The Personal Touch
by Bill Ayers
Warren Buffett recently described it as the economic equivalent of Pearl Harbor. Major financial institutions — businesses we’ve worked with throughout our firm’s history — are listing or sinking like wounded battleships. Crew is being sent down the gangplank (159,000 throughout the workforce in September alone) without any of the personal touch most of our clients generally show. This lack of care compounds the negative impact on people whose world is blowing up around them. And it’s all happening at a time when the lifeline thrown to exiting employees has already grown less buoyant.
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From The Director's Chair - Managerial Courage During Turbulent Times
by Joan Caruso
Imagine sitting in a crowded airplane and the captain’s voice comes on. “Please fasten your seatbelts. There’s nothing but stormy weather ahead, and we’re going to experience a long stretch of turbulence.” If you could listen to the thoughts of all the passengers, how many different emotions would that announcement trigger?
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Mentoring Gen Y Women - The Dichotomy of Perceptions
by Sue Howarth
I recently asked several senior female executives in one of Ayers networking groups what they know now that they wish they’d known when they entered the workforce. All said that having mentors early in their careers would have helped them become more effective much sooner. Asked if they are passing on the benefit of their hard-earned knowledge to a younger generation through mentorship, the executives said they have tried but found that Gen Y women aren’t acting on their advice. In mentioning this to other business associates, I have heard many anecdotes that support this observation.
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Successful Landings
Case 1: Let go after three years at a major financial services firm, a young software developer wanted to shift into advanced human/computer-interaction design. He was recently married and his wife had also lost her job, so a rapid landing was desirable. His Ayers consultant helped the professional reframe and repackage his experience with an emphasis on accomplishments to position him for the desired role. Together they developed a marketing plan to help overcome his natural introversion. The candidate used LinkedIn extensively to build network contacts, uncover job leads, and land interviews. After two months, he landed a position as a software developer at an education-assessment company and is looking forward to a valuable new experience in a new industry.
Takeaways: In pursuing a career shift, careful repositioning of background at the outset is critical. Online social networking tools are a particularly effective networking supplement for a less extroverted but serious and confident individual.
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Career Transition 2008–Strategies for Boomers
The Ayers Report continues to explore the parameters of career transition in a difficult environment. Following is the third in our series of conversations with consultants in the firm’s Career Transition Group.
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Managing Your Online Identity
Your online presence needs to work for you. Barbara Safani offers the following tips:
- Make sure you’re easy to find. Consider purchasing your domain name (e.g., barbarasafani.com) or creating a “vanity” URL on LinkedIn. If you have a common name, consistently use your full name and tie your professional identity to it (e.g., John Alexander Smith, business-development executive).
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Interviewing Across the Generation Gap
At some point during a job search, boomers are likely to find themselves across the desk from a member of Gen X or Y. Being interviewed by someone your children’s age is hardly new, but today’s generation gap has been widened by technology and other factors. This underscores the perennial need to understand the interviewer’s perspective and be prepared to deal with it.
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Helping Boomer Workers Plan for the Next Phase
In the current wave of downsizing, Ayers is seeing more people in late career taking voluntary separation packages. Not ready to retire, they don’t necessarily want to return to corporate life.
“If they need to continue working, they often want to do something aligned with their personal interests that makes them feel they’re doing good,” says Dr. Peter Olsinski, Director of Career Transition Services at Ayers. “Even if they don’t need to work, they want to fill their time constructively. People who are accustomed to being productive all their lives aren’t really going to be happy spending 20 years fishing or playing golf!”
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Ayers Holds Job Search Seminar For Friends and Family In NYC
With 120,000+ job cuts in the financial service sector since the subprime crisis sent the economy into a tailspin and cuts rapidly spreading to other industries, The Ayers Group is reaching out to people who find themselves jobless and without access to outplacement services. Leveraging the success of its annual College Day program, aimed at students launching their first post-college job search [link to last issue], the firm has created Friends & Family: a full day of job search workshops presented by Ayers career transition professionals. Sessions cover everything from resumé writing to role playing designed to develop interview skills and from social networking to online search.
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Consultant's Corner
The Inner Game of Job Search
By Sean Brawley
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Sean Brawley
Senior Executive Consultant
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With the winds of change blowing hard around us, it’s more important than ever to know how to build inner stability. If you are negative in your thinking, unclear about who you really are and the vast inner resources at your disposal, you risk being uprooted.
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