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.

  • 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.

    Beyond_Ready_Cover-smaller

    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!

  • 4 Criteria for Creativity: Women Working or Drones?

    4 Criteria for Creativity: Women Working or Drones?

    What’s more creative:  1) drones delivering a Kindle to your door in 30 minutes or less or 2) women working?

    According to Fast Company’s  100 Most Creative People in Business, women in the workplace, in Saudi Arabia at least, is more creative. Princess Reema Bint Bandar Al-Saud topped the list of most creative people in business by inviting Saudi women to work.

    Quoted as saying, “You cannot have half your population not working,” the princess emphasizes why an “innovation” with people is more important than technology that allows all kinds of things to be delivered to your door as quickly as a pizza. Not only more important, but also more of a challenge.

    But is extending the invitation to work to half the population creative, or something entirely different? This example illustrates that in order for something to be truly creative, the following has to be present:

    1. Conventional thinking has to be challenged. In a country where it is illegal for women to drive, women working challenges conventional thinking.
    2. Risks have to be involved. Again, in a country where it is illegal for women to drive, risks are involved in inviting women to work.
    3. Impact extends beyond the original intent. Might it be made legal for women to drive because women are working? It may necessitate a legislative change eventually.
    4. Positive gains are made and results are achieved. As reported in the article, “The Riyadh department store-which opened in 2000 as Harvey Nichols’s first location outside the U.K. – weathered a 42% drop in profit last year, partly because of opposition to the female sales force and partly because of loyalty to the far-more-seasoned salesmen it replaced.” Time will tell if this creative intervention will lead to business results. But maybe, just maybe, this example goes to show that you get more points for creativity if societal results are achieved at the possible short-term detriment to business results. See #2 above. As the princess said, “The second a woman is responsible for her own finances, she’ll want to explore more of the world for herself and become less dependent.”

    What’s the most creative people intervention or idea have you ever witnessed?

    You may also like:  What Employers Want: Creativity

  • 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.

  • I May Have Adult ADD But I Wouldn’t Trade It For Anything: Refusing to Choose Between Work and Life

    I May Have Adult ADD But I Wouldn’t Trade It For Anything: Refusing to Choose Between Work and Life

    At an HR conference this week with a focus on wellness, the topic of work-life balance is bound to come up. It is and continues to be a buzz phrase in the field. How do we as individuals balance work and “life” and how do companies and HR professionals help employees find and gain balance in order to promote wellness and avoid stress and burnout which ultimately hurts company performance?

    As I sit here writing this at the conference, my eight week old is with me. So is my mom who is here to help and also hear some key sessions at the conference she is interested in. I am going to sessions, volunteering for the conference, checking email and responding to clients, eating dinner with friends and aunts I haven’t seen in a while, feeding my little girl and changing her, talking to her and enjoying her precious grins that have just begun to make an appearance across her sweet face.

    I think I may have adult ADD (attention deficit disorder) with the constant change in focus, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Because I enjoy each component of these activities and roles, the lines between my “work” and my “play” or “life” are so blurred that I’m sometimes not sure which box I’m in, and in my opinion that is the way it should be.

    You don’t have to choose between work and life.

    The people I know who love their work don’t talk a lot about work/life balance. They do work, they do life and oftentimes they aren’t sure which one they are doing at the moment. It’s just all life.

    So how do we get to the point of not needing to seek out work/life balance?

    1. Choose work you love. Finding the unique balance between your talents, your passions and your values will enable you the opportunity to choose work you love and allow you to make it an integral part of your life. It also allows you to clear the clutter and say “no” to things that really do not need to be a part of your life and your work.
    2. Surround yourself with people who support you in your work and life. I realize that this may be more of a challenge for some than others because to a certain extent it may be out of your control. I am fortunate that my mom was able to come with me to this conference because she too had a business needs to hear some of the speakers. My husband is at home with our other child manning that front, and he is glad to do it. But it goes beyond just having the support of family being close by or having the flexibility to help. It extends to doing business- working with and for- those who share the same mindset of work-life balance.

    For example, I’m working with a marketing firm to develop a marketing plan and strategy to take the company to the next level. The timing of brainstorming sessions needed for this came about two weeks after I had the now eight week old. We didn’t postpone it. They came to my house to do it. Not one session, but two. They held the baby, I held the baby and, because my husband was still off on leave because of the birth, we were able to get his ideas too, which is highly valuable to me. In my opinion, we came up with, among other things, some pretty awesome tag lines for the three unique lines of services/products we will be offering soon. (If you want to turn on your creative side, go grab a baby while you brainstorm). Picture proof of this session here.

    1. Refuse to think either/or: I could have postponed the brainstorming sessions and I could have skipped this conference and some people probably think I should have skipped both. Aren’t most maternity leaves 12 weeks? But I’d rather do both from a different perspective- having my child with me, who obviously needs me almost constantly as an infant and who will so soon not be giving me those sweet grins that I don’t want to miss out on, and doing work that I love and I hope meets needs for others too can be done together.

    I don’t have to separate my work from my life or choose between the two and you don’t either.

    What are your best methods for doing life instead of having to balance work and life?

  • Everyone Gets a Trophy and The Skills Gap

    Everyone Gets a Trophy and The Skills Gap

    At a lunch meeting yesterday, one topic of discussion was the “everyone gets a trophy” generation. The millennial generation – of which I am barely a part of based on my date of birth, but rarely admit to being – seems to have a problem with feeling entitled. And the negative outcomes this creates in schools and int he workplace is a hot topic.

    A couple of issues cited in this discussion were:

    • Lack of respect for consequences of one’s actions. For example, a star pitcher not getting to pitch in a game when scouts were there because he missed a practice and was also in trouble at school for skipping class. His parents raised holy terror because he didn’t get to play. Who is to blame? The parents or the student?
    • Lack of respect for other people and their time. For example, a teenager not showing up for work to teach swimming lessons because she had play practice and no one called to let the family know the child would not have lessons because the teacher couldn’t make it. Is the paid work or the play practice more important to attend? The director of the play told her she couldn’t miss practice. Does getting a paycheck for something also communicate you can’t miss?

    Compare these to examples to key findings cited in the Alabama Skills Gap Study conducted by the Alabama Department of Labor:

    Employers were more likely to identify gaps in soft skills (41%) than in technical skills (38%).

    Of the employers who have identified gaps in soft skills, 65% stated that Attendance was a problem. Following Directions and Time Management were the next most often identified soft skill gaps (39% and 36% respectively).

    We could blame these skills gap issues on just one generation, but the numbers show employers must be facing it with the majority of their workforce, which can’t possibly be all made of just the trophy winners.

    So what should we do? First, we should focus on soft skills development just as much as we do technical skills development in our schools and in our homes. A good resource for soft skills curriculum can be found here: http://www.dol.gov/odep/topics/youth/softskills/

    Next, we need to turn the mirror on ourselves, whether as a parent or as a teacher or even as a student. The question becomes, am I guilty of what I’m complaining about and how do I model the behavior I want to see?

    I say this as I sit here, letting my three year old skip swimming lessons. He’s asleep next to me after having tried to wake him up from his short-lived nap to go to the lesson. You haven’t seen holy terror until you’ve tried to wake a three year old up who doesn’t want to be woken up. Yep, that person complaining about the teenager teaching swimming lessons was me and now here we are not going to a scheduled lesson. Am I teaching my son something I don’t want to be teaching him? Sure am. But at least I called to let them know we wouldn’t be there… (I know don’t tell me, because I know, we still should have gone).

    As I beat myself up about not doing what I know I should, I figured I’d at least share the lesson. Soft skills are important. They are learned. Teach them by modeling the behavior you want to see.

    Want more on the soft skills employer want? Check out these posts:

    What do employers want? The 4 Cs

    What do employers want? Creativity

    What is your smart phone teaching you about communication?

    Want to get a job? Foster collaboration