Dubin & Lee Blog

Listening Tips to Advance Your Career

  

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What kind of listener are you? 

Have you even thought about the kind of listener you are?  Most people have not, yet listening thoughtfully and with depth is the key to developing a connection with other people.  Among other things, great listeners are better leaders, lead more successful teams, and are able to influence others to action.

Here are 4 Ways to Listen with Impact and Create Action

1. Be empathetic:  Know whether the other person’s tone or content is “speaking” to you first.  If a person’s tone evokes a strong emotion, respond to the emotion first.  Ex:  “Sounds like you are (concerned, disappointed, having difficulty with, etc.) with ….”  By recognizing and landing the negative emotion, you are neutralizing it; in other words, disarming any hostility.  The person can now listen to your content-related questions or comments as well as to any action statements.    Great listeners also know that it’s important to recognize and land positive emotion as well.  “Sounds like you are (enthusiastic, happy, delighted, optimistic, etc.) about …”

2. Paraphrase:  Offer your interpretation of what the other person has said.  This is especially effective with words that have many meanings.  Paraphrasing shows the depth at which you’re listening, that you’re not taking for granted that both of you have the same meaning in mind.  “To me being highly organized means …”  “To me, a great product means it includes…”

3. Perception check:  Be aware of nonverbal behaviors.  As with tone, nonverbals “speak” louder than content.   Pay attention to the other’s nonverbals, no matter which of you is speaking.  Eye rolling, shifting of position, crossing arms, heavy sighing, averting eye contact without obvious reason may indicate an internal feeling that has become overt.  Perception checking must be done in a benign, less direct way – not attacking the obvious behavior.  “It seems that my description of “X” may not have been what you expected.”   As with the interpretation of tone, great listeners watch for positive behavior to perception check as well.  “You appear to be enthusiastic about the new proposal.” 

4. Gain Agreement:  In each of the circumstances described above, it is critical to gain agreement with the other person – that what you have landed (empathy, paraphrase, perception check) is what that person meant.  “Is that what you meant?”  “Did I hear you correctly?”  “Is that accurate?”  “Did I capture that right?”

If you listen at a deeper level, you will improve your effectiveness and have greater efficiencies in one-on-one interactions as well as in meetings, and be perceived as a careful and thoughtful leader, who engages everyone in the work that positively moves toward the organization’s outcomes.

Why Demand is Up for Accounting & Finance Professionals

  

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The Journal of Accountancy just reported that CFOs are having difficulty finding accounting and finance talent. This difficulty is up 7% from the previous quarter which means there is desire to find talent that can hit the ground running.

Here are 5 reasons why the demand for Accounting & Finance Professionals is high.

1. The musts are REALLY musts.  The criteria for the jobs we work on are crucial to the candidate being successful in the role. There seems to be very little ability to hire someone who does not possess key skills sets and credentials. The issue occurs because the knowledge base changes so quickly that if you have not done "it" recently, it is like you have not done "it" at all.
2. Succession Planning!  This is a good thing.  As the job market continues to pick up, hiring companies know that it will only get harder to find job seekers later.  It is best if they can find someone who will be great for the current job opening as well as be a great asset for the future.
3. Finance wants CPAs now, too.  Because the corporate environment is becoming more and more regulated with all the new FINRA, even Corporate Finance is leaning towards people who started their career in Accounting.  Go figure….literally.
4. Communication and leadership skills seem to be what is missing from the Corporate Accounting & Finance Departments who are looking to hire from the outside. When a client calls me with an Accounting or Finance staffing need, I ask them what seems to be missing with the current staff which prevents them from stepping up to this role. Most of the time, the first criteria mentioned is either communication skills or leadership skills.  Because a Corporate Accounting & Finance Department, now more than ever, is involved in implementing policies and procedures cross functionally, the need to influence without authority is immense. Also, effective managers need leadership skills, and many companies have not implemented adequate in house leadership training.  The result is that if the employee does not take it upon him/herself to develop these skills, the company will hire externally.  Seek out communication skills and leadership training now!
5. Corporate Accounting & Finance professionals are working too many hours to look for better job opportunities.  The ones that manage to keep an eye peeled for a greener pasture are the ones getting the best career opportunities right now.

Check out this week’s featured job opportunities.

3 Reasons Your Resume is Not Getting Response.

  

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Click, submit resume not getting the response you believe it should?

Some people spend their entire job sob search doing the “click, submit resume” and the reality is that most people do not get much response at all.

Here are 3 reasons your resume is not getting response.

1. At first cut, a human is not reading it. Most responses are parsed into a database known as an Applicant Tracking System or ATS, after which, the Corporate Recruiter will punch in the keywords, years of experience, education, etc. into this ATS and see what resumes come up.  If you wrote “Microsoft Office” and the keyword searched was “Excel” you might have slipped through the cracks.

Shhhh! Don’t tell anyone I told you about this one!

2. The posting may not be for an active job.  If a company has 40 job slots to use with their Monster or CareerBuilder membership for the year but has no more openings, that company may choose to use those posting slots for possible future jobs or workforce planning research.  Those resumes will be parsed into the ATS for them to search on when headcount restrictions loosen up or approved.

3. You may not be sending the right resume.  If you are like many people, you may have several focuses to your experience or a career change in your past.  Your resume should not be viewed as one size fits all.  Make sure you rework the wording on your resume to mirror the job description.

Quality vs. Quantity!

Sure, this is extra work but think about it as having a gun in the battle field and only 10 bullets…..you want to use them wisely.

“But wait, there’s more!” Don’t be fooled into thinking the work is done there!

“Click, submit resume” is just a fraction of what needs to be done in a job search.

Get out and meet people.  Also, use tools like LinkedIn to help you find the right people to get you in the door and develop your personal brand.

Remember my 10 favorite 2 letter words…. 

If it is to be it is up to me!

Want the best resume you can have? Does your resume need a serious 2012 facelift?

Download the Quick and Easy Resume Updater Guide designed to get you through the dreaded “resume update” process in a painless 30 minutes or less.

Why You Need LinkedIn

  

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Myth:  LinkedIn is just for Job Seekers! 

Granted, recruiters start on LinkedIn to find the talent they are looking for and usually stay there given the likelihood that they find what they are looking for but it is not just for headhunting and talent identification.  LinkedIn is a massive tool for business development, professional credibility, professional networking, industry knowledge and updates as well as job seeking.

Massive? Yes! 

This tool is growing everyday to the tune of 160M+ members and over 100M unique visitors a month.  Also, applications for tasks such as project management with remote teams, polls to attain market research and social media integration pop up frequently.  I find it much more complex than Facebook but it is a business tool with a social media interface as opposed to just a social media platform.

SO HERE IS WHY YOU NEED LINKEDIN......

Just because you don’t need your network right now, does not mean you won’t need it later.

PROOF:

Waiting until you need a network to start working on one (like the out of work job seeker hopping from networking event to networking event in hopes of running into that perfect contact that will set them up with an interview) is like waiting until your teenager starts applying to colleges to start saving money for college tuition…..it’s too late.

Before LinkedIn, when we changed jobs, we could very easily lose touch with our best references.  All that fantastic testimonial for your amazing work would be down the drain.  Now, with LinkedIn, we never have to worry about that.  Again, just because you don’t need that reference now, does not mean you won’t later.

The social media aspect of LinkedIn does allow you to be informed of the needs of those in your network to give you the opportunity to do a favor for someone else.  Having done a favor for someone else, makes it that much easier to ask for one should you ever need it.  Again, just because you don’t need the favor now, well…you know.

You may love your job, your company and your boss but unfortunately we don’t have control over those being around forever.  As you ascend up to ladder of success to 100k roles and up, you will find that the job opportunities are fewer and farther in-between.

Think about this statistically…

What are the odds of finding the ideal opportunity when you need it or are not busy with your current job? 

Those not conducting a job search or as we say “passive talent” have much better job opportunities open to them then active job seekers. What is wrong with being found?

Yes, LinkedIn is a very valuable business tool that you can use for your everyday business needs but sooner or later most people realize that, besides their skill set, their most valuable professional asset IS their network!

For more helpful career and job search advice and social media strategies, check out the Dubin & Lee Facebook page.

If you “like” it, you will get access to the, 6 page, “Getting Hired Guide” complete with video tutorials and advice from building the resume to the interview “thank you” note.  Look for the “red carpet, welcome” icon.