September is Update Your Resume Month, and Show Host Cassandra McShepard interviews Wendy on creating a resume that rocks and how to use personal branding to get an edge in your career search. This is a call-in show where listeners have the opportunity to ask career-related questions.
AM 1290 WMCS Radio
FYI, I downloaded one hour of this two-hour show. Enjoy!
Are you a Matt Damon or a Russell Crowe?
Here’s an exerpt from today’s ERE.net ezine:
“Let’s look at an example to illustrate the ROI of top actors. If you were going to hire a well-known actor for an upcoming action movie you could pick from many obvious choices like Russell Crowe, Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, and Angelina Jolie, or you could hire “Joe Nobody.”
Each of the well-known actors will cost you significantly more than hiring an unknown newcomer, but each also has a demonstrated ability to attract a greater return. Forbes.com recently completed a calculation of the ROI of top actors and what it found was:
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to do these calculations. The results, even to an untrained eye, are startling. If you hire Matt Damon, he will return nearly six times more per dollar invested than Russell Crowe. That’s not a 6% difference; it’s a 600% difference! If the comparison was made broader to include the comparison of hiring “Joe Nobody” as a lead actor (instead of a noted star), the difference in the ROI would simply be mind-blowing.
The lesson to be learned here is that the “on-the-job performance” of the hire (often called quality of hire) can be quantified and converted into dollars in the sports and the entertainment industry and that the same calculation needs to be done by the recruiting function in the corporate world.” (Author: Dr. John Sullivan)
So, you’re not an actor, why is this important? It is essential to know how employers look at you when hiring. Next time you are on an interview, think about what you bring to the table that no one else does.
Calculate your ROI – on a per project basis. Take a look at your performance over the past few years. Is there a project you worked on where the resulting savings was more than your salary? If so, how much more? Or if you add up all the projects, ideas, suggestions, enhancements, improvements you made to the organization over the term you were employed, how much money did you save the company? How much – in terms of revenue – did you bring in through yours (or your team’s) sales efforts? By what percentage did you improve the company’s bottom line?
When you calculate these numbers against your salary, are you a Matt Damon or a Russell Crowe? Be sure to convey your star ROI in terms of results on your next interview.
Rock on.
Here are the 20 best-paying jobs. This information has been excerpted from “150 Best Jobs for Your Skills” (Michael Farr & Laurence Shatkin, Ph.D.) This list denotes occupational category and annual earnings.
Internists, General – $145,600+
Obstetricians & Gynecologists – $145,600+
Psychiatrists – $145,600+
Chief Executives – $142,440
Family & General Practitioners – $140,400
Lawyers – $98,930 Marketing Managers – 92,680
Sales Managers – $87,580
Financial Managers – $86,280
General & Operations Managers – $81,480
Public Relations Managers – $76,450
Training & Development Managers – $74,180
Post-Secondary Education Administrators – $70,350
Medical & Health Services Managers – $69,700
Advertising & Promotions Mangers – $68,860
Physical Therapists – $63,080
Dental Hygienists – $60,890
Market Research Analysts – $57,300
Clinical Psychologists – $57,170
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Do you have what it takes to land one of these gigs? To find out more about these careers check out: The Occupational Outlook Handbook (www.bls.gov/oco/) and the Ocupational Information Network (http://online.onetcenter.org/).
Here are some terrific tips to jump start your job search in the summer months – courtesy of my pal Kim Issacs of Monster.com and PowerResume.com:
Are you taking a break from the job search and surrendering to the lazy days of summer? The conventional wisdom is that almost everyone is in vacation mode from Memorial Day through Labor Day. Consequently, many postpone job searching until September.
Is this a mistake? Could you be missing opportunities if you take the summer off? We asked the career experts to find out.
Summer Job Searching — Worthwhile or Waste of Time?
“I often hear job seekers say that they want to take the summer off,” says Wendy Terwelp, career coach and president of Mequon, Wisconsin-based career management firm Opportunity Knocks. Terwelp says that by the time the summer ends, job seekers who took the summer off will be competing against even more job seekers who have followed the same strategy.
Check out this cool survey by ExecuNet:
Do you network like a girl? If so, you have the advantage. In our gender analysis of data from our 15th annual Executive Job Market Intelligence Report, women assessed their networks more positively than their male counterparts, giving themselves much higher “excellent” ratings.
Source: ExecuNet, 2007
Dave Opton, CEO and founder of ExecuNet, offered a couple of non-scientific reasons for the divide. “Two-thirds more women than men said they worked on building their professional networking relationships ‘very often;’ and self-assessment is subjective and without universal measurement.”
Despite their super networking skills, women are still less visible in the corporate executive suite than are men, and a 2004 study in the American Journal of Business outlined some of the influential factors.
“Female executives do not achieve top ranked executive positions at the same frequency as do male executives. However, top female executives are significantly younger, and have fewer years of service with the company and in their job positions, than their male counterparts. This may be indicative of the movement to encourage and support women to achieve higher corporate positions, but it could also provide a reasonable explanation for the observed compensation gender gap,” write Joanne Healy Burress and Linda J. Zucca in the report.
ExecuNet’s proprietary research produced encouraging news: while the title and compensation gap exists, the differential was roughly just $20,000, and both genders expected about the same increase in wages from 2006 to 2007 — 7 percent.
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Now all we need is more cash, right girls?
Rock Your Career® 