Marketing & Creative Jobs in Canada Blog - Part 37

Start Developing Your Leadership Skills Now

Improving-Leadership-Skills

You might just be starting out in your career and not have a single person reporting to you.  Even if that is the case, it is never too early to start honing your leadership skills. You may be managing a project or working with an external team and the ability to lead will be of great value in these situations and as you grow in your career.

Do people understand what you are saying when you speak to them?  Try and gage how the audience is receiving your message; even ask some of your colleagues.

I am sure you see senior people in your organization and how they can rally a team; change the feeling in a room from gloom to hope, get people behind an idea and push them to give 110%.  These people might be natural leaders (and you might be to) but if you are not a natural, don’t despair; there are steps you can take to develop your leadership skills.

In 10 Qualities That Make A Great Leader, author Tanya Prive describes the key qualities that every good leader should possesses.  Here are some of the qualities you can start with right away

  • Honesty  – Honesty is an important quality for anyone not just leaders but if you are in charge of a team you should be holding yourself to a much higher standard. This is definitely a skill that you can work on developing at any point in your career and will make you a better person too!

Continue reading →

4 Tips to Reconnect with Old Contacts

Making-Connections-With-Old-Contacts

You’ve amassed a long list of contacts from your time spent at varying jobs, networking events, and volunteer groups. It’s understandably hard to keep up with everyone along the way; overtime, the majority of your network may become comprised of contacts you haven’t spoken to in years.

But when the situation arises where it’s beneficial for you to reach out to an old contact, how you reach out can be just as important as whom you reach out to.

Sara McCord, author of How to (Non-Awkwardly) Reach Out to Old Contacts, explains that reaching out to old contacts the right way can be the difference between getting a reply back, or getting ignored. Here are 4 ways to properly reconnect with old contacts:

A retweet, “like,” or comment, is an effortless way to keep the relationship “warm,” and makes it easier to connect for a quick lunch or meeting down the line.

1. Be Specific With Your Request

Be as specific with your request as possible when reconnecting with someone who has advised you in the past.

Instead of leaving your requests too open-ended (“I could use some advice”), be granular and include examples. If your manager from 5 years ago gave great presentations and you’re looking for tips on how to do the same, include specific details about what made the presentations so memorable, and areas you’re looking to improve upon. A clear and concise message removes any uncertainty your contact may have with fulfilling your request.

2. Reference Tangible Memories

Most people looking to reconnect with old contacts are trying to reach out to someone who hasn’t advised them in the past. Asking for help from a contact for the first time can add a new dimension to the relationship; you’ve never asked this person for a favour, and he or she may not even remember the details of your relationship properly.

Instead of trying to oversell (“I miss you!”) or undersell the relationship (“I’m not sure if you remember me, but…”), use a tangle memory in your message. If you worked on the same project at one point, took a class together, or were introduced by a mutual friend at a dinner party, mention this in your message. Finding a shared memory helps your contact remember the details of your relationship, and is more likely to respond and help as a result. Continue reading →

5 Mistakes That Could Be Costing You a Job Offer

Mistakes-Resume

What do you do when you’ve sent out several resumes but you’re not getting any interviews? Or maybe you’ve made it past the interview stage but you still haven’t landed the job. There might be a few things you’re getting wrong.

The good news is, most of these pitfalls are easy fixes. In “9 Mistakes that Could Sabotage Your Chances at a Job Offer,” Emily Co outlines a few critical slip-ups you could be making that could be costing you a job offer.

1. You’re not networking.

It’s been said over and over again that networking can be incredibly beneficial to your career. In today’s market, you need to do more than just submit a resume to land a job. In fact, when done right, networking can even help you land your dream job. Having an inside referral can help move your resume from the bottom of the pile to the top and also lead you to potential opportunities that you didn’t know existed. If you’re not quite sure how to get your foot in the door, start by attending industry events, meeting up with potential connectors, and utilize LinkedIn. Take an inventory of who you know and then go from there.

A tastefully designed cover letter and resume can help you stand out among the pile of other applicants and help you get that crucial second look from a hiring manager.

2. Typos and other careless mistakes.

Unfortunately, typos happen. Although a typo doesn’t usually have menacing consequences at a job, it could potentially keep you from getting a job interview. Do everything you possibly can to eliminate typos and other careless mistakes in your resume and cover letter. Get a second reader to look over your application before you submit it and be sure to research the company thoroughly to make sure all of your facts are straight. A potential employer is less likely to believe you’re detail-oriented if there are spelling mistakes in your cover letter.

3. Your resume is boring.

A typical hiring manager looks over hundreds of applications for every position they post. That means you’re competing with many professionals for one job. Without an inside connection, your perfect typo-free resume still stands a chance at catching a potential employer’s eye. This is where design can help. A tastefully designed cover letter and resume can help you stand out among the pile of other applicants and help you get that crucial second look from a hiring manager. Continue reading →

Is Collaboration The Silent Killer In Your Corporation?

Collaboration

With a brainstorming session booked in four days coming, this subject is very topical and scarily relevant for me. I have booked a team to come together to brainstorm on initiatives for a client for the next calendar year.  What have I done?

A collaboration session will be more successful if everyone has a chance, on their own, to think through problems and flesh-out ideas.

In “Collaboration Paradox” Ron Friedman, Ph.D., founder of ignite80 and the author of The Best Place to Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace, shows the potential problem and costs associated with collaborating.

  • Collaborations create a sense of false confidence. Friedman sites a study in Psychological Science that found that when we work with others to reach a decision, we become myopic dismissing outside information and more confident in the output from the group compared to outputs from individuals.  This confidence in the work of the group vs the work of the individual did not have any foundation.
  • Collaborations create a platform for only the strong to be heard. Are you sure that all voices on your team are strong enough to make themselves heard? Do you have someone who will be attending who is going to shut down good ideas before they can be crystallized? You may end up only hearing from the stronger personalities and leave the others feeling defeated.
  • Collaborations allow people to be lazy. For a lazy person, the best place for them is in a full day group session, surrounded by their peers where they can hide behind those that are eager, enthusiastic and prepared. Over time this type of meeting or process may actually breed lazy people. Those who come prepared start to notice that they are doing all the work and will start to do less while the lazy keep trying to hide. Soon you will have a room full of people who are just not interested in “collaborating”

Now the negative outcome from collaboration, like a heart attack, can be avoided and not all collaboration is a failure.

  • Ask tough questions.  While breaking down silos in the organization is an important goal, collaboration is not always the best option for the situation.  Morten T. Hansen a professor at the University of California at Berkeley and at Insead, in Fontainebleu, France has studied this topic for 15 years and in his article for Harvard Business Review he states that the first thing you need to ask is “Will collaboration on this project create or destroy value?”
  • Assign homework.  A collaboration session will be more successful if everyone has a chance, on their own, to think through problems and flesh-out ideas. Also, if homework is assigned it will help dissuade those who are lazy from opting out of the thinking.
  • Invite diverse skillsets and set expectations.  Do not invite a room full of marketing managers to a session on improving client relationships and expect to get the best results possible. Nothing against marketing managers but you should have a cross-section of people from those who actually meet with customers to the customer support team that answers their phone calls; the product team that creates products for them. It really takes a village!

Continue reading →

Powerful Tip for Positive Thinking During your Job Search

Positive-Thinking

Searching for a job is a full time job. Every new cover letter is another mountain to climb. Every new Taleo profile to create is another ocean to cross. It’s easy to get discouraged even for the biggest of optimists.

But Lily Zhang, career counselor and author of The Simple Trick That Will Make Your Job Search Way Less Painful, has a message for any job seeker stuck in the grooves of despair: focus on the things that have been working for you, and that are in your control.

Celebrate the little victories along the way in order to remain optimistic and encouraged.

Lily has found her clients are able to bounce back on track by following that one quick trick.

Next time the job search has you feeling discouraged, write down all the things you’ve been doing right:

  • Have you reached out to people in your network?
  • Are you actively attending networking events?
  • Has a side project helped you realize what you’re truly passionate about?
  • Have you been thorough with conducing company research before your interviews?

Continue reading →

5 Body Language Tips to Master for Career Success

Body-Language

Is the nervous pacing before a client meeting a reflection of a lack of confidence, or the cause of a lack of confidence?

According to Christian Jarrett, author of The 4 Ways You Can Use Body Language To Influence Success, it’s the latter – levels of emotion and confidence are often determined by your body language. Fortunately, you can use this to your advantage.

Not only will deliberately smiling help you access positive memories, smiling will actually make you feel happy.

Learning how to harness your body language into positive energy will give you an upper hand in presentations, negotiations, and client meetings. Let’s take a look at a few ways body language can be used to influence workplace success.

1. Understand the “Power Posture”

The “power posture” boasts confidence-boosting effects from the name alone.  It involves opening your body and filling more space (and the more space you manage to take up, the more “powerful” the posture is).

What are the power posture benefits? Studies have shown an increase in testosterone, pain tolerance, and risk taking, all follow a power pose.  A recent study conducted by Harvard University showed that students performed better during job interviews if they spent just two minutes in power poses beforehand in preparation.

Power pose examples include clenching your hands behind your head and putting your feet up on your desk, the “star-shape,” where you spread your arms and legs out wide, or simply standing with your legs shoulder width apart and your hands on your hips.

2. Use Gestures While Speaking

Gesturing while speaking is more than an idiosyncrasy – it can actually assist with your mental processes. Gesturing lets you visualize important information, allowing you to free up memory to better comprehend problems and produce stronger results.

A study by Susan Goldin-Meadow, professor at the University of Chicago, confirmed these findings in a recent study. Subjects who gestured were able to solve math problems and simultaneously remember a string of characters, as opposed to subjects who couldn’t gesture and struggled with the same exercise.

Gesturing also leaves a strong impression with those you’re speaking or presenting to. Gesturing is used to emphasize what you’re saying – as long as the gestures are not out of control – and audiences take this as a sign of competence and knowledge. Continue reading →

Before Accepting that Job Offer, 5 Things You Should Know

accepting-job-offer

After several weeks of job interviews, and perhaps one or two pre-employment assessment tests, you finally get your job offer. The salary and benefits look acceptable. But before you accept that offer and tender your resignation, there are a few things you should know about your employer and the position you’re stepping into.

During the interview process, if you’ve been making careful observations, and you’ve been asking the right questions, then you should know the answers to all − or most of − the following:

1.     How long has this position been vacant, and how long did the previous employee fill this position? What you want to know is whether employees go through this position like a revolving door. If the last employee held this position for less than a year, and the employee before her six months, then you know there is something wrong with the role, the manager, the department, or all of the above!

don’t take the position simply because the company makes an exciting electronic device, or it’s considered a “cool place” to work at

2.    What is the career path for this position? Has the previous employee who held this spot moved on to bigger and better things? What you want to know is whether there is room to grow within the department or organization. Some companies post their job vacancies in an internal website, before looking publicly. Others make it a policy to hire internally first. These are positive signs.

3.     What are the job deliverables, and what resources do you have to complete your job duties? What you want to know is whether you can complete your job assignments within the expected time frames, without requiring you to work overtime and on weekends, on a continual basis. If the department appears to be understaffed, or under-resourced, this should give you pause.

4.     Who do you report to, and who are your stakeholders? Everyone knows that it is your boss whom you need to impress, when it comes to doing well in your performance reviews. But when you get more than one or two managers into whom you have to report, things get complicated, because not all managers have the same priorities, objectives, and time pressures. The more managers you need to report into, the more effort you’ll need to expend in balancing their competing interests. Continue reading →

4 Ways to Be More Creative – Up Your Creativity Quotient

Increase-Creativity

Do you look at a friend or a colleague and wonder just how they come up with such great ideas or how they can make subtle changes to something and make it totally new and exciting? Do you feel like you are stuck in a imagination-less rut? Not to fear there are steps you can take, things you can do, to be more creative.

Christina Desmarais shares Keith Sawyer’s tips from “Zig Zag: The Surprising Path to Greater Creativity” in her post 25 Ways to Be More Creative, Here are a few action items you can start with right away:

1. Be inquisitive. Ask questions

Creative solutions come from being inquisitive and asking lots of questions that may ultimately lead you to the questions that put you on the path to a creative breakthrough. When you are attempting reach a creative solution trying rephrasing the question 10 different ways and do it without overthinking it. One of your questions might be the catalyst to THE answer.

2. Invest time in the development of your creative muscle

Very few people have pure natural abilities. Yes, there are athletes like Tiger Woods and musicians and performers who impress us with their abilities but even they practiced as they climbed through the ranks. If you are trying to reach a creative conclusion in a specific area of business then you want to be the expert in that area before you can truly be creative in it. Dive in and immerse yourself as part of your process at getting to the solution.

In addition to being more inquisitive and taking more time to think you might need to do some internal reflection and ask yourself if you are possibly being your own roadblock to the path of creativity. Here are a couple tips to getting out of your own way from A.J Jacobs in How to Be More Creative: Continue reading →

5 Effective Brainstorming Techniques – Let Your Ideas Flow:

Brainstorming

Group brainstorming sessions can be great spaces of collaboration where innovative products and cost-cutting services are born from that one, wild idea. Free-flowing idea generation can turn the most rigid of boardrooms into a space where, for a moment, the dress shoes become unlaced and tossed aside.

In 7 Tips on Better Brainstorming, the team behind OpenIDEO shares their advice for effective brainstorming in traditional group settings. Here are few ways to get your ideas flowing in no time.

1. Don’t Limit Your Ideas

Brainstorming is best when we can think freely and come up with wild ideas. It allows us to think about what we really want if we didn’t have to worry about things like technology restrictions or costs. Encourage the wild ideas, as any road bumps you encounter are just opportunities to build new technologies or software that can help deliver them.

Brainstorming for an hour and walking away with only 2 or 3 ideas may be a sign that too much time is being spent on dissecting, debating, and over-analyzing ideas during the brainstorming process.

2. Build. Build More.

Ideas beget ideas. By encouraging an environment free from judgment, it allows everyone to speak their mind and let the ideas flow in an uninhibited manner.

You can foster a judgment free zone by mastering the skill of the skill of saying “and” instead of “but” when building upon someone else’s idea. The word “but” is normally used to introduce an objection, whereas “and” shows that you have an open mind to an idea. It allows you to keep building while still being able to pose questions and provocations, and make everyone feel like their ideas are valued.

3. Quantity Counts

Generate as many ideas as you can. Brainstorming for an hour and walking away with only 2 or 3 ideas may be a sign that too much time is being spent on dissecting, debating, and over-analyzing ideas during the brainstorming process. While that’s certainly important, you should really start refining only once you have a large bank of ideas to choose from, or during a second session dedicated to fleshing out your ideas further. Continue reading →

How To Increase Productivity When You Don’t Feel Like It

Increasing-Productivity

We all have days where we wake up and just don’t feel like doing any of the work in front of us.When tasks both small and large have piled up into a daunting mountain of work but all you feel like doing is binge-watching TV on the couch all day.”

For some, caffeine or an energy drink is enough. But when that doesn’t work, Ken Daum of Inc. has some tips to help you stay motivated in The Best Way to be Productive When Your Energy is Gone

Studies show that music can improve your mood, increase concentration, and even inspire new ideas.

1. Start by doing something that you actually want to do.

Although you may not feel inspired to work, there are usually a few small, straightforward tasks that you can get out of the way first. Kevin Daum of Inc. recommends starting there.

“When I really feel sluggish, I take five minutes and write down the two tasks I have been most motivated about tackling. Then, I make a pact with myself to complete them both that day. Now here’s the trick. I start my day with one of those tasks agreeing that I don’t get to start the other one until I work through all the not-so-interesting work that I also have to complete.”

2. The Pomodoro Technique

Named after the tomato kitchen timer, the Pomodoro technique has been around for decades and has garnered fans across all types of industries. Once mastered, the method should help you keep track of time and even train you to estimate how many “pomodoros”, or 25-minute blocks of time, a project will take to complete.

The technique is simple: work for 25 minutes straight on a single project (no stopping!) and after the 25 minute pomodoro is up, take a five-minute break. In order to be effective, you must stop whatever you’re doing at the end of the 25-minute timer, even if you’re right in the middle of a sentence. During the five-minute break, do something completely different such as checking your social media feeds, going for a quick walk, or refueling. Once the five-minute break is up, start another 25-minute work sequence (a new pomodoro) over again. Continue reading →