Horizon Point Consulting

Category: Career Development

Beyond Work is our line of resources for people and community leaders looking for something new and innovative, be it a new job, career change, or personal development outside of work. Read this category specifically for Career Development.

  • Career Development Facilitator Competencies in Action- Tell, Show and DO

    Career Development Facilitator Competencies in Action- Tell, Show and DO

    One of the reasons I love CDF training is because the competencies that the training emphasizes fit together so nicely.  Not only that, but they also spur action through behaviors as any good competency model should do.

    An example of 2 CDF competencies in action

    Take these two competencies:

     

    “Helping Skills – Be proficient in the basic career facilitating process while including productive interpersonal relationships.”

    And

    “Program Management/Implementation – Understand career development programs and their implementation, and work as a liaison in collaborative relationships.”

    In the CDF training, you learn that helping skills includes being competent in helping others set goals and create action plans for themselves as it relates to their career.  You act on this knowledge, by creating tools to help clients to set goals.

    But the application of being competent in goal setting is taken to the next level through the competency of program management implementation. What good program manager doesn’t need to know how to set goals, track them, and meet them?

    Participants in our CDF training take what they have learned about goal setting in the helping skills content and demonstrate that they can direct their behavior to apply goal setting by mapping out a new program or a redesign of an existing one complete with goals, timelines, deliverables and metrics.

     

    Tell à Show à Do 

    We like to call our model for building the CDF competencies Tell à Show à Do, with an emphasis on the DOING.    We focus on building the 12 competencies by designing assignments and deliverables in the course that help you kill two birds with one stone.  They build your knowledge, but the assignments also produce tangible tools and plans that you can use on the job. Then you can easily show that you know how to apply knowledge by doing.

    Your boss can’t see the knowledge in your head without you acting on it, so the doing helps advance your career just as much if not more than having the certification.

    If are a career development professional and want to have some fun doing, you can register for our CDF course.

    If you’re a part of school system, college career center, local or state workforce agency or career center, you may want to learn more about how this model of applying the CDF competencies can help your group create a strategic plan through the professional development opportunity.  To do so, you can view our presentation on CDF Training and Strategic Planning (which will be presented this Saturday, June 21, from 8:30-9:30 am at NCDA’s Conference in Long Beach- join us if you are here!) There is also a case study you can read to see how this has been put into practice with a K-12 School System

    How has doing helped advance your career more than knowing?

  • 4 easy steps to know which keywords to include in your resume

    With all kinds of tools out there these days for a computer instead of a person to initially screen a resume, we get lots of questions about keywords.  What keywords am I supposed to include seems to be the critical question.

    What keywords should I include?

    You will know what keywords to include because they are in the job posting.  Tagcrowd.com  is the quickest and coolest way we’ve found to identify keywords by the frequency they appear in the posting.

    What you do:

    1. Find a posting
    2. Copy and paste the posting into Tagcrowd.com
    3. View the word graphic it displays
    4. Make sure the biggest words are incorporated into your resume

    Here’s an example:  On Indeed.com we did a simple search for “IT” positions.

    Picking this one:

    ITJobPosting

    We pasted it into tagcrowd, and this is the result:

    tagcrowd copy

    If you were applying for this position, the key is to make sure you emphasize the marketing experience you have in social and content marketing.  Development software, writing, research, and Mircosoft product experience are going to be needed.  You’ll also need to emphasize ways you’ve collaborated and engaged others.   And see “bachelor” up there in the top right corner? You’re going to need a bachelors degree.

    If you are wanting to develop a resume for a variety of openings, then search for openings in the area in which you are pursuing, copy and paste several of them into tagcrowd and look for consistencies.  The words that come up the biggest and most frequently need to be included in your resume.

  • Chart Out your Cover Letter to Stand Out

    Chart Out your Cover Letter to Stand Out

    To include a cover letter or not to include one? Some say no if it’s not asked for, citing it’s a waste of time. Why would you think a hiring manager or recruiter would look at a cover letter if they only spend six seconds on average looking at a resume?

    However, having a cover letter that actually makes it easy for a recruiter to see if you meet the qualifications for the position could help you stand out in a way that gets you an interview. The key is:

    1. Do you meet all the qualifications for the position?
    2. If you do, then chart it out for them.

    For example, let’s just take the requirements from a posting that came up when we did a search for “Registered Nurse” on Indeed:

    Education:

    • Graduate of an accredited School of Nursing.
    • Current appropriate state licensure
    • Must meet the practice requirements in the state in which he of she is employed.

    Experience and Required Skills:

    • Minimum of one-year medical-surgical nursing experience preferred.
    • Hemodialysis experience preferred.
    • ICU experience prefferred.
    • Successfully complete a training course in the theory and practice of hemodialysis.
    • Successfully complete CPR Certicication.
    • Employees have to meet the necessary requirements of Ishihara’s Color Blindness test as a
    • condition of employment.
    • Provide coverage at any or all area facilities as required by management.
    • Icd-9 Training.
    • Nurses Technical Training
    • Must meet appropriate state requirements(if any)

     

    A cover letter should have a chart that looks like this:

    Your Requirements

    My Qualifications
    Graduate of an accredited School of Nursing BSN of Nursing from University X, 2000

     
    Current appropriate state licensure Alabama State License number XXXXX
    Minimum of on-year medical-surgical nursing experience preferred Three years experience as a medical surgical nurse at XYZ hospital
    Hemodialysis experience preferred 2 years experience at XYZ hospital performing hemodialysis
    You get the picture- keep filling the chart in…. You get the picture- keep filling the chart in….

    This only works if you meet the requirements for the opening. So just like on a resume , experience matters, whether we like it or not.

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    Our Beyond Work™Workbook is chalked full of practical tools on resume writing, interviewing, networking and social media branding to help you seize the career you want. Order yours today for $19.99!

  • You Get 6 Seconds: Think Like a Recruiter when drafting your resume.

    You Get 6 Seconds: Think Like a Recruiter when drafting your resume.

    Count to six. What do you think you could get accomplished in this amount of time? Not much, but a recruiter has already reviewed your resume and moved on to the next one by the time you can get to seven.

    The Honest Truth.

    Hiring managers and recruiters, at least when it comes to making decisions based on a resume, don’t care about anything but your experience and your education if it’s required for the job.

    Someone may tell you having phrases like “highly motivated”,   “self-starter”, “strong interpersonal skills”, etc. need to be on your resume, but you can’t prove that you are these things simply by putting them down on paper.

    The cold hard facts that can be put on paper, and therefore, as the video shows, where recruiters focus their time:

    1. Where you’ve worked and for how long
    2. What education you’ve obtained

    And that is what the powers that be look at. You may be able to prove to them in an interview that you are, in fact, a “self-starter”, but stick to the concrete stuff on a resume. Where you’ve worked and for how long matters- whether we like it or not.

  • 6 Steps and Tools for Better Networking

    6 Steps and Tools for Better Networking

    Last week, we discussed the importance of networking because Computers Don’t Give People Jobs- People Do. If you still aren’t convinced of this based on the data presented last week, then here is another tid-bit of data for you:

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    According to this chart, networking encompasses almost half of the way that companies fill job openings.

    So the proof is there. If you want to get a job, the best way to do it is to network. But how do you do it?

    Here are some steps along with a Networking Log to help you track this process:

    1. Set a networking goal. Our Networking Log has a baseline goal for you.
    2. Identify your network. Who are you already connected to and who are those people connected to?
    3. Develop a plan to reach out to your network. Target who you will reach out to, by when, and how (in-person meeting, email, phone, social media).
    4. Request that the network contacts you reach out to send your information to anyone else in their network that might be in need of your skills and expertise. Many of them won’t do this, but for the few that do, this method may lead to promising job leads. I know one job opportunity I’ve had and accepted was a result of this type of networking.
    5. Follow-Up. You have to stay in front of people who you are networking with and continue to reach out to them. Create a schedule to follow-up with those network connections that are most promising.
    6. Track the leads and results achieved from each contact. This can help you identify the best methods and networks to tap into for further results.

    But I’m not looking for a job you say? Whether you’re an active job seeker, passive job seeker, or not a seeker at all, networking is critical to seen and unseen opportunities. This same method can also help sales or business development professionals as well as recruiters (there are two sides to the job networking equation after all!). Taking the time to have a networking game plan and follow through on that plan, no matter where you are in your career, can help you take advantage of relationships. And relationships are what lead to the best possibilities in work and life.

    Image source: Lou Adler (@LouA) is the Amazon best-selling author of Hire With Your Head (Wiley, 2007) and the award-winning Nightingale-Conant audio program, Talent Rules! His latest book, The Essential Guide for Hiring and Getting Hired, is now available on Amazon.

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