Horizon Point Consulting

Category: Beyond Work

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

4 Things to Do After An Interview

You’ve made it through an interview, or two or three interviews, as it seems to be these days. You relax for a second, happy that this part of the process is over, but that lasts only about half a minute before you begin going through every possible scenario in your head about how things could play out. Do you get a call back with an offer? An invitation to come back for another interview? A thanks but no thanks letter in the mail? What will happen next? And what do you do in the meantime?

It can be extremely nerve-racking as you wait after an interview, but here are four tips to keep yourself focused on what you can do instead of focusing on what you can’t.

1. Respond with thanks. Immediately send a thank you note, handwritten if possible, to everyone you interviewed with. Beyond that, focus on having gratitude for the opportunity to interview, and regardless of the outcome, how the opportunity to do so can help you in the future.

2. Be patient. Many people become frustrated by how long it takes to hear back after an interview. Put yourself in the employer’s shoes and realize how much they are also probably doing on top of trying to select a candidate for this role (of course this empathy needs to go both ways). In addition, some of the control on timing is out of their hands due to things like reference and background checks.

To help with this, inquire in the interview about what the next steps are and when you should expect to hear something back. Then follow their guidelines with your follow-up. For example, don’t call asking about the position two days after your interview if they told you it would be two weeks before they get back with candidates. As a rule of thumb, if you don’t know their timeline for follow-up, wait at least two weeks before following up with them.

3. Continue to look and apply for openings that are of interest to you. This helps to keep you focused on what you can control instead of dwelling on if and when and what you are going to hear from those who have interviewed you.

4. Continue to network. In fact, this should be a strategy regardless of whether you are waiting on interview results or not, whether you are an active job seeker or not. We’ll have more tips for you on networking here on the blog this week.

What is the most nerve-racking thing for you post interview? How do you combat this?

September 1, 2015
5 Questions to End the Slow Painful Death of Death by Meetings

In a leadership training class on communication in the workplace, I had one participant tell the group that meetings at his company were the biggest waste of time. When probed as to why, the basic gist of it came down to two reasons:

1. No one knows why the heck a meeting has been called and/or why they need to be there

2. Nothing results from the meetings

Because of this dialogue as well as other feedback we had received, we started incorporating a segment on effective meetings into our standard Communication Outline lineup.

Whether you are dealing with these two major meeting issues or just want to sharpen the saw on facilitating effective meetings, here is a checklist of questions to ask yourself:

1. Do you even need to have a meeting? Is there a more effective way to communicate and/or make decisions?

2. If a meeting is needed, what is the meeting’s objective? Clearly outline an agenda that meets this objective and send it out to all participants ahead of time. While in the meeting, stick only to topics related to the objective. If a topic comes up outside the scope of the meetings objective, politely redirect the conversation back to the objective and remind people you are doing so out of respect for everyone’s time.

3. Who really needs to be there? We often include people because we don’t want to hurt feelings and/or we simply don’t take the time to think through who needs to be at the table. Only include those who are truly needed. In the case where decisions need to be made in a meeting, the smaller the group the better.

4. Did the meeting result in decisions, action items and timelines centered-round the meeting’s objective?

5. Did you put in place a mechanism to follow-up on the action items and timelines set forth in the meeting?

August 19, 2015
2 Steps to Keep People from Quitting

Do you know the number one reason why people quit a job? It’s not for more money or better benefits or advancement opportunities. People may cite these factors as a reason for leaving in an exit interview or casual conversation, but what most likely led them to look elsewhere in the first place is because of a bad boss. As a Harvard Business Review article stated, “Studies have consistently shown that having a bad manager or a poor relationship with one’s manager is a top reason an employee quits.”

Yep, most likely your number one reason for turnover is bad leadership, especially at the frontline level. And how much does turnover cost? Most studies report between 150-300% of the person’s annual salary depending on the position. Ouch.

However, in the same Harvard Business Review article, only 12% of survey respondents said they currently invest sufficiently in the development of frontline managers.

So one of the best ways to nip a turnover issue in the bud and to potentially gain a competitive advantage over competitors is to fix your leadership issues, with the greatest bang for your buck being at the frontline level. Here are two steps to do just that:

1. Identify, assess and select frontline leadership talent based on skills needed to effectively lead and develop others, not skills needed to perform successfully in the doer role. The classic Peter Principle states the people are often promoted to their level of incompetence. Most frontline leaders are promoted to a supervisory role because they are good at the doer role, not because they are equipped with the skills to be effective leading others.

Whether you are hiring someone externally or promoting from within, you need to assess both the leadership potential of the person (skill) as well as the desire to be in a leadership role (will). As Kris Dunn said in one of his all-to truthful and to-the-point performance management posts at HR Capitalist, “That makes hiring people (leaders) – who are comfortable with the gray and understand the value of taking many small actions towards a goal with no guarantee of success – one of the most important things you can do today.” Find out if the person can lead others in a gray world and if he/she actually wants to.

If you want some tips on what dimensions you need assess potential leadership talent for, give us a shout out and we can help. Kris Dunn’s post just cited has some food for thought on this, and entrepreur.com can help you get you started in thinking about key traits to evaluate.

2. Teach frontline leaders the skills they need to be effective in a management role. We often promote people to their level of incompetence because we throw them to the wolves as a new leader and expect them to come out alive. What often happens is we make no investment in cultivating the new skills needed be effective at our organization and then are surprised when they fail.

Doing this before someone is even promoted and/or hired into the role is imperative. For example, we have a company we love working with that calls us to come and do one-on-one leadership coaching/training with anyone before they are promoted into a supervisory role. You can’t be promoted without this step in the process.

Developing and deploying a leadership development training plan at an individual and company level in order to effectively transition people from doer to leader then ensure people maintain and grow in effective leadership skills is an ongoing effort. Development plans are also a great way to facilitate succession planning and foster employee engagement.

If you want more tips on strategies for putting together effective development plans, you might like these posts:

3 Steps to Better Leadership

Get a Leadership Development Game Plan

What has been your number one strategy to keep people from quitting? Does it involve leadership development?

August 18, 2015
4 ways that the changing world of work is changing education

We’ve been talking a lot on The Point blog the last month or so about the changing world of work. Unfortunately, until recently, the changing world of work wasn’t doing much to change education. The structure of education has remained very much a product of the industrial revolution. The fact that education’s purpose is primarily to train people to be successful, working adults emphasizes the importance of our educational system adapting to the world of work.

Here are 4 Ways The World of Work is Changing Education:

1. Delivery is changing: Schools are now offering classes outside of traditional school hours and schedules to meet the needs of the learner and foster an environment where each individual can learn best. In addition, virtual offerings are taking place, even down to the elementary school level, where a student doesn’t have to step foot in a traditional classroom to learn. In fact, PennsSounds familiar? The workplace has by and largely done the same thing. For a model of this check out, Pennsylvania Virtual Charter School.

2. Curriculum focus is changing: Reading, Writing and Arithmetic will probably never go away, but curriculum is shifting more and more to focus on the application of concepts learned and how they relate to actual jobs and tasks present in the workplace. The rise of career academies and soft skills lessons and training (what employers seem to complain about the most in terms of what is lacking in employees) lend themselves to foster a learning environment to purposely prepare students to tie relevance to what they are learning and at the same time prepare students to be prepared to meet workplace needs. In addition, many of these models incorporate on-the-job learning requirements through job shadowing, internships and co-ops. For more information on this check out: Career Academy Policy Paper, Model Soft Skills Curriculum

3. The traditional college degree could become obsolete: In a discussion with a friend about saving for our young children’s college education, he said, “You know, when our kids are 18 the model for gaining access to success which, we by and large see now is through a college degree, could be completely turned up on its head.” Interesting, I thought, but I’m not sure I believed it. Although the pace may not be as rapid as he thinks, ie- I haven’t cancelled my my four and one year old’s 529 savings plans- evidence is showing that the traditional college degree model is turning out graduates who are not prepared to meet a need in the marketplace, thus making their degree, well, worthless (even though they paid a pretty penny for it). More and more programs are being offered that seek to prepare individuals for success in the “real world” and they aren’t through traditional post-secondary pathways. For more information on this check out: This is the Future of College and Uncollege.

Image: William Symonds, Director of Global Pathways Institute

How do you see the world of work changing the world of education?

For more on this topic, you might like: 5 Big Ways Education will Change by 2020 from FastCompany

July 6, 2015
4 Outdated Career Myths You Should Probably Forget

Guest blog post written by: Stephanie Seibel

Have you ever noticed that your career looks nothing like Mom’s did? We’ve got a post-recession economy,technological advances resembling something from Gattaca, and a radically different generation of workers entering the labor force. It only takes one Google-second to realize that the entire world of work is changing.

If the evolving work-world gives you a headache, here are 4 outdated career myths you can safely forget.

1) Get a Job

“Jobs” are out but “gigs” are in. With the high costs of training and the short stay of workers, many employers now prefer independent contractors, consultants, and freelancers over full-time employees. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that solopreneurs will make up about 40% of the workforce by 2020. While the figures vary, reports will tell you that half to two-thirds of millennials are interested in entrepreneurship and a third already have their own side-businesses. It’s no wonder career blogger, Danny Rubin, recently suggested that the best networking conversation-starter today is, “worked on any cool projects lately?”

2) One Career at Once

Some money experts say that diversifying your income streams is wise in this economy, perhaps explaining the rise of what Marci Alboher coined as the “Slash-Career.” While most Boomers and Gen Xers will vouch that one career used to be more than enough to juggle, some workers today enjoy the variety that a multi-faceted career brings, with what business author Dan Pink is now calling the ever-shifting “Lego Career.” Many millennials in particular are drawn to a multi-income lifestyle rather than the single-track careers their parents knew so well. Just don’t be surprised when the next contact you meet has three job titles listed on her business card.

3) Stay For Life

It’s no secret that job security’s a myth. While there are many different estimates, most sources say we work somewhere between 7 to 15 jobs in a lifetime today. For millennials — soon to be a large portion of the workforce — 91% expect to stay at a job less than three years, according to surveys conducted by the Future Workplace. The old story of climbing a static ladder until retirement do you part simply isn’t true anymore. Your career will likely be an evolving journey.

4) Work at Work

Advances in video conferencing technology and an increasingly global workforce have spurred a new trend towards remote work. Fortune reported a 26% increase in remote job postings just in 2013 alone and 45% of the workforce now has jobs suitable for part- or full-time telecommuting. Droves of millennials are setting up shop in creative work environments — home offices, cafes, and the increasingly popular “co-work space” (which I write you from at the moment, perched at my laptop amongst a community of coffee-drinking solopreneurs). If business casual is sucking the life out of your closet, working in your pajamas is officially more possible than ever.

These changes may seem confusing, but 21st century workers are riding the currents and finding ways to thrive within the storm. By working together and sharing our talents in innovative ways, we’re redefining work as we know it.

So hold onto your hats! We’ve got some exciting careers ahead.

Stephanie Seibel, CPC, is a certified career coach for 20- and 30-somethings and founder of RedThreadCoaching.com, “Work With Every Fiber of Your Being.” She specializes in educating young adults about the alternative career options available today and helping them pursue work that is both meaningful and successful.

June 29, 2015