A-players

Resume Authenticity

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Cathy Graham authored an informative post entitled “Living Up to Your Resume.”  While it offers a number of good insights, here’s the one I want to key in on today … because it is so critically important.

Resume writing services are out there and many are very good. However, you can end up with a product that really bears little relationship to who you are. Experienced recruiters and employers pick up on this quite quickly. Robert Half International conducted a survey of 100 Canadian senior executives, asking them “How common is it for a job applicant who has a promising resume to not live up to your expectations when you interview him or her?” Sixty-five percent said it was very common. One of the biggest causes of this disconnect stems from inflating your achievements. When you get in an interview situation, with its attendant stress, you are unable to relate your experience to match the way it is conveyed on your resume. 

One of the things I evangelize to my clients is the importance of consistency between who they look like on paper and who they appear to be in person. It is also why my clients work very hard through the marketing document development process. Until they are crystal clear about their marketable value proposition (MVP), the pain they’ve taken away, challenges overcome, problems solved, and situations improved … and they can articulate those points … they simply canNOT compete as A-players.

What Difference Does 3% Make?

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According to Peter Weddle, keynote speaker at the CMA annual conference last month, quite a bit. Robyn Greenspan, Editor-in-Chief at ExecuNet, offers this quote from Weddle in its most recent newsletter … 

While 2001 sparked a jobless recovery, the current recession is actually eliminating jobs. Where there were once 1.7 job seekers for every open position, now four candidates compete for the same role.

The advantage for job seekers lies in the 3% separating them from everyone else. Weddle asserts that we are all just 3% different from each other, and those who identify, strengthen and express that small portion can become the A-players who are in demand in any economy. "Find the 3% that makes you special, your best self.”

It may not be easy to find that 3% difference, but it is well worth the effort to do so. Unless and until you identify and clearly convey your branded marketable value proposition (MVP), you are playing in the very crowded field of commodity.

Passively Social

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I just returned from the Kennedy Recruiting Conference in Orlando. This was a hotel full of “internal” recruiters … those folks who are employed in–house to source potential candidates for their companies. And the four words and two themes we heard over and over were …

–Passive Candidates
–Social Networks

What internal recruiters want is the coveted A–player who is currently employed. Where they go to find them are social networking and job aggregator sites like Linked In, Ziggs, ZoomInfo, and Naymz.

If you want to play the game, you need to get in the game. If you aren’t where recruiters are looking, you won’t be found by them.

Email me with “Passively Social” in the subject line for a copy of my full article on this topic.

CPA CFOs

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There was an interesting Finance Quiz in CFO.com recently. For those who missed it, you can read it here: http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/7938502/c_7935456?f=home_todayinfinance

For me, and for those of you on a CFO–track, this question should have caught your attention.
3) What percent of today's Fortune 1000 CFOs have neither an MBA nor a CPA?
a. 92 percent
b. 24 percent
c. 10 percent
d. 55 percent

Answer: b. Twenty-four percent of Fortune 1000 CFOs have neither a CPA nor an MBA. In 2003, many more — 41 percent — lacked either qualification.

A–players who want to go to the top need to understand the importance of this statistic. The number of CFOs – who are not credentialed – has dropped considerably in the past three years, and that number will continue to fall.

CPA CFOs are the candidates of the future. According to Spencer Stuart, the number of CFO-CPA’s among Fortune 1,000 companies has almost doubled in the past two years. The trend to recruit CFO’s with more technical accounting backgrounds will probably only continue into the next decade. Not being a CPA will make it increasingly more difficult to compete for top CFO positions.