ACE Your Performance Review

Your resume is still an important self-promotion tool, despite the growing popularity of your external profile in sites such as LinkedIn. You’ll need to take every opportunity to express yourself in the best possible way to get the best jobs, first.

Is your resume as good as it could possibly be? Or has it gone stale? Here are 12 steps to ensure that your resume is at the top of any recruiter’s large pile!

1. Get into the right mindset. I find it helps to imagine that your ‘new boss’ inside your potential employer is sat in front of you, and address them directly when you write your resume. It’s a powerful visualisation technique. Regularly imagine that this person is asking you questions in an interview and answer them in the document in the appropriate sections.
2. Research your potential employer. Do you research potential employers as much as you could? Use the web, LinkedIn, and other sites to find out as much as you can about your potential employer. Learn as much as possible about their culture, mission-statements, products, territories, clients and business. Having an in-depth understanding of the organization will give you many opportunities to address specific aspects of their organization.
3. Use the right format. If you have been given a format to follow, then follow it. Ignore this at your peril! Processing resumes is a costly activity for recruiters, so out-of-format documents will be put straight in the shredder.
4. Tirelessly check for mistakes. How often do you forensically examine important documents like this for spelling errors? Don’t let spelling mistakes, grammatical errors or inaccurate statements provoke recruiters to send your resume to the trash. Time spent on this will pay dividends. Tip: read your resume backwards. This way you will read each word in turn and not skim over mistakes. Also, enlist the help of a friend to double-check it!
5. Stay positive and upbeat. Your resume isn’t the place to talk about failures. It’s a sales document, so use positive language. It’s definitely not the place to put previous employers, colleagues or projects in a bad light!
6. Don’t use ‘clever’ language. Do you use Corporate Bullshit? Keep your language simple – avoid jargon and industry-specific acronyms. It won’t always be someone who is familiar with your terminology that is reading your resume. It would be a real shame to be filtered out by someone processing your resume because they can’t understand what you have written.
7. Use active, definite language. I once heard an athlete say ‘I hope I medal this summer’. I wondered why a noun had been turned into a passive verb! What’s wrong with ‘I hope I win a medal this summer’? Avoid passive language (it’s boring for a start, and it shows a lack of accountability); demonstrate your confidence and accountability by being clear and definite in what you write.
8. Articulate achievements. How do you tell people what you have achieved? Nobody really cares what your job title is. Everybody seems to be Head of something, or VP of so-and-so. Say what you achieved rather than what you did. This is a crucial aspect of your resume!
9. Share the truth. How many porky-pies have you told on your resume? False statements in your resume are time-bombs that will go off when you least expect it. You’re sure to be found out at some point. Skilled interviewers are well-practiced; they will know how to spot the BS. Worse still, you could be branded as a liar and toxic!
10. Ensure that your skills and experience is relevant. It’s no use telling a potential employer something they don’t want to know about. Phrase your words to show how your skill set is relevant to the potential employer, or their industry. Be ruthless with this, or better still, be creative. Success in one organization or industry can be translated to a more generalized statement.
11. Avoid unnecessary detail. Irrelevant information may scupper you. Personal interests are a classic disaster zone where I have caught people claiming interests they know nothing about, or having wildly inappropriate interests for the sort of job on offer.
12. Commit your resume to memory. Can you reel off your resume from memory? You should be prepared to answer detail questions about every aspect of your resume.

It’s amazing how many people can’t describe their achievements in order to maximize its impact. When you’re performing your Self-Assessment, or talking to your manager during your Performance Appraisal, your ability to describe your achievements is a critical factor for a successful outcome. Read the rest of this entry »

The ‘problem’ of communication between business departments is age-old. It’s common to hear comments about ‘working in silos’ and such like. Internal Communications is the process that binds an organization together, yet it’s also used as an excuse to hide poor performance and bad management.

GET THIS, THOUGH – using Internal Communications can create a serious advantage for you…

In the modern enterprise, Performance Management (the process where your performance is managed, assessed and scored) is not just a matter between you and your boss. Many organizations use 360-degree feedback to gather feedback about your performance from across your organization, often beyond the boundary of your department. If your organization does this, then consider this:

If you’re not communicating with people outside of your department, how do they know what you’re doing and how well you’re doing it?

This is where Internal Communications can provide you with a solution. There are two types of Internal Communications…

1. Communication, normally from an authorized member of your department, that is formal and used to communicate plans, events, status or news about your department. You often see this kind of communication on your company’s Intranet. There are normally rules that govern the style and tone of Internal Communications of this type.
2. Communications from individuals about items of work, problems, opportunities or status updates. These are normally person-to-person and are less formal and to the point. There are still rules that govern these communications, but the tone is typically less formal.

Are you involved in any of these?

If you’re not doing #2, then you’re missing a great opportunity to keep your colleagues uptodate with what you’re doing, and your colleagues also miss the opportunity to assess how well you’re doing it. So when the 360-degree feedback form lands on their desk, what are they going to say?

Use Internal Communications to stimulate specific, current and constructive feedback.

Generally, a short communication done often is best. It needn’t be eloquent prose, but make it to-the-point, professional and courteous. And above all, make sure it has a purpose.

Take a look back at the first form of Internal Communications. Normally, the head of department would provide such a communication. Guess what though – it needn’t be that way. In the modern organization, structures are flatter and often in matrices, so the head of department is not always communicating about their domain knowledge. Leaders really do want people to step forward and take more responsibility for internal communication. This is an opportunity for YOU to stand up and be counted – and build up your profile across your organization. And when you do, your name will be recognized as a leader and expert, so when that Performance Appraisal comes around… guess what? You’re getting the credit.

If you are the leader of an initiative, service or function then why not ask to become the spokesperson within your organization? If you’re not afraid of seeing your mugshot on your intranet with a quote against your name (why should you be?) then go speak with your boss (or go right to your department head) and ask today!

Recently, I was totally impressed by a guy I met at a technology conference who has an amazing technique for organizing his projects and interests at work.

What he showed me was something simple, but very effective.

Mark Jacques has a ’swipe file’ of information he collects and uses on a day-to-day basis. During any business conversation, he can choose to pull out a page from his file to contribute to the conversation. It saves a lot of time and effort and it immediately helps the discussion get to the point and move on. Sounds too simple, but it blew my mind on how effective it is.

He collects pages from trade magazines, prints from web articles and just as importantly, scraps of paper that contain his own notes and data that he has generated himself.

We all need a swipe file of some kind. We waste so much time re-iterating information and sharing knowledge from scratch, time which could  be best used working, and to be frank, we sometimes forget – this tactic solves this problem.

What struck me is that this technique can be easily adapted to gather up information on our achievements during our appraisal period ready for presenting at our Performance Appraisal, and it also serves as a great way of reminding ourself about progress and achievements to date.

This isn’t the same as formal self-assessment documentation. The kind of information I am thinking about is the stuff we’re asking to show in the moment. These might be Thank You emails from colleagues or customers, or project closure notes, or even stats/data from your Management Information system that demonstrates the effect of your hard work. It can be anything you like, and as unstructured as you like, as long as it shows the evidence and impact of your achievements.

There is a much longer term benefit to this tactic Mark found. When he prepares documents this way and has them on hand, he is much more confident about discussing the subject. In turn, this makes him appear more impressive (as I found) and the impact he had on the listener is much greater, which increases his authority and trust placed on him. Because each presentation of the subjects are essentially well-practiced and highly-tuned. (I did note that when I asked Mark about some details on the info, he filled in more detail and can now use it again should he need to.)

How Do You Get Your Swipe-File?

Easy. It starts with a cardboard folder and a ring-bound notebook.

Many people use fully-bound books during their day-to-day activities, but tearing these pages out is a risky move (I’ve tried it, and torn right through my work!). Avoid these kinds of books.

When you’re collecting information, write it in your book as you normally would. Review it afterwards and see if there are ways it could be presented better. Redraw it on a fresh page, and tear it out an place it in your folder.

When you receive information by email, print them and place them in the folder (hey, be green and use double-sided print!)

Each week, fortnight or month (depending on how often your environment changes), empty your folder and systematically replace the papers as you re-read them and familiarize yourself with what you have achieved. It might sound a bit odd (why re-read what you know?) but guess what – constant reminders about what you’ve achieved and how you achieved them has a great psychological effect and gives you a well-deserved confidence boost.

This is such a simple technique, but so effective it was worthy of an article.

Making Sure Your Objectives are Deliverable

If you have been set objectives for your review period, or if you’re in the process of setting and agreeing them with your manager, then it is vital to make sure you can actually deliver your objectives.

There is a subtlety to this which might not be immediately obvious.

Take a look at your objectives… do you understand what, where, how and when they need to be achieved? Yes, good. Does your manager understand these too? Yes? Great. But do you understand them in the same way?

This is what trips a lot of people up, and they only realize there is a difference in understanding during their performance appraisal.

It is vital that you and your manager understand the objectives in the same way – otherwise you are most likely to miss your managers expectations.

Only when you’re delivering objectives to the same standard and specification that your manager expects will you get top marks and hopefully a maximum bonus.

It is worth every second you spend ensuring that you and your manager have the same understanding of your objectives, so take a few minutes and check your manager’s understanding.

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