Manage Your Career as a Business

From this point on, you will learn to manage your career as the CEO of a business — the business of “ME, Inc.”

The CEO of any company runs the company. CEOs direct all critical operations such as sales and marketing, research and development, strategy, finance, corporate culture, human resources, community affairs, public relations, and so on.

CEOs are primarily responsible for setting the corporate strategy and vision. They decide which products to introduce into which markets and against which competitors. CEOs decide how the company will brand itself and differentiate itself in the marketplace. Ultimately, the CEO is responsible for the success or failure of the company.

Happy New Year,

Rod Colon

What a Difference a Decade Makes

As recently as the mid-1990’s, getting a job, starting a business, or switching career paths were not considered to be overwhelmingly difficult challenges. The jobs were out there but you had to spend lots of time using the increasingly popular Internet job boards to ferret them out and then electronically submit on them.

Since then, however, the global jobscape has changed dramatically. Economic pressures have forced companies to cut staff in order to keep their budgets in line. Achievement payouts, merit awards, bonuses, raises, and benefits have been relentlessly trimmed back in what began as a trickle but which today is a torrent. The available pool of jobs has dried up to such a point that if you need a job badly enough, the pressure of competition now forces you to prove your value and unique talents in an almost spectacular fashion.

In an era in which jobs have become unbelievably scarce, it’s regrettable that the majority of job seekers still rely on submitting generic resumes to Internet job boards with the belief that they can compete successfully with an ever-growing population of job seekers. The real problem with this approach is that it delivers miserable results involving little or no human-to-human interaction, networking, relationship-building, etc… — skills that, in the real world, are at the root of all successful business ventures. It is very much like tossing your resume into an immense “black hole” and watching it vanish forever with zero opportunity for acknowledgement or follow-up.

Today, there’s a dynamic and intelligent alternative. Shape My Career has partnered with the ETP Network (Empowering Today’s Professionals) to engineer a whole new job search system for professionals who want to manage their careers in the same way a CEO manages a company.

The system is logical, precise, and driven by business ownership logic. It leverages the power of advocates — people who will help you get connected to decision-makers or contacts who know those decision-makers — within a company that interests you. It requires you to develop a powerful value proposition which, if designed correctly, will compel any reasonable decision-maker to grant you an interview.

Happy New Year,

Rod Colon

The 21st Century Jobscape

The 21st century jobscape is unlike any other in history. Some of its key features include things such as: 1) a tremendous upheaval in global economic forces; 2) the “flattening” of today’s business environment in such a way that competition for available jobs has been ratcheted up into near-stratospheric levels; 3) an increased need on the part of many businesses to employ people who can comfortably cross the traditional boundaries of job descriptions and easily deploy their skills in a wide variety of available positions (thus significantly reducing costs).

If the preceding paragraph has given you an uneasy feeling about your current job search predicament, then it’s accomplished its purpose. It was written as a wake-up call for all those professionals in transition who still believe that the old, “traditional” methods of looking for jobs will still serve them well and eliminate the uncomfortable period of transition.

To frame out your understanding of Shape My Career’s new methodology, you’ll need to have your finger on the pulse of today’s job market … the “21st century jobscape”, as we call it.

Happy New Year,

Rod Colon

WE ARE YOUR “ON-CALL” CAREER COUNSELORS

We hope that you will gradually learn to think of SMC as your “on-call” career counselors. No two individuals will ever receive identical career counseling services because no two individuals will ever have the exact same career management requirements.

We teach, train, advise, counsel and mentor. We place the entire burden of “owning your career” on you, but we will be there every step of the way to make sure you take ownership in a true businesslike manner.

Happy Holidays,

Rod Colon

The Success List

You might think that just being enrolled in the SMC program practically guarantees a successful transition to a new job or position. But you’d be dead wrong.

The success you experience here will come from a strict adherence to some fundamental principles we will teach you. Here is a partial list:

• Your attitude, behavior, and even the way you think all have an unbelievably powerful effect on your success during periods of transition. If you don’t already know how to do it, you will need to develop a positive mental attitude about literally every task — large and small — you take on every day. Setbacks will happen but they should never be allowed to defeat you.

• You must learn how to think like a business owner with respect to your job search and career management activities. You are the CEO of a business and must learn to think and act like one. All decisions are yours, both good and bad. You must learn to hold yourself accountable at all times.

• You will bear the brunt of all work you attempt — no one will bear it for you. This is a measure of character, determination, and commitment to success. You must be relentless about pursuing all angles of the job search, not just the high-profile or glamorous ones.

• Know and understand yourself well. Know your strengths and weaknesses; capitalize on your strengths and avoid situations in which your weaknesses tend to reveal themselves. Even more important, develop a keen sense of self-awareness with respect to your interests, talents, and special skills.

• Never assume that you have made a lasting impression on someone just because you’ve had a great phone call or a fabulous interview. Be absolutely sure you follow up in all interpersonal activities. Keeping your name and face brightly framed in the mind of a would-be decision-maker can be the difference between getting the job you want and yielding it to someone else.

• Learn to acquire mental toughness. If you’ve been raised on the need for comfort and compassion from others to get through your troubles, you may find certain aspects of the SMC Program difficult. You will need to “steel your resolve” to get through the tough times on your own … and once you’ve done it successfully a few times, it will become not only second nature for you but one of the most valuable weapons in your career management arsenal.

• Become a master networker. The more you know about networking and the finer points of executing it, the more successful you’ll be in making connections with decision-makers and advocates who can help you along on your journey.

Happy Holidays,

Rod Colon

A Learning Library

As a participant, you must begin to think about your experiences in SMC as a learning laboratory. Most of the time, your efforts will be successful, but from time to time you will experience setbacks. The SMC learning laboratory will help you put problems into a healthy perspective so that setbacks are perceived only as temporary delays (and terrific learning lessons!) in forward progress — just as a CEO views minor setbacks in a real-world corporation.

Happy Holidays,

Rod Colon

732-367-5580

Shape My Career Offers ...

SMC offers participants a well-defined path through the maze of traditional career management and job searching techniques. But it does so using a paradigm of business ownership and personal accountability for all of your career decisions. The advantages of this model are powerful. Briefly, participants will:

• participate in a group of self-assessment exercises designed to make them keenly aware of their talents, strengths, skills, and overall fitness for the kind of career or position they wish to pursue;

• learn how to think about their careers as business owners instead of some random task on a “to do” list and learn how to manage the day-to-day operation of that business as its Chief Executive Officer;

• learn the art of making connections in order to develop sound, stable, and long-term relationships;

• learn how to develop “targeted value propositions” for the positions they seek;

• learn and master the critical 21st century skill of personal branding;

• master certain fundamental and mission-critical Internet skills;

• learn and master a specific 7-Step Job Search Methodology that practically guarantees success in getting interviews (provided it’s followed precisely);

• learn the key behaviors that drive successful connections and master the techniques for finding advocates;

• learn how to access and leverage the “hidden job market”;

• learn how to prepare for a successful interview;

• learn how to manage negotiations successfully;

• learn what must be done during the first 90 days of landing a new position to ensure success on the job while continuing the never-ending task of expanding your network.

This is by no means a complete list. There are many other techniques, tips, tools and procedures that will be introduced as the program’s topic sequence requires them.

Happy Holidays,

Rod Colon

Chief Operations Officer

Shape My Career, Inc.

155 North Washington Avenue

Bergenfield, NJ 07621

tel: 201.477.8370 ext. 170

alt: 732-367-5580

fax: 201.385.8243

email: rod.colon@shapemycareer.com

web: www.shapemycareer.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/rodcolon

A COMPLETELY UNIQUE CAREER MANAGEMENT PROGRAM

From its very name, Shape My Career distinguishes itself from all other outplacement services. SMC literally “molds” a career transition plan around you — the participant — and your individual needs and unique requirements. Compare this with most other outplacement services that typically use a cookie-cutter “one size fits all” approach to job searches and career transition — and then promise extraordinary results! The fact is … there is no comparison!

Our staff of expert-level career counselors is led by Mr. Rod Colón, Founder and CEO of the ETP Network (Empowering Today’s Professionals). Rod has been building networks, teaching networking skills, and providing expert-level coaching for business and career professionals for almost twenty years. He draws from experience on both sides of the interviewer’s desk and therefore brings a fresh and unique perspective to the career counseling space.

At some point in your SMC training, you will interact directly with Rod and make some interesting discoveries. Although he is energetic, enthusiastic, and passionate about helping people, he demands the very best you have to give at all times and uses a no-nonsense approach to get it. As he senses your level of commitment to help yourself, he offers customized guidance and precisely targeted support to ensure you follow a path that will lead to extraordinary success!

Rod Colon

Your Career Is Calling Radio Show on PRX

If you go to www.prx.org and click on "series" you will see that we have uploaded a couple episodes of Your Career Is Calling. We should have all our shows up by the end of the month.

Enjoy,

Rod Colon

Shape My Career

If you haven’t already done so, take a close look at our logo.

An “S”-shaped section of road blends neatly into the word ‘Shape’. Shape what? “Shape My Career.” The logo serves as a visual reminder of what we regard as our mission in this uniquely designed job search and career management guide.

The mission? We intend to deliver a program of live instruction focused on getting you further along in your journey to the next stage of your career — and far more expeditiously — than any rival outsourcing or career management company. As if that weren’t enough, our program is designed to be custom-tailored for your specific needs and requirements. We will, quite literally, be helping you to decide the direction, speed, and quality of that journey … in short, its shape.

In addition to helping you shape your career, our program will offer resources and support to help you as you continue your efforts even after you’ve left the program! There aren’t many outsourcing agencies that can make that claim!

The methodology contained in the Shape My Career Resource Guide will steer you toward the goal you ultimately set for yourself, whether you are seeking full-time employment, part-time employment, contract work or self-employment.

This is not a “spoon-feed me” course. In fact, it will involve a great deal of work, time, energy, and commitment on your part. But the payoff of putting yourself through it will be enormous when you once again find yourself in the ranks of the employed, or perhaps generating new business, or starting off on your brand new career.

You’re on your way and we’re here to help!

Rod Colon

Social Networking: Sounds Like a Lot of Extra Work … Why Bother?

I’ll tell you why you should bother, but first let’s answer this question: Why do people go online in the first place?

The answer is simple: According to eMarketer, about 70% of U.S. households were on the Internet in 2008. What were they doing?

· Researching

· Sharing

· Shopping

· Communicating

If your next question is "Do I really have time to do all this online networking?” the answer will be no surprise: If you want to win the race for 21^st century jobs then yes, you must make the time!

The time investment is reasonable: Writing occasional blog posts or replying to questions on LinkedIn or Twitter doesn’t take very long. But the return on that investment is significant because your dialogue can be picked up by thousands or maybe even millions of Internet users simultaneously. Try accomplishing that through snail mail, the cell phone, or “texting!”

Here’s another angle to consider: Recruiters and decision-makers are using LinkedIn and other social networking sites more frequently to gather information about job applicants. If you have any desire to shape their opinion of you, why wouldn’t you get actively involved? At the very least, you should be on LinkedIn to build contacts, obtain introductions, ask questions, and support others. It doesn’t take long for a recruiter to spot something special about you, something that’s part of your personal brand — but to benefit from the process you must be actively engaged in it.

Best wishes and catch you on Sunday morning on Your Career Is Calling,

Rod Colón

BREAKING FREE OF TRADITIONAL LIMITATIONS

Career professionals have long been aware that certain kinds of people are better at certain types of jobs and that it’s important to find as good a match as possible between the person you are and the kind of job you choose. The problem is that the traditional approach to job searching doesn’t take enough considerations into account. The conventional analysis looks at only the “big three”: your abilities, interests, and values.

Shape My Career recognizes the importance of these factors. Certainly you need the right skills to perform a job well. It also helps if you’re interested in your work. And it’s important to feel good about what you do. But this is far from the whole picture! Your personality has additional dimensions that also need to be recognized. As a general rule, the more aspects of your personality you match to your work, the more satisfied you’ll be on the job.

Most of us make our most important career decisions when we are least prepared to do so. The decisions we make early in life set into motion a chain of events that will influence our entire lives. Yet when we’re young we have little or no experience making job choices, and we tend to have an overabundance of idealistic enthusiasm, plus a reckless lack of concern for future consequences. We haven’t lived long enough to see ourselves tested in a variety of situations, and we’re highly susceptible to bad advice from well-intentioned parents, teachers, counselors, or friends. No wonder so many people get off to a poor start.

There is no easy solution. But a methodical and relentless commitment to self-discovery will always provide rich career dividends. Getting to know yourself well is not a narcissistic activity; it’s an intelligent and tactical maneuver used by an increasingly large number of professionals to help them carve out “favorable position” within the high-stakes competition involved in finding jobs and satisfying careers.’

Rod Colon

A FRESH APPROACH TO CAREER MANAGEMENT

You might think that just being enrolled in the SMC program practically guarantees a successful transition to a new job or position. But you’d be dead wrong.

The success you experience here will come from a strict adherence to some fundamental principles we will teach you. Here is a partial list:

· Your attitude, behavior, and even the way you think all have an unbelievably powerful effect on your success during periods of transition. If you don’t already know how to do it, you will need to develop a positive mental attitude about literally every task — large and small — you take on every day. Setbacks will happen but they should never be allowed to defeat you.

· You must learn how to think like a business owner with respect to your job search and career management activities. You are the CEO of a business and must learn to think and act like one. All decisions are yours, both good and bad. You must learn to hold yourself accountable at all times.

· You will bear the brunt of all work you attempt — no one will bear it for you. This is a measure of character, determination, and commitment to success. You must be relentless about pursuing all angles of the job search, not just the high-profile or glamorous ones.

· Know and understand yourself well. Know your strengths and weaknesses; capitalize on your strengths and avoid situations in which your weaknesses tend to reveal themselves. Even more important, develop a keen sense of self-awareness with respect to your interests, talents, and special skills.

· Never assume that you have made a lasting impression on someone just because you’ve had a great phone call or a fabulous interview. Be absolutely sure you follow up in all interpersonal activities. Keeping your name and face brightly framed in the mind of a would-be decision-maker can be the difference between getting the job you want and yielding it to someone else.

· Learn to acquire mental toughness. If you’ve been raised on the need for comfort and compassion from others to get through your troubles, you may find certain aspects of the SMC Program difficult. You will need to “steel your resolve” to get through the tough times on your own … and once you’ve done it successfully a few times, it will become not only second nature for you but one of the most valuable weapons in your career management arsenal.

· Become a master networker. The more you know about networking and the finer points of executing it, the more successful you’ll be in making connections with decision-makers and advocates who can help you along on your journey.

Rod Colon

How To Target Your Resume as the CEO of ME, INC.

As a fifteen–year veteran of Human Resources recruiting in both a corporate and an agency setting, I've devoted a third of my life to reviewing resumes. During this time, I saw every combination of resume fads and styles. It is abundantly clear to me that professionals spend too much time and money developing a winning resume when the client is not looking for a resume at all.

The client is not really interested in a full accounting of your education and employment. What he or she wants to know is if you have the required skills for the job and if you've successfully demonstrated mastery of those skills, preferably within the last 3 – 5 years.

Here are the questions most likely to be running through the client’s mind:

· Does the candidate have the required skills?

· Does the candidate clearly describe how he/she used the skills in his/her last few positions?

· Does the candidate demonstrate success in the skill sets required?

· Does the candidate have enough of the skills to be worth pursuing even if he/she is not a perfect fit?

· Is the candidate able to clearly communicate this on the resume or is it poorly written?

· Are the compensation expectations in line with the role?

· Is the candidate a fit from a “level” (grade) perspective? Is he/she looking to take a major step down just to find employment and then leave once a better opportunity presents itself? What is the risk in hiring the candidate?

· Will the candidate fit within the culture of the organization?

Most decision-makers review a countless number of resumes each day. On average, you only have 10 - 15 seconds in which to make a powerful first impression. If your Targeted Resume doesn’t “grab them” right away, there may not be another opportunity to grab them at all.

Still more food for thought: In the race for 21^st century jobs, we are now living in an age of consensus hiring — the decision of “yea” or “nay” is not up to just one individual but rather a whole team. Your ability to “connect” with the entire team matters a great deal.

Finally, you'll have a much better chance of being considered for an interview if the experience you cite is relevant, current, and clearly written. This way, no one with input on your suitability will misunderstand or misinterpret what you’ve written. That is the power of the targeted resume.

Separating Resume Fallacies From Facts

Fallacy

· The purpose of a resume is to list all your skills and abilities.

· A good resume will get you the job you want.

· Your resume will be read carefully and thoroughly by an interested employer.

· The more good information you provide about yourself in your resume, the better.

· If you want a really good resume, have it prepared by a resume service.

Fact

· The purpose of a resume is to spark employer interest and generate an interview.

· All a resume can do is get you in the door.

· Your resume probably has less than 10 seconds to make an impression.

· Too much information on a resume may kill the reader’s appetite to know more.

· Resumes are written to impress, not inform. Think of your resume as a marketing tool, not an historical record. It is valuable real estate, so use it for your most impressive but relevant information.

Specific Steps for Preparing a Targeted Resume:

1. Copy and paste the core requirements and responsibilities from the job description into a blank document.

2. Place a bullet “·” before each key requirement/responsibility.

3. You now have a list of key questions the client/company will ask you on the interview.

4. Now put the list in priority order — here, you must try to think and act as if you are the decision-maker to determine priority.

5. Select the top 5 to 8 skills from the list and write below each one how you have accomplished the requirement/responsibility including the impact/result of your work.

6. You now have the content to build both a great targeted resume and your talking points for the interview.

7. Incorporate your answers into the generic resume and you now have the beginnings of a powerful targeted resume.

8. Delete/remove from your resume facts/details that have no value for the job.

Don’t forget to listen to our weekly radio show Your Career Is Calling – Sunday at 8am (EST).

Best wishes and keep networking alive,

Rod Colón

Get in the Habit of Learning About Social Media “Supplemental” Tools

Here is just a very short list of applications you need to research that will make your use of social media more meaningful and more productive.

Note that we have not provided any URLs for these applications! J

1. TweetDeck – A tweet management system that makes using Twitter much easier by organizing your tweets into either predefined or customized categories. It also allows you to tweet, retweet, and reply without logging into Twitter and is great for following trending topics.

2. Twhirl – also a tweet management system; has a cloud computing feature that allows you to follow what’s trending. Can be sent to track everything that’s being tweeted about you, your company or a particular topic such as job search.

3. Postlater - A blog scheduling tool that allows you to post-date blogs and/or microblogs

4. Friendfeed – a web service that allows you to add all of your updates from social media sites, blogs, and microblogs in one place

5. SecondBrain- a social content aggregator that allows you to gather, organize and share online content

6. TweetBeep – used to set up tweet alerts – like Google alerts.

7. Hootsuite - Twitter toolbox. You can manage multiple Twitter profiles, add multiple editors, pre-schedule tweets, and measure your success.

The challenge is not only to investigate these applications but to find others, or perhaps newly released ones, that could help you in your efforts to increase exposure on the Internet. If you are truly a savvy social media user, you know that its power lies in its ability to help you make connections with others!

Rod Colon

LinkedIn

Introduction

LinkedIn is a social network made up almost entirely of business professionals. It is not really about social interactions; rather, it’s designed for networking between people within the same industry and across industries. As social networking sites go, it's not very glamorous but for business purposes, it's got the best practical advantage since it allows anyone to build a network.

LinkedIn’s Features and Advantages:

You can:

· Maintain online resumes and link with friends, colleagues, and business contacts

· Find experts that can help you with career or job search problems

· Connect directly with any LinkedIn account holder without the need for an introduction.

Rod Colon

HOW TO IDENTIFY THE RIGHT JOB

The right job enhances your life. It is personally fulfilling because it nourishes the most important aspects of your personality. It suits the way you like to do things and reflects who you are. It lets you use your innate strengths in ways that come naturally to you, and it doesn’t force you to do things you don’t do well (at least, not often!).

How can you tell if you’re in the right job? Here are some general guidelines. If you’re not employed, keep them in mind as you search for your ideal job. If you are employed, see how your present job measures up.

If you’re in the right job, you should:

• Look forward to going to work

• Feel energized (most of the time) by what you do

• Feel your contribution is respected and appreciated

• Feel proud when describing your work to others

• Enjoy and respect the people you work with

• Feel optimistic about your future

It’s important to recognize that there are as many different paths to career satisfaction as there are happily employed people. There is no one “ideal job” to which everyone should aspire. But there is an ideal job for you — you just need to master the skills necessary to find it.

There are an infinite number of variables in the workplace. To achieve career satisfaction, you need to figure out what your preferences are and then find a job that accommodates them. Some jobs provide warmth and stability; some are risky and challenging. Some are structured, some aren’t. One job may require a lot of socializing, while another may require quiet concentration. Do you know exactly what kind of job suits you best? Have you ever even stopped to think about it?

Rod Colon

MAKE YOUR UNIQUENESS WORK FOR YOU

Since the right job flows directly out of all the elements of your personality type, you need to spend some time figuring out what makes you tick. By making a conscious effort to discover the “real you,” you learn how to focus your natural strengths and inclinations into a career you can love for a long as you choose to work.

This is where “type” is so helpful. It provides a systematic, effective way to evaluate both your strong points and your probable weaknesses or blind spots. Once you have these figured out, you’ll know how to make sure you are always operating from a position of strength.

Each one of us has a distinct personality, like an innate blueprint that stays with us for life. We are born with a personality type, we go through life with that type, and when we are laid to rest (hopefully at the end of a long and fruitful life), it is with the same type.

Now you are probably wondering, “Wait a minute. I might be one way sometimes, but at other times I’m a very different person. Doesn’t the situation influence my personality type?”

The answer is no, it doesn’t. Do we change our behavior in certain situations? Certainly! Most human beings have a tremendous repertoire of behaviors available to them. We couldn’t function very successfully if we didn’t. Sure, we act differently at work than we do at home, and it makes a difference whether we’re with strangers, close friends, at a ball park, or at a funeral. But people don’t change their basic personalities with every new door they walk through.

All this is not to say that environmental factors are not extremely important; they are. Parents, siblings, teachers, and economic, social, and political circumstance all can play a role in determining what direction our lives take. Some people are forced by circumstances to act in a certain way until they are literally “not themselves”.

If you are skeptical about the idea that personality type is inborn, take a look at different children from the same family. These could be your own children, your siblings, or even children from a family you know. Do they have different personalities? Absolutely! And the differences are often apparent from birth.

The concept of “personality type” is not new. People have always been aware of the similarities and differences between individuals, and over the centuries many systems and models for understanding or categorizing these differences have been developed. Today, our understanding of human behavior has been expanded to such a degree that we are now able to accurately identify sixteen distinctly different personality types.

Finding the right job for each of these distinct personalities may seem like an awesome task. However, all sixteen personality types do function in the world. As we will see, it is possible to identify your own personality type and the types of others, to understand why certain types flourish in certain kinds of jobs, and to clarify why people find career satisfaction in different ways.

Rod Colon

BLOGGING

BLOGGING

Many job seekers ask "Should I be blogging?"

Blogging allows you to offer your thoughts, insights, and opinions to the online community; it gives them a "view" of who you are and how you think. And it’s important to remember that decision-makers often browse blogs to see who truly provides value.

If you’re new to blogging, here’s a great tip: Start by not blogging at all, at least not right away. Instead, simply visit the blogs of others, especially those who share your interests. If you post meaningful comments on their blogs, you’ll be setting the stage for reciprocal visits once you settle into a comfortable posting routine.

RUN YOUR CAREER AS A BUSINESS

RUN YOUR CAREER AS A BUSINESS

For far too long, job seekers have tried finding positions with an approach that can only be compared to falling into some gigantic “Black Hole” in space. The Black Hole approach to job searching goes like this: You take a copy of a generic resume that’s been on your computer for years, tweak a word or two in the belief that you are giving it relevance, then visit the major Internet job boards to see how many job openings look like good possibilities. You spot a few, submit the generic resume (possibly with a cover letter) and then “wait it out” until a response comes in.

But the reality is this: 95% of the time a response doesn’t come in. The problem with this approach is that job seekers have become complacent and careless working on the assumption that an Internet job board, being nothing more than a piece of software sitting on a server somewhere in cyberspace, will accept your documents, evaluate them, pass them up the line for review if the match seems like a good one, and so on. But Internet job boards are not people. There is literally no opportunity for human interaction (e.g., dialog, questions, callbacks, follow-ups, etc…). That is both the primary flaw and inevitable failure of the so-called “Black Hole” approach.

SKILLS vs. COMPETENCIES

SKILLS vs. COMPETENCIES

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BASIC DEFINITIONS

A skill is something you learn through education or experience. A competency is something you are born with. Interviewers tend to pose questions that will help to reveal your competencies.

FUNDAMENTAL CHARACTERISTICS AND DIFFERENCES

· Competencies are underlying characteristics that differentiate superior performance from average performance. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that well-trained interviewers try to determine your competencies so that they can make the best possible match on key positions.

· Skills are the know-how, the information acquired from most knowledge. Competencies, however, are the inherent abilities a person has or uses to achieve his/her goals by successfully deploying those skills.

Example: You can call a manager competent only if she can achieve her goals effectively by using her skills. The manager may possess organizational, planning, communication, computer, and interpersonal etc. skills. But we won't call her competent if she fails to achieve her goals, e.g. lowering production costs, enhancing a product quality etc.

· Skill is related to education whereas competency is related to training, experience etc.

· A skilled person can easily teach his skills to others in a short time but in case of competency, it needs a long time orientation and often found very difficult.

· Skills are transferable, i.e., they can be adapted for several different types of jobs or positions.

THE CEO OF ME, INC. PARADIGM

The CEO of any company runs the company. CEOs direct all critical operations such as sales and marketing, research and development, strategy, finance, corporate culture, human resources, community affairs, public relations, and so on.

CEOs are primarily responsible for setting the corporate strategy and vision. They decide which products to introduce into which markets and against which competitors. CEOs decide how the company will brand itself and differentiate itself in the marketplace.

Ultimately, the CEO is responsible for the success or failure of the company.

Here are some key CEO responsibilities that you must learn to incorporate in managing your career as a business:

As the CEO of your career you will:

· Learn to partition your responsibilities to ensure that all critical operations are carried out and none get overlooked. For example, your Research & Development Department will be in charge of networking — making connections, digging up new leads, gathering business information, etc… Right from the start, anything you do that's part of this effort is processed in the R & D “department” of your mind. Likewise, your Sales & Marketing Department will oversee the development of a powerful value proposition and various parts of the 7-Step Job Search Methodology until every task is properly niched.

· Take responsibility for making tough decisions — there’s just no way around this. Tough decision-making is a skill with tremendous short and long term benefits. It trains your mind to weigh options before you commit to a course of action.

· Accept the consequences of your tough decisions — both good and bad. You can savor the good results and analyze why the bad results occurred. Most importantly, don’t waste time beating yourself up when a decision yields poor results. Pick up the pieces and move on. Learn from every aspect of the failure experience because it will move you closer to winning the race for 21^st century jobs.

· Bring a new level of personal accountability to managing your career. Why? Because you have a “governing body” to which you now have ultimate responsibility: your Personal Board of Directors (e.g., spouse, family, extended family, significant other, etc…).

Still not convinced your career can benefit from thinking like a CEO? Are you saying, "Why bother? This sounds like a whole lot of work for very little benefit."

If that’s how you see it, consider this: For every terrific opportunity you identify — and for which you’re qualified — there could be hundreds, maybe thousands of others competing for the same position. But there’s one critical difference: Most of them fail to adopt the “I’m in charge” attitude and their race for the finish line becomes a mediocre performance at best. They remain mired in the “employee mind-set”, a part of the Black Hole crowd that inevitably lags behind in the race to get the job that you are busy targeting. And while most of us don't want others to fail, there’s nothing wrong with capitalizing on the inept business decisions of others to gain a tactical advantage whenever possible. In other words, if you are thinking like a business owner and your competitors aren’t, you have a significant edge over them in the race for 21^st century jobs. Do not fail to leverage it!

Will you absorb this paradigm shift overnight? No. In a week? Unlikely. In a month? Maybe. People internalize it at very different rates. Most of our members can tell rather quickly if they are cut out to be the CEO of ME, Inc.

The good news is that this mental model will work if you make it work.