Archive for March, 2011

Is Anybody Even Reading Cover Letters?



While it’s true that in many companies, your resume needs to get selected through a key word search done with the computer, humans still look at your resumes.

You certainly can be rejected from a job by a computer, but you will never get hired without the recruiter, hiring manager, and other interviewers reading your resume. This is why it is critical to have a great resume and not just one filled with key word blather.

And this is also why you must, must, must have a fantastic cover letter.

Everybody the computer deems acceptable has all the necessary skills (on paper, anyway). In most jobs, far more people than will ever be interviewed will have the necessary experience to do the job. A cover letter is something that will push you over the top.

Alison Green, at US News, gives solid advice on why a cover letter isn’t just something to take lightly.

A cover letter is your opportunity to make a compelling case for yourself as a candidate, totally aside from what’s in your resume.

That because for most jobs, picking the best candidate is rarely solely about skills and experience. Those obviously take center stage, but if that’s all that mattered, there would be no point in interviews; employers would make a hire based off of resumes alone. But in the real world, other factors matter too—people skills, intellect, communication abilities, enthusiasm for the job, and simply what kind of person you are. A good cover letter effectively conveys those qualities.


Remember, a cover letter isn’t just a restatement of the facts on your resume. It’s an opportunity to tell them why you should be hired. What is it about you that makes you unique? Why is this company such a good fit for you?

Please note, do not say, “I am the best candidate for this job,” because you sound pompous and since you have no idea who else has applied, you have no idea if that is true.

Writing a cover letter is hard. It takes time. But it can make the difference between a “meh” and a “let’s bring this person in for an interview.”

Source: BNET

Can You Be Fired For Asking For a Raise?



Of course. You can also be fired for picking your nose, wearing ugly shoes, and getting on the boss’s nerves. In fact, the only things you can’t be fired for are those things that are protected by law. (For instance, race, gender, pregnancy, disability and, increasingly, Facebook posts, although don’t quote me on that last one.)

My BNET colleague, Kimberly Weisul, reported on a study that seemed to indicate the easiest way to get a raise was to ask for one. Rather quickly, the comments started filling up with people asking if it was possible to get fired for asking for a raise. BNET commenter SueGallo shared her bad story:

I asked for a raise and was fired. I was a consultant, and my client asked me to become a division manager (which was a new pay level for my company) and thought if the company would bill more for my time for a position I won for the company, I should also be paid more. My company disagreed. Then I was hired by a competing firm to do the same job (the client wanted me in that position). Even with a “happy” ending I won’t ask for a raise again.


Lovely and not normal. Most of the time you won’t be fired for asking for a raise, even though it’s almost always legal to do so. (Exceptions would be if you ask in the context of pointing out that you are being paid less than your coworkers who perform similar tasks at similar skill levels who are all a different race than you are, for instance.)

But, why would this be a concern on so many people’s minds? What on earth would make a boss fire someone for asking a completely logical and understandable question. We all want to make more money. Here are 6 reasons why you may be fired, or otherwise punished, when you ask for a raise.

  1. You are incompetent and don’t recognize it. Yes, let’s start with blaming the victim, but there are some completely inept, incapable and incompetent people out there who are utterly convinced that they are geniuses and are deserving of huge raises, promotions and company cars. You have worked with some of these people. If you were their managers, you’d be likely to want to fire them for asking for a completely undeserved raise.
  2. Your request is seen as ungrateful. This is most likely to happen in a small business where the boss is the owner. Sometimes these people see their employees as people who would be homeless if it wasn’t for their largess in giving jobs out, as if it were free candy. They fail to recognize that your work benefits them. So, when you ask one of these people for a raise, they think you should be grateful just to be employed, and when you’re not, it’s time for you to hit the road.
  3. The boss doesn’t like to be wrong. When you come asking for a raise, you’re also saying that you think the boss is wrong. That if she were smart and attentive, she would know that you deserve a raise. This is especially likely to happen if you try to go over this person’s head, to HR or the boss’s boss. Bosses like this take such requests as personal attacks.
  4. You won’t take no for an answer. Sometimes the answer will be no and you need to learn to deal with it. There are some employees who repeatedly ask for raises and promotions and ignore the boss’s increasingly annoyed negative responses. When you’re fired, or otherwise punished after you ask for a raise for the 15th time, it’s not your question, it’s the annoyance of it being repeated.
  5. Your boss is just a complete whack job. It’s entirely possible that you have the misfortune of working for an irrational jerk. You managed to tick him off just the right (wrong?) way by asking and it’s pink slip time for you.
  6. You’ve presented your boss with an ultimatum. “Either you give me a raise or I’m quitting!” May well result in the boss firing you before you can get that letter of resignation written. Only issue ultimatums when you really mean it.

After reading all these possibilities, calm down. It’s rare to be fired for asking for a raise. It’s more likely you’ll get one, especially if you have good reasons for deserving one. I don’t think it’s as high as 85% as the Accenture study seems to indicate. They asked people if they had ever asked for a raise (note the plural nature of that question) and then asked what the result (singular) was. My bet is that (like me) people have asked for raises more than once and been successful at least one of those times, but not every one. Still, unless you think your situation falls into one of the above categories (and if you’re number 1, you’re too stupid to recognize it anyway), and a raise is justified, go ahead and ask.

Source: BNET

Nonprofit Pay Seen Recovering



Salaries at nonprofits are growing as economic conditions improve, with nonprofits posting the same modest improvements as for-profit companies, a new study says.

Salaries increases at nonprofits totaled 3.1 percent of base salaries in 2010 and are projected to total 3.5 percent this year, says the 2010/2011 Not-for-Profit Compensation Survey conducted by Total Compensation Solutions, or TCS, a human-resources consulting firm in Armonk, N.Y.

Nonprofits now are offering compensation packages that are roughly equivalent to pay in for-profit companies in order to compete effectively for executive and staff positions in a highly competitive marketplace, the study says.

It is based on data on 74 unique positions at 760 unique nonprofits throughout the U.S., including information on nearly 4,800 individual employees.

Nonprofits continue to offer competitive benefits to employees, including the cost-sharing approach they have used in recent years on health benefits and retirement-benefit plans, which tend to be slightly more generous than benefit plans and retirement plans in the for-profit sector, the study says.

“For a long time, it was perceived that nonprofits offered dramatically higher benefits to offset their lower pay structure,” Paul Gavejian, managing director of TCS, says in a statement. “Now, nonprofits need to pay competitive salaries and even bonuses in order to attract and retain talented managerial and professional employees.”

As a result, he says, some nonprofits offer total compensation that is competitive with for-profit pay.

And some nonprofits are using for-profit companies when they create a “peer group” for use in setting pay for executive, he says.

Roughly 12 percent of nonprofits have adopted formal bonus plans for their most senior executives, with the plans using a variety of performance measures, and the bonuses often linked with operating budget variances and operational effectiveness, TCS says.

The says over 20 percent of nonprofits offer a bonus or incentive award to their CEO or executive director, up from fewer than 10 percent in 2005.

“These organizations are rewarding executives for achieving strategic and tactical performance objectives,” Gavejian says. “It’s a dramatic shift for many of these organizations and makes them more competitive with for-profits.”

Source: Philanthropy Journal

Is Your Executive Resume Too Wordy?



Finding it difficult to sum up your value proposition in a 2 or 3-page resume? In addition to annoying employers, a too-long resume can quickly lose its potency and dilute your brand message—leaving decision-makers confused about why they should hire you for a leadership role.

Here are some tip-offs to a too-wordy resumethat fails to distinguish your skills:

  • Your bullet-point sentences are longer than 2 or 3 lines, making them nearly impossible to scan quickly
  • You’ve started many phrases or sentences with the same word, which weakens your message
  • Your performance results are buried all the way at the end of each sentence, and are therefore hard to find, with minimal brand impact
  • You’ve added too many adjectives and adverbs, with every achievement noted as “outstanding,” “exceptional,” and worst of all, “successful.” (Employers certainly hope this is the case!)
If any of these apply to your executive resume, it’s easy to trim excess words with these 3 techniques that drive your point home quickly:

Skip verbs for increased impact.

As a branded marketing document, a leadership resume can use innovative conventions, such as sentence fragments that remove the verbs. Consider this example of a sentence transformation:

Original:

Led large-scale operations restructuring and expansion of call centers and company facilities, resulting in a 63% profit increase in just three years and the region’s lowest personnel costs.

New:

63% profit increase in 3 years plus lowest per-employee expenses with enterprise-level operations restructuring and expansion.

Here, the original sentence was condensed 37%–but it still conveys the same meaning. Now, imagine what cutting more than a third of the clutter could do for the clarity of YOUR executive resume!

To use this technique, make list of front-loaded results sentences like these, give this section a name (such as Selected Leadership Results), and then pop it on the front page for maximum exposure.

Take out that long, winding summary paragraph.

There’s no need to bore your reader with a look-alike resume summary or profile that states the obvious, such as:

Dedicated team player with proven leadership, technology utilization, and financial expertise. Skilled in completing projects and communicating at all corporate levels, with excellent team-building and cross-functional collaboration skills.

Don’t waste this key area of resume real estate with a description that fails to tell a story. Instead, cut down the volume of words while giving a snapshot of brand value that pulls in some achievement metrics.

Here’s an example culled from a leadership resume for a candidate moving up the ladder to a CTO role:

VP Technology attaining 99% over-goal performance by exceeding SLA requirements through strategic planning, cost containment, and contract negotiations.

Note the metrics and specific job title blended into the summary statement – with a message that promises value and performance.

Learn to write a branding headline.

A trade secret among professional and executive resume writers, the headline is actually a tagline that allows you condense more data into a tight space. The best part? Your resume can use more than one headline to convey your strongest points.

Here are some examples of headlines that encapsulate value and position job hunters for a specific role:

  • Senior pharmaceutical executive behind accelerated, multibillion-dollar product launches
  • VP Sales driving global growth for new-media marketing company achieving worldwide recognition
  • Investment professional promoting financial health through investment & capital planning
A branding headline can quickly give employers the “big picture” of your achievements, without taking up precious space on your executive resume.

To create this statement, combine the position you seek with a major achievement from your career, showing the results of your work or the approach that you use. In fact, you can lift a success story directly from the body of your leadership resume and summarize it—allowing you to remove extraneous detail from elsewhere in your document.

As you continue to adjust your executive resume and tighten the language, be sure to show it to colleagues and others familiar with your work. You’ll probably find, even with excess words removed, it still conveys your brand message—and faster to boot.

Source: Careerealism

Help Understanding Health Care Reform



Trying to understand health care reform — with all the political arguments and lawsuits swirling around it — is like walking into a hurricane.

With 100 mph winds and pounding rain, it’s impossible to nail anything down.

Throughout the coming year, this column hopes to be the Red Cross in this mess. My goal is to show up after the political-legal-bureaucratic storm to help you figure out what just happened.

And the only way to understand upcoming changes to the existing law is to have a clear picture of what’s happened so far.

I’ll try to paint that picture. My goal is to make health care reform — and its effects on consumers — so clear you’ll be able to explain it to your grandmother.

To do that, I’ve talked to folks at the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation and J.B. Silvers, a Case Western Reserve University professor of health care finance.

Here are the basics. The health care law had three major goals: to provide insurance to about 30 million more Americans; to stop insurers from doing bad things — canceling coverage when someone gets sick, for example; and to keep health care costs under control.

In the law’s first year, 2010, it made progress toward all three.

More people did obtain coverage — in several ways.

First, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as it’s called, required insurers to include young adults — up to the age of 26, married or not — on their parents’ plans. (Ohio law, by the way, extends coverage to single children up to 28, in some individual and employer plans.) In the past, many young adults had gone without insurance, especially when full-time jobs with benefits were hard to come by.

Another way health care reform expanded coverage was with the creation of pre-existing condition insurance plans, or PCIPs. They provide coverage for those considered high risk, such as people with cancer, heart failure or depression who have been uninsured for six months or more. Before reform, many of those people were denied coverage, or premiums were so high, they couldn’t afford insurance.

The PCIPS aren’t cheap, and they have their problems. But so far, Ohio’s is now covering about 1,000 people.

More people now are insured because of a third provision, too, one that says new policies can’t deny or limit coverage to children with pre-existing conditions.

Among the 20 or so other changes implemented in 2010 are several that prevent insurance companies from mistreating consumers.

Insurers can no longer limit the total amount they’ll spend on an individual’s care, referred to as a lifetime limit.

New plans also must cover basic preventive tests such as mammograms, immunizations and colonoscopies, with no co-pay.

And insurers can no longer cancel coverage when someone gets sick.

The law is working at reining in costs, too.

Last year it began providing grants to states to look at how much insurance companies raise their premiums annually. Some states have taken that a step further, says Jennifer Tolbert, a health policy expert for Kaiser, and have forced insurers to lower those price increases.

And it’s funding health insurance exchanges. Those exchanges are like markets where individuals and businesses can go to shop for plans and compare them in an apples-to-apples way so they can determine which one works best for them and costs the least.

“It’s to provide consumers with better information that allows them to make informed decisions regarding the purchase of health insurance,” Tolbert says.

Other changes that took effect in 2010 include a 10 percent tax on tanning, the creation of a website that explains what insurance options are available, and a $250 rebate to those who’ve reached the Medicare doughnut hole. The doughnut hole is the point at which Medicare recipients must pay 100 percent of their prescription drug costs. In 2011, Medicare recipients hit that hole after spending $2,840 — including co-pays — on prescription drugs.

More changes affecting consumers take effect this year.

Beginning in 2011, insurers must spend 80 percent to 85 percent of premiums on patient care and quality improvement. If they don’t, they have to refund the difference to their customers.

Drug manufacturers must also cut prices on name-brand drugs by 50 percent for Medicare patients in the doughnut hole.

And Medicare must cover preventive tests such as mammograms, immunizations and colonoscopies, with no co-pay.

Later this year, chain restaurants will have to list the nutrition content of the food on their menus. Vending machine food must, too. The goal here is to get restaurants to offer healthier food and consumers to eat better in the hopes of improving health and reducing costs.

Beginning July 1, the law also puts an end to federal payment to states for the treatment of hospital-acquired infections in Medicaid patients. It’s a stick, to encourage hospitals to stop the infections and, ultimately, reduce costs.

Health care reform changes aren’t all to the consumers’ advantage.

Tax-free health savings accounts can no longer be used to pay for over-the-counter medications not prescribed by a doctor and any portion of them not used for health care will be taxed at 20 percent, up from 10 percent or 15 percent.

If you’re covered by a Medicare Advantage plan, you might notice another change in 2011. Federal payments to those plans will be frozen at 2010 levels. To make up for that loss, some plans may cut extra benefits such as free health club memberships. And some insurers may decide to stop offering Medicare Advantage plans altogether.

Yes, there are other provisions — they affect the training of doctors, for example, or create a Medicare payment advisory board. But the changes noted above are the major ones that change the way health care covers consumers.

It’s a lot to digest.

So I’ll use a future column to talk about changes expected in 2012 and beyond.

Of course, you should know that the law is most likely headed to the Supreme Court because lower courts disagree over whether it’s constitutional.

Congress is fighting over it, too, with Republicans trying to overturn the law and Democrats arguing that is should stay.

What happens next?

The answer is simple: We don’t know — not yet.

But for now, this is the law that’s in place and the one we’ll be living with.

Source: Cleveland

Discover Your Values to Locate Career Success



Success Tweets: Your values come from deep inside you. Spend the time necessary to discover them. Then hold fast to them. Honor them with your actions.

I love blogging. It gives me the opportunity to share my thoughts and ideas with people who can’t afford my career success coach services. It also keeps me sharp. My thinking on life and career success has grown and developed because of this blog. I hope this is reflected in the quality of my posts. I think I give my better career advice as a result of writing this blog.

There is a side benefit to blogging too. People send me free books in the hopes that I will review them. A while back, I received a copy of Masha Malka’s latest book, The One Minute Coach. It’s a great little book.

Masha has organized The One Minute Coach into bite sized chunks. One three paragraph chapter entitled, What Does it Take to Be Attractive? makes a great point about being true to yourself…

“Being attractive comes from having that magnetic power that pulls people towards you. A power that inspires them to talk to you and find out more about who are; a power that makes them want to be like you!”

She follows this up with five action steps. I love the fifth step…

“Focus on who you are and not just what you look like. People fall in love with the essence of you – your energy, the sparkle in your eyes, your passion for living, your unconditional love, everything that makes you unique and special…people fall in love with your beautiful soul.”

What is your essence, your beautiful soul? It lies in your personal values. Do you let your essence and values shine through? Or do you keep them both under wraps, thinking that you won’t measure up in others’ eyes if you let your true self show.

When I was in high school and reading Hamlet, we got to the point in the play where Hamlet is setting off to avenge his father. Polonius gives him some advice. We were reading the play out loud. I was reading just before Polonius’ advice. Mrs. Yothers, stopped me and said, “This is some of the best advice on life that you will ever get. Read slowly Bud, and the rest of you should listen closely.”

I can’t remember the entire verse anymore, but there was one line that has always stuck with me: “And above all else, to thine own self be true, and it must follow as the day the night, thou canst be false to no man.”

When my nephew Matt Seaton was going off to college, his grandfather and my father-in-law, Roy Blackman, gave him a piece of advice written on a scrap of paper. It read, “TTOSBT – figure it out and live by it.”

Can you figure it out? Here’s a hint, read the quote from Polonius.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple. We are all unique human beings. Each of us has wonderful traits. Our best traits come from deep inside ourselves, our personal values. We all need to have the confidence to let our wonders shine through. You create positive personal impact when you live by your values and let your essence shine through. Pay attention to the advice in Tweet 20 in Success Tweets, “Your values come from deep inside you. Spend the time necessary to discover them. Then hold fast to them. Honor them with your actions.” Honor your values in the way you live your life. Let your values shine through the next time you are in a room full of strangers. You might be surprised at the way people respond to you.

Source: Careerealism

Experience an Asset for Nonprofits



Imagine a well-financed organization that has no staffing problems, plenty of qualified people to do the work, and plenty of resources, but everyone seems to be failing to accomplish what they set out to do.

Think of for-profit businesses, where customers complain about routine tasks taking forever, long lines and poor service. (I always think of banks during lunch hour.)

Or worse yet, think of government bureaucracies.

Indeed, what is usually treated as either a funding or a human-resources problem ignores the crucial element of management– of how to organize resources, processes, people and tasks in ways that are efficient, effective and equitable.

In nonprofits, more than in for-profit businesses or government, the management problem is glaringly obvious because it is in the “voluntary” sector that inexperience is increasingly thought of as a virtue.

The trend in the financially-strapped nonprofit sector has been to keep salaries low, and costs down, by discounting experience in favor of “commitment,” “enthusiasm,” and what I call BBP — best and brightest potential.

I have noticed more and more young people with good technical skills, and virtually no experience or training in managing organizations, being rapidly promoted to mid and high-level executive positions.

The results are often disastrous.

But to be honest, and accurate, I have met ineffective managers of all ages and levels of experience.

The problem, I have come to believe, is less about demographics than it is about training: How are nonprofit managers trained? How many nonprofit managers are trained to be managers of nonprofits?

The answer, I suspect, is very few. And this is alarming.

It is alarming because, in nonprofits, we are not simply meeting a bottom line; we are typically providing vital services to vulnerable people.

Yet, even the most advanced training in core activities — social work in social services, medicine in health-care institutions or education in schools — does not ensure, and may actually work against, administrative best practices.

There is a difference, after all, between being an excellent practitioner or service professional and acting in the best interests of an organization, between being responsive to the needs of clients and formulating policies that will withstand external audits and legal challenges, between being committed to helping people and helping an organization to overcome the myriad obstacles that threaten its ability to carry out its mission and even its very existence.

At the very least, someone who commits the time, energy and resources to pursuing an advanced degree in public administration or some aspect of nonprofit management has established that he or she takes the idea of management seriously and wants to be better at it.

And so, there should be more professional managers at all levels, and more MPA’s working alongside the MSW’s, MD’s and MS.Ed’s who do the essential work.

Source: Philanthropy Journal

Takeaways from a Recent Resume-Writing Event: Helpful Insights




By: Dalya F. Massachi

I served as a panelist at a recent resume writing event in San Francisco, co-sponsored by Opportunity Knocks and the Young Nonprofit Professional Network. I thought I would share some of the insights:

  • Before you start tailoring your resume to a specific job, remember to first step back and picture your reader. If you were in the shoes of the hiring manager at your target organization, what would you want to see? What problems would you have that you are seeking to solve by hiring a new person? And wouldn’t you want to read an easy-to-skim resume that didn’t dwell on minute details?

  • Then think about the overall objective you have as a resume writer. Can you picture yourself at the job you are applying for? What skills do you think you’ll use most? If you are applying for two or more kinds of jobs, you probably need several different versions of your resume.

  • Make sure your resume is relevant to the job you’re seeking. That is, first list key accomplishments and responsibilities in areas that speak to the skills the specific employer is seeking. This may mean that you need to turn your resume into more of a skills-based list instead of a strictly chronological one.

  • You need to showcase what you can do in your next position–and that may be a bit different from what you are doing now. For example, your current job may be largely administrative or academic, but you have been able to demonstrate your managerial or fundraising skills in other projects that are more related to your future career. Feature them!

  • Try out a single-paragraph or bulleted “summary of qualifications” at the beginning. Use keywords from the job description to describe your successes and experiences. This should be easy to read at a glance.

  • Speaking of brevity, consider that many people read on tiny mobile phone screens these days. Challenge yourself to make each resume entry no more than 140 characters (like a Twitter “tweet”).

  • Even though each entry should be brief and to the point, resumes can be two pages long. This rings especially true if you have an advanced degree or have several years of experience in your field. While there is no need to cram everything onto one page, you want to be strategic and only hit the highlights.

  • Keep your LinkedIn profile current. Many employers will check your LinkedIn profile. Make sure it at least outlines your resume and contains punchy recommendations from previous employers, relevant colleagues, and contacts from places you have volunteered.

  • Each entry should be proportionate to the amount of time you were at the job. The longer you held a position, the more you can emphasize it (assuming it’s important and shows increasing responsibility).

  • Measure your accomplishments with exact numbers as much as you can. Feel free to include relevant and recent volunteer work you’ve done.

  • Make a great first impression! If you assisted or worked with a director or manager at your organization, include that person’s title (it will position your work at a higher level). Use a professional-looking, consistent header on each document. Watch your verb forms, formatting, etc. to ensure that you lead your reader through your resume without any grammatical or visual roadblocks.

  • Make sure you follow submission directions! Your cover letter, resume, 3 references, and writing sample (if requested) should all be part of a single PDF or Word attachment. If the organization does not accept attachments, put all of your information in the text of your email — or do as I do, and put the cover letter in the text of the email with live links to the online resume, writing sample(s), etc.

    Feel free to add to this list with your own secrets of resume success!

    About the Author
    Dalya F. Massachi specializes in helping nonprofit professionals advance their missions through outstanding fundraising and marketing materials – online and offline. A lifelong writer, Dalya’s first Letter to the Editor was published in her hometown newspaper before she was even a teenager. For nearly 20 years, Dalya has worked professionally with community-oriented organizations as a sought-after trainer, writing coach, grantwriter, journalist, and organizer. She has crafted countless successful marketing pieces, grant proposals, and news articles. Dalya’s award-winning book, entitled “Writing to Make a Difference: 25 Powerful Techniques to Boost Your Community Impact,” is available at a special discount for OK readers (http://bit.ly/kna7RA). Her website and free tip sheets and e-newsletter are at: www.dfmassachi.net.

    • Are You a Finger Pointer?




    By Chelle Shell

    Being held accountable should start when you are old enough to speak. Good parents teach their children to tell the truth and when they don’t there are consequences. However, once children reach a certain age they quickly figure out if they blame the wrongful behavior on something or someone else they may be able to fly under the radar with no repercussions.

    This all sounds completely normal and many of us learned the lesson of “being accountable” early on. The problem is some of us never learned this lesson or went astray at some point and continue to point the finger as an adult.

    Refusing to be accountable and take complete responsibility for one’s actions without making excuses or placing blame is toxic to all of society and is no stranger to the workplace. There is at least one finger pointer in every office, and you know just who they are, and chances are they are not the most popular person in the organization. Or, it’s even worse when that person is your boss!

    If you are in a management role, your employees look at you to lead by example, just as a child does a parent. If you are finger pointing and not being accountable then your direct reports will follow suit. If you are seeking growth within an organization and you’re not accountable, you’re not going to go very far once your superiors catch wind of your weakness, and believe me, they will.

    If you are a job seeker, or someone looking to climb the organizational ladder, you must also be accountable for your actions. If you’re not currently working are you blaming it on the economy? If someone else received a promotion was it because of the organization played favorites? It’s doubtful that these or any other excuse is why you’re still unemployed or didn’t get promoted.

    Read these questions below and if you answer no, or even falter on any of them then you’ve got some work to do.

    1. Do you do steadily do the right thing on a daily basis, whether it’s in your personal life or at the office in order to achieve something meaningful?

    2. Are your expectations reasonable? You must make sure you have clearly communicated with others what you anticipate from them and what they can expect from you. You must hold yourself to the same standards you expect from others.

    3. Do you own the results of a situation when the outcome is bad? Being responsible for the outcomes, whether they are good or bad is a must, no matter what, and you cannot make excuses.

    4. Are you proactive when a mistake is made, own up to it and face it head on? If not, you better. Figure out the solution, learn from it and keep it moving.

    5. Do you tell the truth - always? This one was a trick question because if you answered yes then you’re a liar. We are humans and no one is perfect but we can sure strive to be. You know the solution to this and you’ve heard it since you were old enough to listen, Try to always TELL THE TRUTH! We all know one lie leads to another so just don’t do it.

    6. Are you living in “the now”? You cannot change the past, but you can focus on the present and the future.

    7. Are you truthful with yourself? If you don’t believe in yourself and what you stand for no one else will either.

    If there are areas in your life or career where you are struggling to reach your full potential then chances are you’re not being 100% accountable. You control your own destiny, so stop playing the victim and get out there and make positive things happen! And remember, in the blame game, there are no winners.

    Do you have a Finger Pointer in your office or life? We’d love to hear your story so just comment away below.



    About the Author

    Michelle “Chelle” Shell has worked in management for over 14 years in positions ranging from recruitment to public relations. In her current role as Client Development Manager for Opportunity Knocks she assists national nonprofit organizations and recruitment agencies connect with talented, qualified nonprofit professionals and HR management solutions. Chelle is active in her transitioning neighborhood association as well as local tennis associations. She is also a Board Member of ANP, Atlanta Nonprofit Professionals.

    For questions and/or comments for Chelle please click on “comments” below and start typing away. Many of you have the same concerns and this will allow you to read what others have to say as well as help the masses. And don’t worry, you don’t have to identify yourself if you would like to remain anonymous.

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    Funders’ Boards Skew White, Male, Over 50



    Members of foundation boards are predominantly white, male and over age 50, and they do not receive compensation for their board work, a new survey says.

    Eighty-five percent of board members at over 500 foundations responding to a survey by the Council on Foundations are white, 62 percent are male, and 74 percent are over age 50, with 19 percent age 40 to 49.

    At family foundations, 16 percent of board members are under age 40, representing the largest share of board members that age among all foundations, says the survey.

    The three-part 2010 Foundation Management Series survey looks at board composition and compensation; administrative and investment expenses, and fiscal oversight.

    “These are important considerations for foundations working to more effectively advance their mission and better serve those in need,” Steven Gunderson, president and CEO of the Council on Foundations, says in a statement.

    African Americans represent 7 percent of all board members, while Hispanics present 4 percent and Asian/Pacific Islanders represent 2 percent.

    Sixteen percent of survey participants say that, to the best of their knowledge, at least one member of their board is lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.

    And 29 percent say their foundations have a written policy on diversity.

    Seventy-six percent of foundations do not pay their board members, while 65 percent of foundations that do provide compensation provide all board members with fixed fees, such as annual, committee-based or per-board-meeting fees.

    The median compensation paid to the board as a whole is $50,750, with board chairs getting a median annual fee of $18,000, and other board members getting $10,000.

    The median fee for a board meeting is $1,000, and the median fee for a committee meeting is $650.

    At 234 staffed independent and family foundations that responded to the survey, administrative expenses represent 15.8 percent of “qualifying charitable distributions,” which include all expenses that count toward meeting the IRS payout requirement for foundations.

    Nearly all foundations used independent accounting firms in 2009, and nearly three in five require full board approval for the use of such firms.

    One -third of foundations strengthened internal management controls in 2009 based on the findings of their 2008 audit, and most took no action or made no changes to policies and practices.

    Nearly nine in 10 foundations provide directors and officers liability insurance.

    Source: Philanthropy Journal

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