Category Archives: Starting a Career in Sales

By Donna Fuscaldo

Everyone knows they should have a mentor but many don’t know how to find one. Mentors come in many flavors and hold different monikers, but the two common traits they should all possess is a willingness to give unbiased advice and expertise in the areas you are looking to improve.

“A mentor is extremely important to grow your skills and enhance your career path,” says Susan Ruhl, a managing partner at OI Partners – Innovative Career Consulting in Denver. “It doesn’t matter if the person is internal or external (to your company) as long he or she understands what your personal development goals are.”

Before you can start your hunt for the perfect mentor or advisors, career experts advise to do a little soul searching to pinpoint your weaknesses and to determine your goals. Let’s say you want a marketing job. Come up with a list of skills you’ll need to make the transition and then identify any gaps. Once you know where you need improvement you can pinpoint someone who has those skills. “You have to be clear in what you are asking for,” Julie Bauke, career strategist, president of The Bauke Group, and author of Stop Peeing on our Shoes: Avoiding the 7 Mistakes that Screw Up your Job Search.. “You can’t just say, ‘I want to get to the top of this company can you mentor me.’”

Finding a mentor can take a bit of detective work especially if you are new to a company. Sure the C-level executive would be the ideal mentor, but since that may not be a realistic option unless you are high-up yourself, it’s a good idea to observe people above you and focus on the ones that do their job well.  “I wouldn’t reach out to a stranger,” says Ruhl. “I wouldn’t go up to the CEO unless I had a good relationship” with him or her. Ruhl says to take the company culture into account when choosing a mentor. If it’s a very relaxed structure then you may be able to go very high-up when targeting a mentor, but if it’s a rigid company structure you may want to start by going only one level above you. It’s also important to choose someone that others within the organization admire and respect. The worst thing you could do is align yourself with someone that has no respect within the company.

Once you’ve pinpointed your mentor or mentors you have to come up with a good reason why you want that person to advise you. For instance, if you admire how that person handles herself in a meeting, then ask her for tips on giving presentations. If you want to improve your customer relations skills, compliment your potential mentor on his knack for dealing with disgruntled customers.  “You have to say, ‘the reason I am hoping you’ll mentor me in this one area of my career is because I love the way you handle yourself in meetings,’” says Bauke. “It’s easy for them to say yes because there’s something you admire about them.” By providing specifics, you are giving the mentor a path for success instead of making it feel like work for them, she says. 

Not one person is going to give you everything you need, which is why career experts say you should try to have more than one mentor. Creating a team of advisors with expertise in different aspects of your career is the best way to get well-rounded advice and guidance. It also reduces the burden on the mentors, and if it doesn’t work out with one mentor you’ll have others to use as sounding boards. It’s also important to set expectations ahead of time in terms of how the mentorship will go. For instance, will it be something formal where you meet every other week for a specific amount of time, or will it be informal where you can email or call the person when you need advice?

While most people think of mentorships as an older person mentoring a younger one, it’s becoming common to see the reserve going on. “The younger workforce can be just as informational as the older workforce,” especially in areas of technology, says Ruhl.  “It’s become a two-way street.”

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Donna Fuscaldo is a freelance journalist hailing out of Long Island, New York. Donna writes for numerous online publications including FoxBusiness.com, Bankrate.com, AARP.com, Insurance.com and Houselogic.com. As a personal finance reporter for years, Donna provides invaluable advice on everything from saving money to landing that dream job. She also writes a weekly column for FoxBusiness.com focused on technology for small businesses. Previously, Donna was an equities reporter for Dow Jones Newswires and a special contributor to the Wall Street Journal. Through the Glassdoor Blog, Donna will provide tips on how to find a job and more importantly keep it.

By Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter

The rumor mill is alive and well. This mill never stops churning and has ruined more than a few good careers. Some rumors are started purposely with the intent of embarrassing or upsetting the parties involved, while others are no more than misunderstandings that caught fire and spread rapidly.

If you have ever been the victim of a workplace rumor, or been charged with putting out a fire began by one, you already know how damaging it can be.

Protecting yourself and your coworkers from this danger is simple when you know what to look for and whom to run from.

Here are five basic rules for keeping up good workplace etiquette and avoiding getting tangled up in this vicious web:

1. Be wary of questions that sound like gossip. “Have you heard…?” The moment these words enter the ear canal, your “spidey senses” should go on high alert. The information you are about to have bestowed upon you should instantly be considered suspect at the very least. If the information is of a personal nature: “Jim and Sally are seeing each other,” ignore the information unless you are married to one of them. If it is related to your job and corporate in nature: “Our offices are being shuttered this month,” then you may want to investigate further.

2. Be aware that everything is not always as it seems. Don’t allow someone you work with who has a vivid imagination to sway your point of view. Just because there are moving vans in the parking lot and a black SUV parked nearby that you’ve never seen before, doesn’t mean your headquarters are about to get raided. It could just mean file boxes are being moved to permanent storage and one of your co-workers recently got a new car. 

3. Never ever repeat anything you’ve heard, even if it turns out to be true. Unless you are specifically asked to pass on certain information, work under the assumption that you know nothing. The best way to keep from getting burned is to stay out of the fire.

4. Give sensitive information the respect it deserves. Did you happen to spot a co-worker leaving an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting? Discovering something of this nature, either by accident or some other coincidental circumstance, does not give you the right to tell others about it. Try being glad for this person and happy knowing they are trying to better themselves and leave it at that. Speaking to others about what you’ve learned, or even to the person you’ve found out, will only serve to cause embarrassment unduly. Everyone struggles with something at some time. You are not the national news and have no right to tell another’s story.

5. Stay away from the water cooler gang. Even if you don’t say a word, being seen in the midst of a group spreading some harmful rumor will be noted and used against you should the matter come to a head.

Being social at work is important on a number of levels. However, it is even more important to discern the difference between being “social” and being a part of the rumor mill.

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Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter is a Glassdoor career and workplace expert, chief career writer and partner with CareerTrend, and is one of only 28 Master Resume Writers (MRW) globally. An intuitive researcher, she helps professionals unearth compelling career story details to help best present their unique experience, skillset and interests in resumes and other career positioning documents as well as through social media profiles. In addition to being interviewed for television and radio stories, Jacqui has written for the Career Management Alliance Connection monthly newsletter and blog, ExecuNet’s Career Smart Advisor, The Kansas City Star, The Business Journal and The Wall Street Journal. In addition, she and her husband, “Sailor Rob,” host a lively careers-focused blog over at http://careertrend.net/blog. Jacqui also is a power Twitter user listed on several “Best People to Follow” lists for job seekers.

By Donna Fuscaldo

Being out of work is hard, being unemployed and in your 50’s can be impossible. While companies won’t admit it, age discrimination does exist, particularly in a tight job market where there are many more candidates than job openings. Although the problem crosses both genders, older women reentering the job market can have an even tougher time.  According to the September jobs report, women 55 and older who have been out of work for longer than 27 weeks increased from 50.9% in August to 54% in September.

Older workers looking for employment may think they have to act or dress younger to land a job in this economy, but career experts and headhunters say they should use what they have to their favor: knowledge and experience.

“In life there are the Justin Bieber’s and the Sean Connery’s,” says Mark Jaffe, president of Wyatt & Jaffe, the executive search firm. “There’s no shame in being Sean Connery.”

According to Jaffe, often older job seekers make the mistake of focusing on their past achievements and calling attention to themselves, preemptively laying out an argument why their age won’t matter, when they should be talking about what their goals are for the future and why their wisdom and age can actually benefit the company.

“The question I want answered by someone (regardless of age) is are they playing their greatest hits or are they cranking out new music,” says Jaffe.  He says to avoid talking about your age on an interview, but instead talk about how your experience puts you in the unique position to accurately judge situations and understand people’s behavior. “You don’t have to talk about trendy stuff or having great computer skills. Be that wise old guy,” says Jaffe.

While conveying your wisdom and experience on an interview is one thing, getting the interview is something different altogether. According to career experts, to prevent your resume from getting skipped over because of your age, leave off age identifying information. “Don’t include your entire work history,” says Alison Doyle, the job search expert for About.com.  “The last ten to fifteen years is sufficient.” Doyle says she had one job seeker who had 35 years of experience on the resume and couldn’t understand why employers weren’t calling. She says having years and years of experience is a red flag. “They can guess how old you are right off the bat if you have thirty years of experience,” she says.

Another age identifier to leave off the resume is the dates you went to college. It’s not hard to figure out how old someone is if they graduated college in 1980. What’s more, make sure your skills are fresh on your resume and include current applications. Nothing screams outdated and out of touch then skills that have been obsolete for years. So even if you are an ace in Word Perfect or C++, don’t include it on your resume.  “If you need to upgrade your skills be sure to do that,” says Doyle. “It makes a difference with employers.”

Whether you are 25 or 55, one of the best ways to get a job is to do so by recommendation from someone you know. That is why career experts say its impetrative that older workers tap connections and network in order to find a new job.

“You’re more likely to get a job from someone you know,” says Kerry Hannon, career expert and author of What’sNext? Find Your Dream Job. “Dig deep into your network and ask for help.” In addition to networking through traditional channels, Hannon says it’s important to get online and learn how to use social media like LinkedIn and Facebook. LinkedIn is a valuable tool to network within a given industry as well as meet new people that may be able to help you find employment. Hannon says it’s also important to keep your skills sharp, even if you’ve been laid off for a while. “Don’t just sit around and send out resumes,” says Hannon. “Take a course at the community college. Get out there and volunteer. You never know who you are going to meet that might help you get in the door.”

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Donna Fuscaldo is a freelance journalist hailing out of Long Island, New York. Donna writes for numerous online publications including FoxBusiness.com, Bankrate.com, AARP.com, Insurance.com and Houselogic.com. As a personal finance reporter for years, Donna provides invaluable advice on everything from saving money to landing that dream job. She also writes a weekly column for FoxBusiness.com focused on technology for small businesses. Previously, Donna was an equities reporter for Dow Jones Newswires and a special contributor to the Wall Street Journal. Through the Glassdoor Blog, Donna will provide tips on how to find a job and more importantly keep it.

The Glassdoor Team is a small yet seasoned group of individuals looking to provide greater transparency into one of the most important aspects of our lives – our jobs. Contributions to the blog are designed to present a unique perspective on current events, offer commentary on the inside workings on specific jobs at a multitude of companies, and provide details on the latest happenings from within Glassdoor.