CareerVision - March 2009

• Social Networking

• Career Profile: Cindy Kottoor, CA
• The Interview – Sixty Minutes to
  Change Your Life
  
• Ask the Coach
• Featured Jobs

• Retaining High Demand Employees
• From the Bookshelf: How the Wise Decide
• Bad Meetings: More than Just a Waste of Time

• Happily Engaged in Canada

Social Networking: Panacea or waste of time? Making the most of LinkedIn, Plaxo, Facebook, or not.

You may have a blog and a web site, but for sure you are being deluged with "connection" requests. Should you ignore them, or jump right in? How can you use these so-called Social Networks to your advantage without sinking wasteful hours into the process? This information-packed webcast reviews the key steps that professionals should take, to:

1) learn about three sites that will allow others to hijack your identity and how to prevent this from happening;
2) learn four ways to use LinkedIn to develop profile and reputation;
3) learn which sites are worthwhile, and which are a waste of time;
4) learn who these sites benefit, and why: salespeople, recruiters, senior management, you;
5) learn how a social networking strategy can amplify your real-world profile and understand the effort required to set it up.

This topic is being delivered by Randall Craig, author of the new book “Online PR and Social Media for Experts” (http://www.OnlinePRSocialMedia.com).

Click here to register for webinar

Career Profile: Cindy Kottoor, CA

On a recent trip to Borneo, Cindy Kottoor, President and Founder of Neverest Inc., went scuba diving with schools of hammerhead sharks. In November, she was in New York City teaching staff at a public accounting firm how to conduct audits more effectively and then hit Times Square the night Barack Obama was elected President. The training and consulting company that she started two years ago takes her into the U.S. and across Canada on business; the meeting with the sharks was a holiday happenstance.

So, your resume or career consultant may have landed you a few interviews, now it's time to wrap up the deal and clinch your dream job. Surviving an interview can be a nerve-wracking or uplifting experience, depending upon the way you approach it. Either way, it's going to land you your next job, and if properly prepared for, it could be sixty minutes that changes your life.

Q. I recently applied for a more senior position in the firm where I’ve been working the past few years. I had several interviews and I thought it was a long shot because there were many qualified candidates. To my surprise, I got the job but I’m now feeling overwhelmed and questioning if I’m cut out for this more challenging role. What if I fail? What should I do?

Featured Jobs

The job postings listed below are a sample of the 100+ postings on CA Source. To search all current CA Source postings, go to Search CA Jobs

1. Pension Manager
   University of Saskatchewan
   Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
   Link to Job Posting
    
2. Senior Accountant
   HSE Integrated Ltd.
   Calgary, Alberta
   Link to Job Posting
    
3. Senior Manager, Accounting Control
   Scotiabank
   Toronto, Ontario
   Link to Job Posting
    

Retaining High Demand Employees
~ Marc Belaiche, CA

Even if times are tough and the unemployment rate is increasing, there are always positions that are in high demand (e.g., in a bad economy employees with an insolvency background are in demand) and recruiting candidates for those roles can be difficult. Retaining a high demand employee is challenging, but from an office morale and financial perspective, it is best to try. There is a significant cost to replacing staff such as possible agency/online recruitment fees, training a new person, the disruption to existing staff and business, and lost productivity or sales. The costs are exponentially greater for replacing a high demand employee.

From the Bookshelf: How the Wise Decide

Publisher: Crown Business; August 2008

How did Stephen Schwarzman and Peter Peterson, the founders of The Blackstone Group, turn $400,000 of their own money into one of the world's pre-eminent alternative asset managers with $100 billion under management? How did William George, when CEO of Medtronic, get the real story about why a critical tool used by cardiologists was failing and use that information to fix a systemic problem within the company?

Authors Bryn Zeckhauser and Aaron Sandoski discovered the formula used by 21 of the world's most extraordinary leaders to make consistent and smart decisions. This book is the product of a three-year quest to discover how people ("the wise") with remarkable success and experience in both corporate and public life went about making critical business decisions.

Bad Meetings: More than Just a Waste of Time

Do you quietly suffer from meetings that are too long, too frequent, or lacking a clear purpose? Are the wrong people in attendance or do participants fail to complete the tasks they have committed to? Poorly run meetings are costing you and your company far more than you think. In a workshop on effective meeting skills, you may complete an exercise calculating the cost of the meeting. Typically, you multiply the duration of the meeting by an hourly rate and multiply by the number of meetings held during the year. For those who travel, you add travel costs as well. While this number can be staggering, it just scratches the surface.

Happily Engaged in Canada

While some people have trouble fitting in at work, most office employees actually like their jobs and their employers. In a poll of 10,310 people in 131 countries, Canada ranks high on the list when it comes to engagement. Asked to agree with the statement, "I am happy in my job," 71.5 per cent of 406 Canadians do, compared to 71 per cent of Americans, 70.8 per cent of Australians and 67.2 per cent of Britons. Canada comes third (62.6 per cent) when asked to agree with the statement, "I feel good about my employer," behind the United States (66.5 per cent) and India (64.7 per cent) but ahead of Australia (60.7 per cent) and the United Kingdom (58.5 per cent).

Canadian Engagement

Source: Mind Tools