Happy Labor Day to You!
I hope you’re having a wonderful Labor Day holiday. A celebration of the American labor movement dedicated to the social and economic achievements of workers, Labor Day is a tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of the United States.
As workers, we take advantage of Labor Day by attending pool parties, grilling out, going to the beach, and spending time with our loved ones. It caps off two months of what is a time of holiday for many people.
Speaking of holidays, did you know that hiring slows during July and August? It does! As people go on vacation, companies naturally slow their hiring down. If you’ve tried to apply for a job in the past month or so, you probably know what I’m talking about. You may have received a few out of office messages, or not received feedback in a timely manner.
Great news though – September is the time when hiring picks back up again!
So, what do you need to do now to be sure you get back into the game as quickly as possible? If you’ve been waiting for hiring to pick back up, you’re probably hating your job, or may even be unemployed. The faster you can get back into the game, the sooner things will begin to look up.
Here are a few tips for making it count in September:
- Get business cards. I’ve said it before and I will say it again – you need business cards. You never know when you’ll meet your next hiring manager. Print business cards and take them with you – everywhere. At a minimum, they should include your name, phone number, and e-mail address. Keep them simple, and avoid images.
- Keep your resume up to date. You may need an updated resume tomorrow. Why not update it today? The longer you wait, the harder it is to recall the little details, like how much extra revenue you generated last year, or by just how much you exceeded your goal last month. Keeping your resume up to date keeps you in the game.
- Stay up to date on what jobs are available. I have seen a huge influx of jobs in the past two weeks – even for those that are normally hard to find. Have you? If you haven’t, you probably haven’t been looking. Read my blog daily for some of the top jobs I’ve found, and keep your eyes on sites like Indeed for the full listing of what’s available.
- Keep networking. Networking is not something just to do at the moment you need a job. It’s something to keep up with year round – whether you’re looking or not. Staying connected helps your network to know what you’ve been up to. It also keeps you in their minds when future opportunities pop up.
- Apply online and follow up offline. Don’t just apply online. Sending your resume into the internet black hole is unlikely to land you your next job. Do the due diligence to apply online and then search for ways to follow up offline. It will increase your odds of winning that next offer.
- Practice your pitch. One of the fist questions interviewers love to ask is, “tell me about yourself.” If you’ve practiced your elevator pitch, you’ll be a pro at explaining who you are, what you’re looking for, and why you’d be a perfect for their company. Stay sharp.
- Get help. If you find yourself struggling, reach out. Whether you need help with your resume, your elevator pitch, or networking skills, there are coaches who can help you to ensure you’re bringing your A-game.
- Don’t give up. The number one rule to job searching is: don’t give up. Your persistence will pay off. It just takes time.
I hope these tips have helped you. Visit CopelandCoaching.com to find more tips to improve your job search. If I can be of assistance to you, don’t hesitate to reach out to me here.
Happy hunting!
Angela Copeland
@CopelandCoach
Featured Job: Project Manager @ American Airlines
American Airlines is seeking a Senior Project Manager in Phoenix, AZ.
Responsibilities:
- Manages all aspects of assigned projects (including definition of project scope/objectives, development of project plan and schedule, budget and resource plan, status reporting, project development, and implementation)
- Manages project teams, including allocation of work assignments among team members
- Negotiates for resources (as required) within the context of the project objectives, requirements, and priorities
- Interfaces with business owners/customers and all other areas/individuals affected by the project
- Ensures proper project documentation of requirements and deliverables are clearly defined and delivered
- Manages project meetings; completes project tracking/analysis reports; reports to management and business owners regarding project progress, issues, and risks
- Manages vendors, as required; tracks/reviews vendor deliverables, approves vendor invoices/timesheets
- Provides technical and analytical guidance to project team
- Manages project budget; reports budget status and acts as liaison with Controller(s), as appropriate
To learn more, or to apply online, visit the American Airlines website.
Featured Job: Evangelist @ Oracle
Oracle is seeking a Public Cloud Evangelist in Seattle, WA.
A great evangelist is a flexible and effective communicator, whether they are presenting to a CIO, whiteboarding with an architect, writing a whitepaper or providing feedback to our engineering teams. Their conversations are grounded in the technical authenticity that comes from hands-on experience working with IaaS solutions, from Oracle and others.
Every member of our team has the opportunity for tremendous growth, impact and fun. You would join a young and growing team, and could strongly influence its approach and culture. Our purview is broad, which will let you focus on the problems that interest and challenge you. We have support from Oracle’s leadership going all the way up to the top, and steady access to them.
As a representative of Oracle you will have immediate access and relevance to the world’s largest enterprises. Join us and learn what we can do for them.
To learn more, or to apply online, visit the Oracle website.
Featured Job: Evangelist @ Microsoft
Microsoft is seeking a Tech Evangelist in Cambridge, MA.
The Technical Evangelist is a highly technical role within the US Developer Experience and Evangelism (DX) team. The overall mission of the organization is to drive adoption while supporting a vibrant, healthy, and sustainable developer ecosystem locally for Microsoft’s key platforms. We do this by working closely with developers, startups, and students to drive interest and preference for our platforms. This particular position is for a Technical Evangelist in New York City or Boston area.
A Technical Evangelist on the US Audience Evangelism Team uses software development knowledge, technical writing and persuasive presentation skills to inspire students, startups and developers to build innovative applications using Microsoft’s leading edge technology.
As a member of this elite team you will participate in developer events and engage the community through startup events, meetup user groups and Hackathons. You will develop relationships with community leaders and influencers and reach hundreds of thousands of developers through your branded online media and in person talks and workshops.
This is a highly technical role with the mission of engaging and inspiring the broad community of developers and fostering adoption of Microsoft development tools and technologies.
To learn more, or to apply online, visit the Microsoft website.
Featured Job: Product Manager @ The GRAMMY Awards
The GRAMMY Awards (The Recording Academy) is seeking a Senior Product Manager in Santa Monica, CA.
The Recording Academy is seeking an experienced Senior Product Manager to help drive the strategy, product definition and overall delivery of the company’s digital initiatives based on business goals and market conditions. The candidate must be technically savvy, passionate and self-driven with excellent communication skills and ability to interface with all groups within the organization.
The Senior Product Manager works with design, strategy and development to create and oversee products that fit our customer needs throughout the product lifecycle, from strategic definition to end-of-life planning. They facilitate the product requirements gathering across the team, and manage the process gates and deadlines to ensure successful delivery. The Senior Product Manager is the driver of a multidisciplinary team.
The Senior Product Manager must possess a broad base of skills and knowledge spanning digital technology, strategy and business planning, user experience design, engineering and agile/lean software development practices. They must possess an entrepreneurial drive to develop new products, while managing business needs and timeframes to broker complex relationships that evolve into real solutions.
To learn more, or to apply online, visit The GRAMMY Awards website.
Featured Job: Sr. Manager @ Ancestry
Ancestry.com is seeking a Senior Manager, Adobe Analytics Implementation in San Francisco, CA.
The Analytics practice at Ancestry is a team of over 30 innovative web analytics professionals offering leading edge interactive product strategies, insightful analyses, and reporting services. We’re searching for a new team member to share in our passion for data and continuous measurable improvement across multiple product offerings.
Our team supports the Product organization and is focused on understanding their strategic business objectives, relating those objectives to measurable indicators, and delivering learnings that promote continuous performance improvements. Working closely with members of the Product and Engineering teams, you will explore opportunities for conversion and optimization opportunities across Ancestry websites and mobile apps.
We are looking for an experienced technical leader to work with internal clients to understand their business objectives and translate them into analytics integration requirements, then execute accordingly. This is a single, hands-on role expected to install, configure, customize and deploy the Adobe web analytics platform- meaning writing the code necessary to produce reporting. This role will own the tagging capability across the organization for the global analytics team and includes coordinating upgrades and new functionality with appropriate internal team members.
Working closely with an Adobe Evangelist who oversees the adoption of the product, the Senior Adobe Analytics Implementation Tag Manager will develop the next generation of online user behavior reporting capability. You will own the execution of best-in-class strategy of use of s.props, eVars, events, classification rules, IP excludes… across multiple sites and Report Suites, as well as maintain the solution doc describing those decisions. After an initial evaluation and implementation stage, daily activities include meeting with stakeholders to gather tracking requirements then creating customized reporting ability. This is an exciting to join Ancestry and own an important capability, from ground up, that will define our success.
To learn more, or to apply online, visit the Ancestry website.
Featured Job: Head @ GoDaddy
GoDaddy is seeking a Head of Experimentation in Sunnyvale, CA.
Responsibilities:
- Lead our A/B testing program
- Establish a culture of rapid experimentation by being a ‘go to expert’ on A/B testing and MVT
- Ensure robust hypotheses are tested and help ensure sound experimental designs
- Ensure business owners interpret test results correctly and make informed decisions
- Set up a platform which enables multiple simultaneous experiments; increase velocity of and robustness of experiments
- Hire and lead a small team of statistical/testing analysts; build a
- Testing Center of Excellence
- Ensure consistent tools, methodology, and best practices are employed
- Ensure visibility of experiments; create a central repository of experiments with description & results
- Educate the business on all things Testing related (eg: Bayesian vs. Frequentist)
- Be a ‘Testing ambassador” and an evangelist – to establish a culture of Test & Learn
To learn more, or to apply online, visit the GoDaddy website.
The Importance of Honesty
Recent events have brought this very basic idea back to the surface. Honesty should be a critical part of each of our professional and personal brands. Building and maintaining trusting relationships is such an important piece of a successful career.
News coverage from the Olympics was dominated by the actions of a few swimmers. And, those actions have nothing to do with the years they’ve each spent training in the swimming pool. Many of the news reports are conflicting. What really happened or how bad things were is unclear. But, what is clear is that the swimmers were not completely honest when they spoke to officials, their families, and the media. Regardless of how bad their actions were, their characters are now being scrutinized in detail. Their lives will be forever changed, both personally and financially, by something that may have seemed inconsequential in the moment.
In a similar regard, we can often be on autopilot at work. We’re trying to make it through the day. We have more on our plates than we can possibly manage and we’re working to check everything off the list. At times, honesty, ethics, and doing the right thing can take a back seat to getting things done quickly.
In fact, a 2002 University of Massachusetts study performed by Robert Feldman found that sixty percent of people lie at least once during a ten minute conversation. It said that “most people lie in everyday conversation when they are trying to appear likable and competent.”
Although the number seems high, this reasoning makes sense. Someone may initially tell a small lie to make themselves look better. But, if caught, a lie can truly impact how we see that person going forward. We may question everything that person has told us before, and whether or not they will tell the truth in the future.
In an interview, telling a lie can cost you the job. If there’s something inaccurate on your resume or in other information you’ve shared along the way and it’s discovered, you won’t receive a job offer. If you’re fortunate enough to make it through the hiring process and then the lie is discovered, it could be grounds for termination.
With this said, accidents do happen. There are times when we’re trying our best to be honest and something we’ve communicated is inaccurate. When this happens, the best answer is to be straightforward with the truth. Dancing around the issue only sets you up to look like you were being dishonest all along. Apologize to anyone who may have been hurt, take corrective steps, and try to move on quickly.
It’s better to build a reputation as someone who’s a little too honest than someone who isn’t quite honest enough. Honesty will allow you to grow professional relationships that will last for years to come.
Warren Buffet said it best. “It takes twenty years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”
Angela Copeland is CEO and founder of Copeland Coaching and can be reached at CopelandCoaching.com or on Twitter at @CopelandCoach.
Featured Job: Event Manager @ Indeed
Indeed is seeking an Event Manager in Austin, TX.
Indeed is looking for an events professional to manage and execute our global event experience program by promoting the Indeed brand, developing client relationships and driving revenue for the company. The Global Events Manager will work closely with internal client-facing sales teams, marketing teams and senior leadership to create transformational event experiences for strategic clients on a global scale. This person must be a self-starter, highly dependable, polished, confident and committed to Indeed’s success. Must be articulate, clear and precise in objectives and actions; flexible, creative, extremely detail-oriented, and a high-quality producer under tight deadlines.
To learn more, or to apply online, visit the Indeed website.
Featured Job: Project Manager @ St. Jude
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is seeking a Project Manager of Quality / Safety in Memphis, TN.
The Project Manager-Quality/Safety is responsible for the overall planning, management and completion of projects on a wide variety of programs. Works with staff and physicians to develop project scope of work documents and project plans. Uses project management skills to manage project roles, identify resource requirements, meet training needs, define project deliverables, provide customer satisfaction and reporting structures and insure quality of projects. Identifies the technical approach to be used on a given project and manages the system development process. Documents opportunities to integrate systems and resources to fulfill project requirements. Ensures effective communications and relationships between customers and project team members are maintained. Responsible for significant, institution-wide projects, typically focused on meeting project commitments, including communications with sponsors, stakeholders etc. Spends majority of time on project management responsibilities. Leads the design, testing, planning, and implementation of complex projects for systems that can affect many users.
To learn more, or to apply online, visit the St. Jude website.
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