When it comes right down to it, everything in marketing is really about problems/pain and results. That’s what people actually care about. They’re paying for results. What’s in it for me? Will my investment pay off? Can you get rid of my problem or get me to the goal I want to achieve?

So how do you make the best of things in the face of this “cold, hard fact”?

Here are a few quick tips to get you started in the right direction:

- Become intimately familiar with your niche. When you know every detail about what keeps them up at night or what dreams fill their hearts, you will be able to easily and deeply connect with your clients. It’s especially helpful when you get to the root of a problem they are experiencing that they are willing to pay you to solve!

- When writing any sort of marketing content, spend the bulk of your time (on average a good 80%) either addressing your audience’s deepest problems/pain or the biggest results they will achieve from working with you.

- Use stories frequently in your marketing… your signature story, stories of your clients, general stories of interest that prove your point. People love stories! We can relate to stories on a much more personal level than we can to a list of facts about your process. Stories draw us in emotionally–helping us see at a heart level how we can be a part of your services–instead of simply engaging the brain in a logical argument about whether to invest with you or not. As a bonus note, even when I’m using stories to communicate in marketing, I still employ the same basic structure… pain or problem someone started with, the turning point, and the results or outcomes experienced afterward.

- Touch on your process only briefly AFTER you have established a strong and emotionally compelling case for problems/results. So you talk about how they will accomplish A, B, C, D, E, and F by working with you… and “oh by the way, we achieve that through X, Y, Z.”

1. General Labour Market and Employment Information:

With 135 000 members, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, CIPD, is the largest and most influential association for human resource professionals in the UK. Even as a non-member, you will find vast amounts of well-researched information on their website www.cipd.co.uk.

Look out for factsheets, reports and pod casts on topics ranging from employee relations to salary surveys, from employment law to career management, from unemployment figures to recruitment and talent management practices.

2. Occupational Information:

In the US, many of you will be using O-Net for occupational information. In the UK, we career professionals tend to refer to “the UK’s official graduate careers website” www.prospects.ac.uk. Don’t let the focus on graduate careers deter you – the site provides up to date and detailed information on career fields, employment sectors and occupational profiles relevant to professionals at many different stages of their careers.

The wide range of “occupational profiles” and “sector overviews” will be a good starting point if (a) You need to familiarise yourself with the technical terms used for your profession in the UK; (b) You want to learn more about specific types of jobs and the way they are performed in the UK (the occupational profiles cover job descriptions, employment prospects, working conditions, training and entry requirements, career development and career progression, professional membership associations and sources of job openings).

3. Professional Membership Organisations:

Professional associations offer a wealth of careers information, professional development opportunities and rich networks you can tap into. Yet in my view, they are far too often ignored by professionals as an information and job search tool.

How can you find out whether there is a relevant professional association for you in the UK? (a) Visit your own association’s website to check for links within its global network – in many cases associations collaborate on international projects or have affiliate systems in place. For instance, via the American Chemical Society (ACS) you will be able to identify the UK based Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC); (b) Check out the listings of the UK Trade Association Forum www.taforum.org; (c) Use a search engine – you are bound to uncover useful connections with UK professionals, however small or large your professional niche may be.

In part II, I will share information about UK based job boards, recruitment agencies and professional online networks.

Until then!

Now these findings really bothered me because on one hand, there are plenty of professional and executive MBA women making significant contributions to the corporate world, so why are we coming up short? While we can certainly agree that bias and gender discrimination still exists in companies, I am a big proponent of executing deliberate, proactive strategies to minimize career obstacles and consistently chip away at the proverbial glass ceiling.

I challenge you with these questions:

Did you negotiate your salary, benefits and total compensation package before you accepted your current position?

Studies have repeatedly shown that professional men are eight times more likely than a woman to negotiate their salary before finally accepting an offer.  If you are actively job seeking, take the extra steps to conduct research, talk to other professional women AND men in the industry and have a solid salary range in mind before accepting a job offer.

– Support your case for a higher salary based on your experience, proven qualifications and the value that you bring to employers. 

– Develop a Critical Leadership Initiatives document to use as a leave behind document in interviews and as vital tool in your negotiation process. Do more than say you are qualified, provide solid, quantifiable achievements written in a Challenge-Action-Results format.

Have you had a direct conversation with your boss to express interest in new projects or upward mobility?

As much as we have made progress as professional women, there are still companies hesitant to promote women, give them out-of-town projects or recommend them for new roles that require long days and weekend hours. We can certainly spend a lot of time arguing against that thought process, but unless you speak up and let your interests be known, you will continue to get overlooked for career growth opportunities that you are more than qualified to handle.

– As part of your annual review process, do more than develop current “job-specific” goals; take the discussion to the next level and talk about the skills and qualifications that you need to take you to the next level.

– Focus on direct questions like “What additional experience, qualifications and skills do I need to advance to the next level?” or “What is the next step in my career path?”

– Establish clear, realistic career goals and objectives so that you don’t wake up one day and realize that you have been left behind.

 More importantly, don’t expect your boss to read your mind, if you want a promotion, new challenges or more responsibilities, then speak up.

Do you regularly solicit feedback and recommendations from your boss and other colleagues?

Okay, so this is the part that no one likes – we don’t mind hearing the praises, but when it comes to criticism, we want to run for the hills. Constructive criticism and feedback on our performance, speaking abilities, interpersonal skills and team interactions are what women MBAs need to be competitive.

If your idea of climbing the corporate ladder means that you show up on time every day, work really hard and be nice to everyone, you will be disappointed time and time again. Your personal brand and professional reputation depends heavily on how others perceive you – your easy-going, “don’t-rock-the-boat” approach may seem fair to you, but may get you overlooked as a leader where the company expects you to make tough decisions.

– Conduct a 360 assessment every year and send out the survey to colleagues, family members, friends and current/former bosses.

– Pay attention to the most common adjectives used to describe you and your personal attributes and determine your areas of improvement and opportunities for personal growth.

Perhaps the largest difference goes to the heart of how the uniformed services evaluate and promote people. It’s all about leadership.

When a civilian asks a military person what he or she does, the services want the military person to say “I am a commissioned (or non-commissioned) officer on active duty.” The services want their members to think of the rank or grade they hold first.

Of course, people in uniforms have different MOSs (Military Occupational Specialty for the Army), AFSCs (Air Force Specialty Code), or Ratings (Navy).

These indicate the kind of job each person is holds now. My career is typical. I was, at different times, a flight instructor and examiner, an air operations staff officer, a curriculum designer, a public relations officer, an educational instructor, and an education administrator. But the Air Force, and I, always thought of me as a commissioned officer. And the system used to promote me measured my effectiveness as a leader.

Military professionals know leadership is not the euphemism used in so many parts of the civilian world where it is confused with financial support, political gain, or winning a marketplace advantage.

The military leader feels his responsibility very deeply, and personally, to those who help him or her do the mission. Therefore, it’s completely natural for military clients to say their career field is “management” or “leadership.”

What they don’t realize—what may come as a shock—is there are no such specific career fields in civilian life.

Employers create jobs based on a capability they need. They describe that capability with a job title or career field. Helping our military clients find the one career field (from the many they may have worked in on active duty) that is right for them is our responsibility.

If we don’t guide our clients, they will chase one disconnected “opportunity” after another. That’s because job announcements almost always talk about “leadership,” “people skills,” “problem solving,” “strong communications skills,” and the like. But the military client may miss the skill sets unique to each career field.

For example, a non-profit executive director needs all the skills listed in the previous paragraph. But if she isn’t practiced in cultivating the donors, if she cannot build and enlarge upon a market brand, she won’t succeed.

As a result, our military client will always feel unprepared. Endless “tweaking” of the résumé follows. In the end, even if that person does find a job, how satisfying it will be is open to chance. And since so many Americans are unhappy, or very unhappy, in their work, the chances aren’t good.

You have many tools to help military clients match up with the right career field—as they define “right.”

As you use those tools, reassure your military clients their leadership and management will make them successful in their new careers just as it did when they are on active duty.

• I was asked in an interview, “If you’re an introvert, is it the end of the world?”
• A man told me he wanted to buy a book on introversion for his wife, but he was afraid she’d be insulted.
• A woman questioned whether it was possible to be both successful and an introvert.

That got me thinking about synonyms, stereotypes, and stigmas. What words do you associate with “introvert”? The Microsoft Word thesaurus offers “recluse.” Ewww! The negative connotations that word has are practically palpable. Along those lines, I frequently see “loner” connected with “introvert” and occasionally “antisocial” (and, sadly, often in stories about people who have committed horrific crimes). There are some words that are less negatively charged – “reserved” or “quiet” come to mind. But still it’s clear that those qualities go against the norm in our culture.

And then there’s “shy,” which people often confuse with “introverted.” In fact, the Microsoft thesaurus lists that as the first option, and lists “shy” as the first option for “introverted.” Look at the others: Retiring – Withdrawn – Timid – Bashful – Diffident – Inhibited – Reticent – Reserved – Quiet. When people admit to any of those traits, it’s always in an apologetic and embarrassed manner.

Part of our job as career coaches is to empower our clients, and my mission is to spread the word that being an introvert means having some powerful strengths that in fact can contribute to success, leadership, excellent performance, and many other wonderful outcomes. If you do a Google search for “famous introverts” you’ll find lists of highly accomplished people in all areas of life. Also, if you search the biographies of hundreds of well-known people (some of them probably extroverts, in fact), you’ll discover that they are or have been shy but nevertheless are known for some amazing achievements.

Shyness and introversion do not have to stand in the way of success – and can even contribute to it.

So I hope the other 50.7% of the population who are introverts will join me and say it loud, and say it proud – “I’m an introvert!”

The Career Liftoff^® Interest Inventory (CLII) is designed specifically to assist students in making wise choices for their college major. As career coach, I have found the CLII to be an extremely helpful tool for my clients, along with coaching, to identify their college major.

Jim Lewis and Gary Anderson formed Career Liftoff^® to create an assessment that helps people to select a college major. Gary Anderson, Vice President of Career Liftoff^®, was a former high school career adviser and college career center director, and saw the need for an assessment that would specifically focus on determining a college major. Jim and Gary, along with expert assessment developer Ronald Page of Assessment Associates International, developed the CLII.

The CLII report shows scores for the six Holland Occupational Themes (OT)—realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional. And it gives scores for five occupational interest scales (OIS) that relate to each of the six Holland themes, for a total of thirty occupational interests. The report shows the test takers’ top OIS in rank order, and lists a sampling of careers for each of them. Because the OIS link closely to college majors, it’s great information to use when coaching people to select a college major.

The careers listed in the client’s CLII report, under the top six OIS, tie directly to occupations in O*NET™. It’s easy for students to use this web-based system to read more about occupations and compare their top OT with the rank order of the OT for the various occupations in O*NET™ Online.

As career coach (or counselor), ask students clarifying questions and actively listen to them to help them process the information in their CLII report and from their O*NET™ research. Encourage them to gain knowledge of occupations through volunteer work, informational interviews, and job shadowing. Also, ask them to read course descriptions for potential college majors to confirm how interested they are (or are not) in taking these courses.

The OIS link to both vocations and avocations. This information can be referred to as you coach people to determine which of them they wish to invest the most time in for their work and which are best suited for their hobbies.

Choosing the right college major allows people to move into occupations that are fulfilling to them. And, fulfilling work leads to overall happiness in life. Serve your clients well by offering them an interest inventory such as the CLII. Further information on the CLII can be found at Career Liftoff^®.

In this blog posting, I want to explore a different type of fear … a type that is based on unexamined emotion and fear of the unknown. This type of fear prevents prospective entrepreneurs from doing what they really want to do. Paralyzing fear deprives the world of the businesses that could be meeting the needs of clients and customers with innovative products and services.

Are you longing to start a business but fearful that you don’t have enough money, that the economy is too challenging, that you don’t know enough, or that your business will fail?  Here are some facts to consider:

1. It doesn’t take as much start-up capital to launch a business as you might think. In one Inc survey, 41% of the Inc 500 CEOs launched their businesses with $10,000 or less. More than a third started with less than $1,000!!!

2. A Kaufmann Foundation study, “The Economic Future Just Happened,” reported that more than half of the companies on the 2009 Fortune 500 list were launched during a recession or bear market, along with nearly half of the firms on the 2008 Inc. list of America’s fastest-growing companies. The data also suggest a broader economic trend, with job creation from start-up companies proving to be less volatile and sensitive to downturns when compared to the overall economy.

3. If your expectation is that you should have a perfect business plan with all aspects of your business strategy evaluated and fine-tuned before you start your business, think again. This BusinessWeek article by Doug Hall, “Fail Fast, Fail Cheap,” makes the excellent point that you can’t possibly know in advance how the market will react to your business until you invite customers to provide feedback. Mr. Hall advises to develop your business idea about 50% of the way, then launch and let customers tell you where you have made mistakes and how to improve what you offer. Isn’t that a relief?

4. It can be a lot easier to find customers or clients than to find a job. And, if your revenue comes from a variety of sources as is the case with many entrepreneurs, you may actually end up with more job security than if all your eggs were in one employer’s job basket.

“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.” – Mark Twain

So, what do you do when life hands you lemons? You make lemonade. That’s what Erik Proulx, an advertising professional did when he lost his job. He created a documentary called “Lemonade.” It’s an inspirational film about 16 advertising professionals who were laid off and found their passion—their calling. The film is about encouraging people to listen to their inner voice and ask themselves: what do I really want to do?, and make that passion a reality.

Proulx was featured in a recent interview on NPR’s “On Point” segment. As Proulx and the other people in the film discovered, there’s always an upside as with anything in life. That upside can be picking yourself up and seeing it as an opportunity to reinvent yourself by changing careers.

Unfortunately, when people lose their jobs, they don’t always listen to their inner voice. It’s often not until their backs are up against the wall that they finally start to pay attention to it.

What do you really love to do? What are the skills that you have and enjoy using? What are you passionate about? How do you want to spend your time and the rest of your life? What’s most important to you? These are the questions that may be in the back of someone’s mind after a layoff (or even before), but it’s not until they have exhausted other avenues to try and replace what they’ve lost, do they start to think about “what else?” they can do now.

For some that question can lead to entrepreneurial ventures. For example, the people featured in the film decided to listen to their inner voice and found other ways to exercise their skills—while still being able to pay the bills. One became a holistic health coach and yoga teacher; another relocated to Costa Rica and is now a successful landscape painter; yet another is a website renovator; and so forth.

People are discovering that there is no more security in a corporate job because in an ever-changing world, it can always disappear. Career reinvention is the new security. In order to move past the loss, you first have to come to terms with it and the feelings that it generates. Once people have allowed themselves to grieve and mourn the loss, can they truly say goodbye and welcome the next phase of their lives.

The key message of the film is to reconnect with the things you love and put that energy into it to see what happens. Rather than focusing on a job, zero in on the skills you know or want to develop to create the life you deserve.

In a tough economy most individuals don’t think they have the ability to negotiate salary. Regardless of the state of the economy, if you are able to get a job offer you probably are in a better position to negotiate than you think. When it comes to negotiating, as in every aspect of your life, you limit yourself by what you think you can do. If someone wants to hire you, it is because you offer something that they value. As a result you are in a position to negotiate for additional money, benefits and opportunities. There are, however, right and wrong ways to go about it. Here are some tips to help you negotiate better even when the job market is weak.
1. Take the time to learn how to negotiate, Negotiating is something you can learn. Like good writing and math, negotiating skills have to be learned. Take a class, attend a seminar or read a book on the topic. The ability to negotiate effectively will help you throughout your working career, not only when are negotiating about compensation. Every day at work you negotiate about deadlines, to get resources, about time off and to get assignments that will propel your career forward and enable to earn more money. Ultimately your career success depends on your ability to effectively negotiate. Time spent learning how to negotiate is time well spent and will pay dividends throughout your career.

2. Get a potential employer to “fall in love” with you before you talk about money. The time to be asking for things is after an employer has already decided to hire you. .Focus on what is important to the employer and what you can do for them. In tough times making or saving money is always important. So is your ability to make your prospective boss look good. Employers want to hire people who bring value and they are willing to pay what is necessary to hire them. Once the employer has decided to make you an offer, then, and only then, should you start discussing the terms of employment. Until that time, whenever the subject comes up talk about the job. Be enthusiastic about wanting the job. Show that you really want to work there. Ask for the job. No one wants to hire a person who is only looking for a paycheck. If asked what you are looking for in terms of compensation, say something like “I am sure that if I am the right person for the job and the job is right for me, something that is fair will be readily worked out.” Then ask some questions about the job. You will look good to the employer and defer the conversation until a time that is more appropriate.

3 The only difference between being employed and being unemployed is your self confidence. You are same person when you are unemployed as you were when you were working. You have the same skills and same experience. The value you can bring to an employer doesn’t change just because you don’t have a job. The only difference is your confidence. If you exhibit confidence you can not only negotiate effectively, it will help also you land the job you want. Competition for your services will also make you seem more valuable in the eyes of a prospective employer. Talking with several prospective employers at the same time will not only increase your confidence but will enhance your bargaining leverage.

Once you are hired, do a good job and continually seek out new challenges. As you take on added responsibilities and learn new skills, there will be opportunities to negotiate further improvements.

Although the ultimate form of the green economy is far more nuanced and multi-faceted that these questions imply, they shine light on myths that affect how our clients think about the green economy.

I believe green/clean/sustainable careers will have an impact on our economy, but it’s not going to happen overnight. We are in the early stages of a complete shift in our economy…the beginning of a new economic era. It’s so new we don’t have an agreed upon term for it yet. Is it going to be the green economy, low carbon economy, or clean energy economy? It is the Third Industrial Revolution or an Energy/Climate Revolution? Even though a clear label hasn’t come into focus yet, momentum for this new economy is building.

According to Recovery.gov, only 12% of the stimulus money that was distributed in 2009 went to green initiatives…by 2012, 61% of the funds are slotted to go to green related initiatives. People are making judgments about a multi-year program after only the first year. The money that has landed is creating jobs in a number of industries. It’s likely money distributed in 2010, 2011, and 2012 will do the same.

Critics posit that new green jobs will mean that carbon-based jobs will disappear. There is no doubt that over time technologies of today and tomorrow will outpace yesterday’s standards. Historical events from the Industrial Revolution through the technical revolutions of the last few decades demonstrate that new technologies overtake old technologies as time unfolds. It’s the way of innovation. Changes invoked by this economy shift are coming more frequently in a wide array of industries. Furthermore, long-standing industry giants are feeling this transition with the shifts to a greener, more sustainable economy.

This shift from one technology to the next will continue in the decades to come as one green innovation is outpaced by another. The road is likely to be rocky for some time to come. Employees must take responsibility for their own career planning and be ready to shift their path as some industries fade and others thrive. Although this strategy is one career services professionals have been recommending for a decade or more, it’s likely to be an even more important strategy moving forward.

In March US News & World Report will publish a debate between Jerome Ringo, former president of the Apollo Alliance and Kenneth Green of the American Enterprise Institute. Will be interesting to read what they have to say in response to these questions.