ Overtime, the business will become a well oiled machine needing only occasional adjustment for changes in the market, competitive environment or customer demand. The system therefore offers the businessman the unique opportunity to get the freedom that he went into the business to achieve in the first place. With systemic thinking, the businessman can implement and maximize all good business ideas each time and every time.

A process dependent company therefore is one that is driven by processes. Processes come about through innovation that has been quantified and orchestrated with a view to identifying the best way of achieving result or the best way of doing the work. Through innovation, quantification and orchestration the work would be organized into a replicable system such that the result you intend to produce can be achieved in exactly the manner you wish them to be. The way people produce extraordinary results are identified, repeated and then leveraged into processes/systems. Consequently, the outstanding replicable results and outcomes can be produced as often as the organization desires. In system/process dependent companies, the system/process is the most important asset.

What then drives a great company?

To answer the question “What drives a great company?” we will turn to Michael M Gerber. In his book “The E Myth Manager”, he opined that “the process and not the people distinguish a great company”.

This is a view I share too and for the following reasons:

1.       In a people dependent company, the main assets (which are the people) go home every day. Whereas in the system dependent organization the assets which is the processes are there all the time.

2.      In the people dependent company, the attention is on who is doing the work rather than how the work is being done. This is not the case in a process oriented company. The focus of attention is usually on how the work is being done.

3.      In a people oriented company, anytime an expert resigns or fall sick, the company is in trouble. In the process dependent company however, since the attention is on how the work is being done, operation manuals are usually available which makes people of less skill capable doing the job after undergoing required training.

4.      Human beings are generally difficult to manage. Therefore in people oriented companies, management of the people is usually a problem. This is not the case in the process oriented organization. The management manages the system rather than the people.

5.      In the people dependent company emphasis is placed on attracting the right talent at whatever cost to the business. Talents (especially passive talents) who are not desperately in search of work tend to play hard to get which consequently escalates the cost of recruitment. With a system in place however, average talents could be trained to do the job especially with the availability of operation manual which details the various procedures and tasks expected of a particular position.

From the foregoing, it is evident that what distinguishes a great company is actually the process put in place to achieve results rather than the people employed. Employing right talents is good. However, identifying how the right talents can achieve results with a view to replicating it and using it as regularly as a company desires (which is what process does) is much better. Greatness comes with achieving desired results as often as a company desires. With the system in place, the desired outcome will be replicated as often as it is required. Predictability is therefore the norm. This is the hallmark of a process dependent company and of course is the model that should be copied by any company aspiring to achieve greatness.

Besides, the small scale business cannot afford to attract and employ the best talents out there in the labor market (active or passive). The small scale business will therefore be in a better position to innovate and create systems, employ average workers who they could then train to run the system and in the process produce great outcomes. By doing so, their companies will become as great as they wish, believe me.

These however are my views. What about you? Comments are welcomed.