Executive Power Brand ~ Deb Dib, The CEO Coach

CEO Confidence Index rose in May

"Chief Executive magazine’s CEO Confidence Index, the nation’s only monthly CEO Confidence Index, rose in May. The CEO Confidence Index rose 15.6 points to 109.9 – a gain of 14.2%."

Seems like good news, but caution is advised by a number of CEOs cited in the study. As one CEO reflected, "We’re likely to see the economy pick up in the next quarter, but the global situation could reverse the improvement trend. All said, we may see some quarterly growth the next few quarters, but watch out for the real devil behind the scenes.” 

What's your take? Good news, or too soon to tell?

The Twitter Job Search Guide: The Missing Manual for Executive Career Success

Two years ago I barely knew what Twitter was - it seemed like just another useless time-sucking social media site, with the emphasis on "social." 

Fast forward to March 2010, and no one is more surprised than I to find that I am the proud co-author of the first book about using Twitter for job search to be written by three experienced career coaches who know what works in careering and job search - and how Twitter makes it all work better.

Why a book? Why now? Simple. Twitter is one of the most useful (and most misunderstood) career-building, opportunity-attracting tools - and most people still think is for "birds, nerds, and kids." And in this economy, job seekers (even very senior executive job seekers) need all the help they can get - a support system, a vibrant network, job leads, research tools, and more - and they can get it from Twitter.

Executives have a unique opportunity to build their brands and extend their hands on Twitter - to be seen as visible, viable, and valuable leaders - and to help others on the way. We know the value of an exec's time is sky-high so we've created a plan that (after your short learning curve) will allow you to use Twitter effectively in just 15 minutes a day.

The Twitter Job Search Guide has more than a dozen fascinating stories of successful job seekers who found meaningful work on Twitter, 140 "Tweets" from career experts, advice from some of the most innovative recruiters around, and pioneering ways to use "short form" thinking to power up your career communications (resumes, letters, pitches, etc). 

My co-authors @SusanWhitcomb, @Chandlee, and me, @CEOCoach, invite you to drop your suppositions about Twitter, and join the growing number of corporate leaders, recruiters, companies, thought leaders, bloggers, news sources, and "just folks" who find that Twitter is truly what Chris Brogan calls "the informational pulse."

Twitter attracts avid fans and die-hard skeptics. Please comment and let us know why and how you use Twitter - or why you don't. Let's get the conversation going and share some great ideas, in the collaborative and generous spirit of the Twitter community.

Execunet's Recruiter Confidence Index showing growth. Are you ready for new opportunities?

March 1, 2010

Today, Execunet's Recruiter Confidence index, a leading benchmark in executive hiring trends since 2003, found that 53% of 183 surveyed recruiters are "confident" or "very confident" that the executive job market will continue a slow upward trajectory over the next six months. This number has been slowly rising over the past 18 months, from a low of less than 30% in November of 2008. 

Mark Anderson, President and Chief Economist of Execunet, cautions that, as has happened in other recoveries, companies will be "testing the waters" in hiring before a steadier rise begins. The good news from Mark is that, "This economy, however challenged, continues to create far more executive jobs than it did a year ago."

If you've been one of the lucky execs who have been employed during this time, and holding tight before making a move, are you prepared to jump on opportunities as the tide turns? Will you be scrambling to find and update your career docs and pitch when the recruiter calls, or a contact gives you a dream lead? That's not working from a place of power!

Now is the time to polish (or discover) your executive brand, review your career materials (if you have a resume older than a year, it is too old - get those new accomplishments defined and ready for your best impression), focus on building or maintaining a robust on-line identity (far more critical than most execs realize), and beef up your network. 

Those who are confidently "visible, viable, and valuable" will have the best opportunity to be hunted, and land faster (with better compensation). Don't wait until the economy heats up...do your homework now!

Ten Tips for Executive Rebranding to Win in Volatile Markets

The market as changed - fast - thoroughly - like an earthquake. 

This seismic shift has left even the most accomplished top talent feeling a bit lost in the present and thoroughly uneasy about the future.

In this volatile climate it's tempting to change who you are - to meet what you think the market needs - so you can protect your current job or secure a new position.

But changing your personal brand is a "no can do" – it’s intrinsically who you are!

However, you can change your executive brand - what you are known for; what your personal brand looks like when you take it to work - and the perceived value attached to that executive brand. 

To retool your executive brand you need clarity, passion, and focus. 

Clarity is about the market and your brand - what the market needs now and what in your executive tool kit of ROI contribution intersects with that need. 

Researching the market and new paradigms in business is hard - but once you have that clarity passion is inevitable because you'll be in your zone, in your sweet spot. 

Focus is about staying on your new course every day and doing what needs to be done to build your new executive brand presence.

Here are ten "Deb Dib" rules for rebranding to win in volatile markets...

1. Do the homework you need to do to know what the market needs, how you can help, and what you now want to be known for. 

2. Make sure your new executive brand value is comfortable and authentic to you.

3. Make sure it's valuable to an employer and/or market. Make sure you can prove the ROI of your executive brand through stories of previous accomplishments.

4. Try and be as niched (specialized) as possible to increase your value. Scarcity value sells!

5. Get passionate about evangelizing your new message. If you can’t be passionate about it you may not yet have reached the clarity of a deeply visceral and valuable brand - keep working for that “eureka” feeling that tells you you’re there.

6. Create a strategic plan and time line for maximizing your exposure as your new brand. If you are employed, don't forget that you need to do this within your company as well as in the marketplace.

7. Don’t forget to include re-building or establishing your new branded on-line presence via LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Namz, VisualCV, etc.

8. Make all decisions brand decisions – ask yourself, “Is the answer on brand or not?” “Will this decision strengthen my brand presence, or weaken it?”

9. Have very good reasons for doing something that is off-brand. A muddy brand dilutes rather than strengthens. A muddy brand confuses and erodes confidence – your own and that of the marketplace.

10. Educate your "personal board of directors" as to your new direction - get some passionate advocates working with you.

Bonus tip: Give to get - be open and generous with “on brand” knowledge and help – the "career karma" William Arruda and Kirsten Dixson talk about in Career Distinction doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

Bonus rule: Embrace the knowledge that building, strengthening, and refining an authentic and valuable executive brand never ends - it's an evolving and exciting continuum that helps you land faster, earn more, have fun, and even change the world a bit!

Are You Attracting Digital Dirt or Digital Desire? Here's How to Find Out.

With today's virtually unlimited public access to a deep-dive of digital information about you, you MUST know what you look like on-line.

What are people saying about you? If you are a successful executive (or just about anyone), employers, recruiters, board members, the media, and even your friends and family will Google you.

What will they find? Good, bad, or indifferent, you want to know. Knowledge is power -- power that will enable you to leverage what's positive and mitigate what's problematic.

Visit Dan Schawbel's Personal Branding Blog for a list of 5 free, must-use tools to help you track and manage your on-line (and off-line) reputation.

 

Fifteen Tips Executives Need to Know NOW to Make a Career Transition in a Volatile Market

1.    Start with the known -- If you've been laid off, excessed in a merger, or just want out of your current field it often helps to pursue companies, industries, and functions that have some connection to your field. These are often the most productive targets. Examples might be healthcare to biomediclal; teaching to educational sales; consumer products brand management to B2B marketing; banking to corporate finance; engineering to green technologies; software development to new media.

2.    Seek growing fields -- New, growing, and emerging fields like green technologies, clean energy, social media, and others, will have fewer job applicants trained in those precise areas. They are looking for the best, but know that the best will often have to come from somewhere else. If your value and experience speaks to their needs, your transition is assured. But it's your job to build the bridge to them and make your case. Barbara Safani's Career Solvers research department can help you with comprehensive job search research services. Mark Hovind's Job Bait site has terrific stats on employment and market trends by industry and region.

3.    Leverage volatility -- When mass layoffs occur, smaller companies that could not compete for top-talent rush into to fill the gap and gobble up superior performers. If you are laid off, don't limit your search to your industry or function, an unrealistic salary, or a geographic location. This is the time that companies are thinking creatively and are more open to speaking with "non-traditional" hires with a great track record. And they will be directing their recruiters to do so too.

4.    Concentrate on unique transferable value -- A transition (indeed any hire) depends on value not skills. Determine the value you bring -- value that transcends the boundaries of industry or function and underlies all your successes. Examples might be an ability to 1) consistently deliver growth no matter what the circumstances, 2) always find the one thing within an already good process that make s it deliver even more productivity or revenue, or 3) motivate a team to gel and excel in difficult circumstances.

CEOs and LinkedIn: Just do it!

Before you read this post, if you're not yet on LinkedIn, get over whatever uneasiness you have and get on it.

You need to be there. If you are not, the people you need to know (recruiters, potential employers, potential vendors, prospects etc) will think it's weird that you're not.

Can you imagine not showing up in Google? (I do hope you show up in Google!). Can you imagine your company not showing up on Google? If you don't show up on LinkedIn, that's just about as bad.

If you are reluctant to appear on LinkedIn because you are a CEO, you're not alone.

I've had CEOs tell me they shouldn't be on LinkedIn because it opens them up to far too much unwelcome contact. Well, when you are between assignments every few years (CEO tenures are running between 2 and 4 years on average), you'll wish you had some of that contact! The time to build your LinkedIn network (and your employment brand/company brand presence) is now, not later.

THE expert on LinkedIn and how to work it to your advantage is Jason Alba, author of I'm on LinkedIn, Now What?? and founder of the JibberJobber Career Toolset (In my opinion it's the best career CRM for CEOs and other execs). The book and companion blog are the most practical, fast-read guides I've found for CEOs to understand and embrace the power of LinkedIn.

Jason recently wrote a very useful post on LinkedIn recommendation protocol. It's a must-read if you want to use LinkedIn recommendations (believe me, you do) to build or enhance your C-level/executive credibility/brand and demo your value.

If you're in the C-suite (or heading that way) and have already used LinkedIn, LinkedIn recommendations, and/or LinkedIn questions as a career tool, how have they helped? I'd love to hear your experiences and successes.

Advice from the Trenches - from Pink Slip to VP

Stop by Jason Alba's JibberJobber blog for some real-world "here's what worked for me" advice from a pink slipped, and now-employed executive job seeker.

He planned and he executed. He got his finances in order for a long-haul search, he networked (the right way) at every opportunity, he researched companies and asked CXOs for introductions/contacts at those companies, he volunteered as a resource for others (and in doing so, leveraged that to prove his skills and stay fresh).

His advice is simple and powerful. This is everything you've heard in books, articles, etc., but proven by a peer.

For many execs, making these plans isn't hard, and planning makes them feel productive. Once planning is done, getting started and staying motivated during the execution is the tough part. But it's no tougher than any mission-critical project at your company. Like those projects, job search done right requires a deep well of perseverance, hard work, resiliency, and emotional fortitude.

For those of you looking at the baffling and uneasy task of job search, make an action plan with these tips as your guide. And then get moving on executing on it! Rather than passively posting resumes online or waiting for a recruiter to return your calls, you'll be actively engaged in building your future, and developing career-long connections along the way.

Five Ways to Jump-Start Your Network When Your Network is Nowhere

Is this you?

You know networking works. You know everyone says networking is the best way to get a job. Maybe you even got a job from a lead a contact gave you. But you’ve been too busy doing your job to keep your network alive, or maybe you’ve never networked.

And now your network is nowhere.

You keep meaning to get out there and get started networking. When you have time. When you need to. When it feels right.

Now you’re afraid you waited too long.

You’re afraid that your job may be in jeopardy, or that you are being passed up for a promotion, or that you are stagnating where you are, or that you need more professional visibility.

Or maybe, the worst has happened—you’ve lost your job and you need a network NOW.

Jump Starting is Your Answer

Building a vibrant network of professional and personal contacts doesn’t have to take years. You CAN jump-start your network—even if you’ve not networked for months or years. Even if you have never networked.

Using just five simple steps you can create an action plan that will get you out there, get you known, get you traction, and get you set for a lifetime of powerful and satisfying networking. Follow these five simple steps to jump-start your network and create career momentum:

1. Be your own advertising agency
2. Be your own PR organization
3. Become visibly involved in industry groups
4. Get personal with one-on-one calls and meetings
5. Go virtual to get personal

The steps are not hard, but you will have to work hard to make this happen in a compacted timeframe. Remember—you likely have a lot of catching up to do! But with a plan and with passion, you can make it happen, and make it happen faster than you think.

Is success real without value?

Stop by Cube Rules today and read Scott Herrick's post Value Must Precede Success.

In the bustle of business we sometimes forget our grounding -- the reason we are in business -- and the way we want to conduct our lives.

Sure you can have a business (and a life) without value, but for how long, and at what personal and professional cost?

At Executive Power Brand, my passion is to work with leaders who consciously practice value as a goal -- in business and in life. Value is in their DNA. It's who they are -- an authentic part of their personal brand -- and it touches everyone they manage, the products or services the company sells, and the world in which they live. You might be surprised at how many of these great leaders exist in the corporate jungle, quietly and powerfully doing the right thing, everyday -- and leading highly successful companies or divisons.

Scott's post is an apt reminder of value's reach. It touches every part of life and business. With value, purpose meets passion and profit follows.

Can committed and passionate leaders instill a value proposition throughout the organization? Over at Chief Executive Robert M Donnelly explores how Apple, Costco, and FedEx have built value into their products, people, and customer interactions. Their corporate DNA is built around an implied promise of value, and their brands are wildly successful in their markets.

Without value can true personal and business success be achieved? Without value does success have real meaning? What do you think?

2008 Executive Hiring Survey - What's Growing and What's Going

ExecuNet just released their "16th Annual Executive Job Market Intelligence Report" survey of more than 250 employer organizations.

These are the executive job functions that corporate employers anticipate will deliver the highest executive hiring growth in 2008. Note, these are functions, NOT industries.

• Business Development, 14.8%
• Sales, 12.9%
• Operations Management (including Quality,
  Supply Chain and Logistics), 12.9%
• General Management, 10.3%
• Finance, 9.1%
• Engineering, 9.1%
• Marketing, 8.7%
• MIS / Information Technology, 6.2%
• Consulting, 6.1%
• Research and Development, 5.7%
• Human Resources, 3.5%

You can download an eight-page summary of the report from ExecuNet even if you are not a member. (The full report requires ExecuNet membership.)

The new face of loyalty

Jason Alba has a thought provoking post over at the JibberJobber blog. He speaks of a VP he met on a trip - they discussed how difficult it is to have been fired and to then enter a new job with any kind of loyalty. Jason said he didn't think he could have that kind of loyalty again. The VP said, 'Sure you will have loyalty. But you’ll be cautiously optimistic.'

I think "cautious optimism" is a great response to a job market in flux. With C-level tenures shrinking to three years and under (CMOs are trending at just about 18 months!) loyalty tempered with cautious optimism for the length of employment sounds just about right.

Of course that doesn't mean one should be cautiously optimistic about doing the job - doing the job requires loyalty to the team and full-out optimism and energy.

In my comment on Jason's blog post I suggested that for savvy career activists who know that they must be prepared to move at anytime, a good phrase might be "Cautiously optimistic. Change ready."

What do you need to do to create your own career (not job) security?

Are you change ready?

Are you hunting or hunted?

Here's a 'close to home' example of how branded 'niching' works to build visibility. As my developer Kirsten Dixson and I were building my new website (this one), I told her I wanted to showcase a group of respected colleagues to whom I could confidently refer prospects, as I just can't work with everyone, or even keep up with inquires.

As I thought about the resume and branding professionals I know well, I immediately thought of their specialties, their work styles, and the type of clients with whom they prefer to work. I had that clarity because they are so visible and branded in the careers industry. I know them, I know what they do, and I know I can trust them to deliver value to my referrals.

How would it feel for you to be that visible? To be so top-of-mind in your field? What would that mean in terms of your career? With purposeful branding you can create that visibility and reap the benefits.

As my speaking partner Kim Batson and I say in our brand presentations, 'You'll be the hunted, not the hunter!'

So you’ve decided to use an executive coach – now what?

Coaching is the catalyst many people need to help bring out, work toward, and achieve their very best (even dreams they thought were unattainable) in a way that they may not have been able to identify on their own. It's very cool. But how do you choose a great coach?

A good coach must be able to articulate to you the kind of client with whom he or she works best. And a good coach must be very willing to decline to work with you if you don’t fit that model.

In addition, it’s important for you to know what it is you want from the relationship – do you want a coach who is a good listener who can ask the right questions to help you “see the unseen” within you, an accountability partner, a high-level trusted advisor (be aware that’s not as much about coaching as it is consulting / mentoring), a strategic partner, a cheerleader, perhaps all of the above.

Do you want someone serious, humorous, calm, energetic, enthusiastic, thoughtful? Chemistry means a lot in an effective coaching relationship.

What are your goals for coaching – why are you looking for a coach? What do you want to achieve? Vague ideas are OK at the start, but specifics tend to emerge as work progresses. Are you ready to take action – how much “pain” do you feel? Enough for you to move on items in your coaching plan?

Hint: Ask your prospective coach if she or he has a coach and for how long? Most coaches have a coach themselves, because coaching works. I’ve had two coaches (still working with one), both of whom have been critical to my success over the years.

Notice I didn’t mention certifications, credentials, etc. There are so many out there, that it is tempting to use certification as a guide, and that’s a good jumping off place. But chemistry, fit, and progress are often better indicators.

Coaching can be a truly transformative and propelling experience, if you’ve got the right synergies with the right coach. So don’t be afraid to ask questions and dig deep. Ask you coach to explain her brand, her value proposition, her process, what excites her most about coaching. If your coach can’t deliver that information, that lack of clarity should give you pause. But is what she says gives you a shot of energy – a jolt of enthusiasm, then you may be set to soar.

Branding goes to the Interview

Some people miss a key point about personal branding – they think of it as spin, as untruthful, as a big ego-trip. But personal branding is not large or oversized, it's just who you are -- but "who you are" identified and leveraged.

A strong personal brand is not "in your face." It's a force that attracts and repels exactly because of its strength. And that's exactly what it should do. It attracts the people and opportunities that appreciate and need it and it repels those that don't.

Candidates and companies are so used to seeing hires in terms of “what can you do to make money for my company” that they often don’t consciously realize that the “who you are” and the “how you do what you do” are just as important for optimum hiring.

Yet, a Korn Ferry survey from a year or so ago discovered that once a candidate was on the short list, the things that got the candidate the job were chemistry and fit.

Branding proves chemistry and fit.
It's simple really -- at its core, hiring is all about money and fit. Accomplishments and skills demo the money and the brand demos the fit. You need both for a great hire that works for the candidate and the company.

Branding works really well in interviews because it helps with a natural selection process -- meaning that a company/job where your accomplishments and brand fit will allow you to be yourself -- in fact that's why you’ll be hired. And a company that's not looking for your kind of brand won't hire you

While that might lead to short term disappointment it also leads to more effective and satisfying hires. There's great potential in a hire where the personal and corporate brand mesh. Being who you are in the interview means you can be who you are on the job.

Your authenticity resonates and gives you great credibility and potential to succeed. And if you manage your brand, have a powerful value proposition, and keep visible in the marketplace, your brand helps you build a strong reputation – which leads to more visibility – which leads to you becoming the “hunted not the hunter.” Companies and recruiters will know who you are and come to you. And who wouldn’t love a process that delivers that kind of power? Well, that’s what well-managed personal branding does.