With the job market saturated with highly qualified candidates who have been laid off from jobs they’ve held for years, it’s no secret many are now interested in applying for jobs that may fall below their level of expertise. If you are a candidate who may be overqualified for a job you’re considering, think about making adjustments to your resume to help you get the job.

Subtract “Too-Impressive” Job History and Education

Believe it or not, it’s perfectly acceptable to leave information off of your resume that might be considered too impressive. For instance, if you have worked as a marketing executive but now want to apply for a job as a human resources manager, you can leave the executive information off, especially since the new and old positions aren’t in the same field.

Same goes for education. If you have a doctorate, you don’t have to add it to your resume. You can postpone any discussion about this qualification for your interview where you can take the time to explain why you’re looking for a job that doesn’t require as much of a challenge.

Add Extra Details About History that Help You Qualify

On the other hand, it’s a great idea to elaborate on various aspects of your career that can help you better qualify for a position. Take time to think about what made you a great manager at a previous point in your career. What caused you to excel and advance to the level you reached prior to leaving your last job?

As a manager, you’re sure to have had great accomplishments to list on your resume. Be sure to go into detail about what made you great then—and what will make you exceptional in the position you’re applying for now.

The goal of writing your resume is to make sure you get called for an interview. Unfortunately, this can be difficult to do if you get tossed into the denial pile because an employer is worried you’ll become bored with your job and flee as soon as you can. By adjusting your resume accordingly to get the interview, you have given yourself the opportunity to sort out the remaining details face to face.

Source: careerealism.com

Research shows top performing managers are leaving their jobs, even in today’s dismal employment environment. The better the results they’re achieving the more confident they are about their ability to succeed elsewhere. One quarter of top performers intend to leave their company, according to a study by the Corporate Leadership Council. Some 42 percent of employers are increasingly concerned that other companies are prepared to poach their top talent, reports Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Competitors may be trying to recruit your best managers right now in preparation for a business rebound, knowing that companies that strengthen themselves during an economic slowdown bounce back fastest when the inevitable upturn comes.

Here’s a strategy that can keep your future leaders working for your organization. It focuses on helping them reach their maximum potential, which is what they value most, and keeping them engaged. This three-part plan is based on research at Juran and my experience as an executive coach.

1. Assess Your Top Performers and Let Them Know They Are on Top

Determine why your top performers are successful. Look beyond the results they’re achieving to understand how they’re producing them. Managers apply a wide range of tactics and execution styles to achieve their targets. Are they consistently using best practices or are they creative geniuses who break all the rules? Are their bottom line results due to increasing revenue or cutting costs? Are they intuitive or analytical? Moreover, does your organization understand their personalities, values, life plans and work expectations?

Successful leaders know their rising stars. Whenever he travels, Phillips Electronics EVP and co-COO Gerard Kleisterlee has three priorities: meeting local management, meeting a key customer — and lunch with a high-potential manager.

By knowing your rising managers well, you can make more confident decisions about your organization’s future leaders and who will be better in other roles, perhaps as subject matter experts in technology or finance. You’ll be able to structure the best development plan for each.

2. Improve Their Performance

Align your top performers’ development plans with your company’s strategy so what they do supports the organization’s needs as well as their own. Determine the best pace for their tracks. Companies sometimes move their rising managers around too quickly. The risk is they may tend to pick only the low-hanging fruit when planning projects and recast the challenge so they can handle it with existing skills. Give them the time needed to plan their projects, implement them and stay to see the results so they can evaluate their performance.

Let these managers participate in the career track planning from its start. By working in partnership with them you can make the most suitable changes together. You can use many different kinds of development techniques.

Mentoring can really pay off: A five-year study of 1,000 Sun Microsystems employees found that 25 percent of mentored employees enjoyed salary grade changes, while only 5 percent of those in the control group did. Those who were mentored were also promoted six times more often than others.

Rockwell Collins matches mentors and high performers using a web-based program. IBM has three distinct mentoring programs: expert mentoring, career mentoring and, for new hires, socialization mentoring. At Eli Lilly, new MBA grads get a full 20 percent of their learning from coaching, while 70 percent comes from their work and 10 percent from formal education. All these programs are productive. In contrast, other mentoring programs peter out and some even generate conflict. The ways mentors are matched with mentees can sometimes look like blind dating.

Let’s picture a different kind of mentoring. The mentor does the usual mentoring things but is also an advocate for the manager. This advocate, a confidante, keeps the manager current on what’s happening in the company, provides counsel, identifies internal resources and helps clear obstacles that impede performance.

The advocate-mentor also helps to resolve conflicts that can easily develop when, for example, a newly rotated top performer is assigned a critical role and the operating unit head would prefer a more experienced manager on the job. The advocate also keeps senior management up to date on the manager’s performance.

Other strategies for developing your high-potential talent can include rotation to a supplier, process improvement team projects, executive education, tuition reimbursement, shadowing, executive coaching, job swaps, stretch assignments and specialized skills training. The training can include courses of one or two days on management skills like project management or making effective presentations. There are short courses that deal with potential problems like ethics or diversity.

There are also longer, more technical training initiatives designed to improve the quality of your company’s products and services to meet customers’ needs, such as Lean and Six Sigma methodologies. Creating a corporate university, like those at companies like GE and Motorola, might be the best approach for leadership development on a large scale.

Don’t make it public about who’s a rising star or you’ll create a culture of winners and losers.

3. Measure Progress Quarterly – Not Annually

The annual performance review is losing out to quarterly reviews at some Silicon Valley businesses. Your high-potential managers also should be given quarterly evaluations because many are in jobs that are totally new for them. Your company is driven by quarterly performance; why not your top talent? Continually monitor and measure the results they’ve achieving and take corrective action if necessary to get them back on track.

The traditional performance review often fails, as both an assessment tool and a plan for future performance improvement, because reviewing managers are given little guidance in conducting it. The review can become the most stressful event of the year for the top performer and the reviewing manager. High-potential managers must be reviewed with great care. A good approach is to have them make a presentation about the results they achieved since the previous review, identifying goals reached and those missed. The meeting is collegial, the manager’s advocate participates, and senior leaders provide encouragement and support. Not a word is said about salary, which is negotiated later.

Salary is only one of the factors that affect retention but disappointment with raises can impact retention rates. When the financial climate is right, top performers who achieve results should get bigger raise rates than other managers who don’t. But what should the differential be? The teachings of the non-profit WorldatWork organization, which provides education, conferences and research on HR issues, suggest a differential of between 50 and 100 percent. Over the last five years, including an estimate for 2011, differential rates have averaged between 40 and 47 percent.

Get to know your rising managers. Let them know they’re valued and that they can achieve all their goals at your company. By managing their development strategically you’ll create powerful, productive leaders who will help your organization reach new breakthroughs in performance. And they may be less interested in jumping ship.

Source: chiefexecutive.net

Are you a swift decision-maker? Do you like taking ownership of projects?

In today’s employment market, the ability to take charge of situations could hold potential value when it comes to finding a rewarding career.

“Organizations thrive on individuals who will take a stand for getting results,” career coach Meredith Haberfeld says.

A take-charge approach can also be an invaluable asset for employees from a teamwork standpoint, too, says Haberfeld, co-founder of the Institute for Coaching. “Over the long haul, they not only take charge, but they are great collaborators and great selling their ideas so that people can get behind them,” she says.

Think you’re ready to take control in a take charge career? Check out the six following professions could pay big dividends for take-charge people.

Take Charge Career #1 - Marketing Manager

As a marketing manager, you would coordinate efforts that will result in a product or brand getting purchased by consumers. Decisions relating to product development and consumer research require a manager’s take-charge skills and an ability to collaborate with others.

“If a person can get other constituents behind them and make them feel like they are part of the process, those take-chargers are prized and they shoot up the ladder,” Haberfeld says.

Education: The U.S. Department of Labor reports that most employers prefer that you have either a bachelor’s or master’s degree in business administration with an emphasis on marketing, where you might take courses in areas such as business law, management, economics, accounting, and finance.

Average annual salary: $122,720*

Take Charge Career #2 - Computer and Information Systems Manager

Managers in the field of information technology (IT) use a take-charge approach to complete projects while under deadline pressure. They might oversee the installation of new computer technology for a start-up company that’s eager to launch. Or they could be under the gun to upgrade a network security system to help combat cybercriminals.

The ability to meet tough deadlines is especially valuable when fast-changing technology is involved.

“One of the most challenging things for information systems is that deadlines endlessly slip in that department, maybe more than any,” Haberfeld says. “If you are somebody who can manage a project, finish on time, and make sure it’s addressed by the right people at the right time, that is highly valued in that arena.”

Education: Getting a bachelor’s degree in a computer-related field could qualify one for most management positions in the IT field, according to the Department of Labor. However, some employers will prefer those who have a master’s degree in computer science, information science, or management information systems (MIS).

Average annual salary: $123,280*

Take Charge Career #3 - Criminal Investigator

Investigating crimes requires a take-charge person to make the right decisions at crucial times. Whether an investigator is interviewing a witness or conducting computer-based research, it’s important to be assertive.

What might be most important for investigators is an ability to stay assertive, whether they work as detectives, crime scene investigators, or laboratory specialists.

“For one thing, investigators have to ask difficult, probing questions and, in many cases, root out the facts,” says Kathy Lavinder, executive director of Maryland-based Security & Investigative Placement Consultants. “Simply accepting information that is provided, without challenge, would be a serious dereliction of duty for an investigator.”

Education: If you want to give yourself a leg up on the competition, some college could be helpful. While experience is generally required, “some people enter the occupation directly after graduation from college, generally with an associate’s or bachelor’s degree in criminal justice or police science,” says the Department of Labor.

Average annual salary: $73,010*

Take Charge Career #4 - Education Administrator (Elementary/Secondary)

Administrators at elementary and secondary schools have a number of responsibilities that can benefit from a take-charge approach. Establishing academic programs and policies, for example, requires strong leadership skills and a firm commitment to giving students the best education possible.

School administrators also need excellent communication skills in order to motivate teachers, staff, and students, according to Mel Riddle, associate director of the National Association of Secondary School Principals.

“When you have a wide number of people you have to supervise, you have to get their cooperation,” Riddle says. “It’s not about control, but cooperation. People have to buy in to what you are trying to do. If you can do that, you are able to develop more of partnership than a supervisor-subordinate relationship.”

Education: Thinking about what it might be like to work as school principal? The Department of Labor reports that education administrators generally start out as teachers, which traditionally requires you to have a bachelor’s degree from a teacher education program and licensure. To move into administrator positions, you might consider getting a master’s degree in education administration or educational leadership.

Average annual salary: $89,990*

Take Charge Career #5 - Health Services Manager

Health care, one of the country’s fastest-growing industries, requires managers capable of dealing effectively with financial concerns, employee performance, and patient wellness.

Whether at hospitals, nursing homes, or physician offices, health services managers rely on their take-charge abilities to keep their facilities running effectively.

Shelia Richmeier, author of the book “The New Healthcare Supervisor’s Guide,” says health services managers must have excellent interpersonal skills in order to take charge of situations on the job.

“I think there are people who are natural leaders and they relate to people very well,” Richmeier is quoted as saying on the Medical Group Management Association’s website. “This is a big part of being a supervisor.”

Education: Getting a bachelor’s degree in health services administration is one way to help start your career, particularly at smaller health care facilities. For advancement to mid-level or higher positions, you most likely will need a master’s degree, says the Department of Labor.

Average annual salary: $93,670*

Take Charge Career #6 - Advertising Sales Agent

Advertising sales agents are responsible for getting businesses to buy ad space from newspapers, magazines, radio and TV stations, billboard companies, and websites.

Sales agents often make cold calls on the phone or approach businesses in person to get potential clients interested in advertising their goods and services. Getting rejected is a part of the process, but a take-charge approach can help sales agents bring in ad revenue, especially during tough economic times, Haberfeld says.

“An advertising sales agent has to drive toward getting clients to commit to dollars in a constricted economic climate,” Haberfeld says. “Everybody is pulling back advertising dollars, so a sales agent has to be an incredible relationship person.”

Education: If you have a penchant for selling, careers in this field often require a high school diploma and on-the-job preparation. But a bachelor’s degree in a business-related field can help qualify you for sales positions that require meeting clients in person, according to the Department of Labor.

Average annual salary: $55,020*

*All salary information is from the U.S. Department of Labor Salary Statistics (May 2010). Salary is often dependent on a number of factors, including experience, education, place of employment, and more.

Source: YAHOO! Education

Success Tweet: Write your goals. Share them with others. You are more likely to achieve goals you write and share.

Accountability is the key career management advice here. When you write your goals and share them with others you are choosing accountability.

Writing your goals demonstrates your accountability to yourself. Written goals are real and tangible. Goals you keep in your head most often are fuzzy and poorly defined; little more than wishes.

Taking the time to write your goals, and then making them S.M.A.R.T. puts some rigor into the goal setting process. You end up with a set of well defined goals on which you can build your career success.

Sharing your goals with others close to you is another way of choosing accountability. When you share your goals, you are making a public statement about what you are going to accomplish. This makes you more likely to do the work necessary to achieve them.

Let me give you an example. I have made a big effort to improve my level of health and fitness in recent years. A few years ago, I set a weight loss goal. I shared this goal with several of my friends, especially those who are committed to their own health and fitness.

One of these people is one of my clients. I was visiting his office one day. There was a big platter of oatmeal raisin cookies left over from a meeting sitting in an open area near his office. As we passed the cookies, I took one. was beginning to take a bit when he turned to me and said, “Do you really want that?”

In the moment, I really did. But in the greater scheme of things and given my health and fitness goal, I really didn’t want to be eating cookies in the middle of the afternoon. I tossed the cookie into the trash.

Sharing my health and fitness goal with this guy helped me achieve it. By asking me a simple question, “Do you really want that?” he helped me make progress toward my goal. He helped me fight the temptation to do something that ran counter to achieving my goal. But remember, he never would have asked me the question if I had not first shared my health and fitness goal with him. This is one of the basic ideas behind the Weight Watchers program. This works for goals in all areas of your life and career.

Here’s another example. I was having a conversation with Doug Westmoreland, king of motivational videos. He and I were talking about email list building. I mentioned I have a goal of growing my subscriber list. Doug asked a few questions, made a few suggestions and then said something really profound, “Bud, you’re a great guy, you give lots of value to your subscribers. It’s about time that you begin offering them the opportunity to reciprocate by making products available for sale in your electronic correspondence with them.”

Doug’s comment was really helpful. He got me to rethink how I communicate with my subscribers. I never would have received this great advice if I hadn’t shared one of my goals with him.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple. Successful people set and achieve high goals. They follow the advice in Tweet 28 in Success Tweets, “Write your goals. Share them with others. You are more likely to achieve goals you write and share.” I have found writing your goals and sharing them with others are two of the best ways to ensure you achieve them. Both of these simple actions increase your personal accountability for achieving your goals. When you write your goals, they become more real for you. When you share them, you invite others to help you achieve them. You build a support network that can keep you on track and moving forward in creating the career success you deserve.

Source: careerealism

Most people think they know the keys to career success: Keep your head down and nose to the grindstone. Avoid personal, emotional, or awkward subjects (in fact, any elephant in the room) at all costs. Well, guess again. Here, experts reveal five on-the-job maxims that are worth challenging.

Stay Away From Emotional Topics

In my opinion, you should always bring a problem out into the open, even if it’s personal, difficult, or awkward. Say you and a colleague have different work styles or have clashed over a project, and as a result there is serious tension between the two of you. Tiptoeing around the issue may cause your productivity to suffer, so it’s crucial that you confront your coworker. You can say, “You seem to dispute every point I make, and I don’t understand. Did I do something to upset you?” If you talk about it, the situation won’t spiral out of control or become a pattern.

Climb the Career Ladder

There’s pressure in our culture to earn more money and to have important titles. But not everyone wants more responsibility and power. And what we don’t hear often enough is that it’s OK not to want a promotion. So move laterally, or choose self-employment if you think that will make you happy. It won’t hold you back; on the contrary, having a nonlinear career path can make you more intriguing to bosses in the future, not less. They’ll view you as having broader experience.

Do What You Were Hired to Do

Your boss has to look at the bigger picture all the time—she’ll admire you for doing the same. If you pay attention to your organization as a whole, you’ll better appreciate what other people do—and you might come up with macro ways to help the company. It’s a fine line between offering assistance and stepping on someone’s toes. But if you have the best intentions at heart, you can say, “I see an opportunity here that we’re not taking advantage of.”

Live at the Office

For many of us, our careers are not our life’s passions. So it’s essential to pursue outside interests—both for our happiness and to facilitate our creativity at work. Amazing discoveries and insights are often made when people are tinkering in the garage, gardening, or riding a bike. Plus, hobbies help give us a sense of peace. And once we relax for a moment, the answer to a work problem will often reveal itself.

Network 24/7

It’s inefficient to walk into a cocktail party or an industry event and start mingling with random people. My suggestion? Throw away every business card tucked away in your wallet and work social-media connections instead. You can get in touch with important people who interest you, whether they’re in your industry or not. Retweet messages of theirs, ask them questions, and strike up online relationships. From there, it can be easy to get them to meet you for lunch or coffee—where you’ll connect in a real, personal way that will ultimately help your career.

Source: Shine from Yahoo!