career

Remote Working

/ dodwalker1 / Leave a comment

Could the digital nomad dream be about to open up to us all???

Is this is new normal???

Well if you are remote working right now, then yes this might be an option.

I’m not suggesting that everyone is going to be able to chase the 4 hour work week dream, but the new normal for many is going to be increased flexibility in terms of how and where we work.

We are returning to work, but not to the office

This is something that companies are really switching themselves onto.

Employees can start working again, but don’t need to be in the office environment.

The cost benefits for business are huge, albeit there is a crash coming for the commercial real estate sector.

As employees its also good news, we are not going to be limited to living and working in one place.

There might be some limitations on us to be working in a certain country or time zone for periods of time but the biggest change to working conditions in living memory, maybe even since the beginning of the industrial revolution 250 years ago is coming our way.

What can we expect???

At the moment that is still a little unclear, what we can say is that there will like every other change we go through, a period of adjustment along with positives and negatives.

The negatives are likely to be around:

  • Pay structures being flattened out as employees no longer need to live and work in expensive areas (We already see face book being brutal here and others will follow)
  • Expat assignments ending — Unless you have a critical role that needs to be face to face in country, the days of expat assignments and the advantages that come with them are going to end
  • Tying in essentially a whole office and everything that this contains to your home at your expense.

Like any big change with the negatives comes the positives, which in this case are likely to be around:

  • Flexible work schedule
  • No or much less commuting
  • Greater flexibility to travel
  • More than 1 career at anytime

It will be different for everyone, but one thing is for sure change is coming, and fast.

Making the most of the opportunity

As usual the folks who are most comfortable with change, who are optimistic and see the opportunities to be grabbed will make a succesful transition.

If you have been happy working from home and/or if its always been the dream to pursue life as a digital nomad, now might just be a good time to start working up the plans for how you would do that.

Final thoughts

The early bird catches the worm as they say.

Change is coming fast, for some of us it is already here, I know of at least 12 companies allowing their employees to travel (restricted today of course) and work today, albeit for trade off in pay or benefits.

This is not going to go away, and as businesses look to save costs in order to recover from the disaster that has been 2020 so far.

If you really want to be a digital nomad but need the security of a salary, your time may well have come.

Taking the first step in sales

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People do business with people they like…

This is the first rule of sales

Maybe sounds a bit old fashioned but, let me assure you it’s a powerful truth.

People do business with people they like

At a time where we do less and less business face to face, this is being forgotten about, but bear with me its important.

If you want to be successful, you have to build a connection with your sales audience.

Standing out from the faceless crowd

This is a huge challenge today, and one thats being embraced by influencers.

Transcending face to face business and taking those same principles and applying them to vlogging is a great example of how people have successfully reinvented older sales principles to make them work in todays world.

While their audience is a video camera as they present or talk about the product or service their selling, what you see on the other end of that is a face and what you hear is one side of a conversation, this builds a connection.

That connections leads to you liking that person (Or the person they project themselves to be on-screen), the result, your much more likely to buy something they recommend.

Not everyone is on social media or wants to be an influencer of course, but its a great example of standing out from the crowd and building a sales audience with probably the oldest sales rule.

In business day to day there are other ways that we can make those same connections without having social media:

  • Pick up the phone — Its amazing to me the amount of people who try to do business over email only and wonder why its not working. Develop that human connection with someone, if you can have that call over video phone even better.
  • Integrity and honesty — This means being honest about what your trying to achieve and how what your selling benefits the person or the business your selling to, if it doesn’t benefit them chances are they wont buy it so be upfront about that. If you are not sure, then use calls and face to face meetings to work out how it would benefit them, you will thank yourself later. The prospect will also thank you because you will actually understand their needs and can tailor your sales towards that.
  • Talk Plainly — Leave the acronyms and buzzwords back in the 80’s where they belong, this kinda ties back into integrity and honesty, no one talks like that in the real world so don’t talk like that in the business world, a natural conversation with the real you, builds that connection.
  • Don’t present, converse — Death by power point is horrible for both the presenter and the audience, so don’t go there. Instead adopt the corporate story telling philosophy. Just have a conversation with some visual only slides for context as you need them. Its a much more natural way to present and puts both the presenter and the audience at ease.

If you can do these things, it will help you to stand out from crowd, build an honest relationship with your customers and get you more business.

Never forget that people really do more business with people they like, this is what makes sales and business development such a richly rewarding career option.

It might be time to modernise your resume.

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It’s a horrible job but no time like the present.

Resumes and cover letters, two horrible formats to have to use to sell yourself, but they are the formats that most businesses tell us we need to persevere with when applying for jobs.

No matter whether you are applying for a promotion, looking to change career or in the active job hunting market, most of the time we need to use these outdated tools to get to the interview stage.

I hate updating my resume and cover letter, really hate it. As a result I very rarely sell myself well in either document. That’s ok if I’m applying within my network or even in my wider industry to a certain degree as my contact base and experiance might be enough to carry me. But I’m a perfectionist I always want my resume to shine. I just struggle to be anything but self effacing.

However since I’m working from home, and im digging through a list of the other jobs I hate and procrastinate over, I’ve added the resume to the list.

After an initial review while the formatting and grammar were all ok, its 3 years out of date. I have alot of work to do.

It’s also just flat, it reads like a long list of technical jargon that pigeon holes me, not the resume of a person with a broad range of experiences and skills. Looking at it, all I could do was shake my head and despair over what I need to do.

Luckily for me help is at hand

There are a number of free resources out there.

An internet search will provide you with a huge number of free guides and resources to get your resume reading more like the sales document for you that it should be in no time.

Canva a free app which I come back to time and time again for templates for all sorts of different subjects, provides a huge array of impactful visual templates for your resume.

LinkedIn is another great platform for hints and tips, right now you can also find coaches who will give your resume a free health check and some more hints and tips on how to improve the presentation to make you stand out from the crowd and deliver the information you need to convey clearly and effectively.

Hints and tips to keep your resume out of the waste paper bin

Use a head shot : you have a smartphone, something smart to wear and you have a solid coloured wall somewhere in your home, take a presentable professional headshot and include it at the top of your resume. Never ever doubt the power of appearance.

Template: there are thousands out there to choose from, lots of colours and distractions will detract from the power of your message, but at the same time there is nothing worse than a boring white page with a list of accomplishments, trainings and jargon. Choose a smart template that allows you to lay out your information in a clear and tidy way with a small splash of colour and personality.

Formatting: the document should be well formatted with margins, fonts, text sizes, headings, sub headings all presentable and consistent. If your not sure how to accomplish that, search it. There are thousands of guides out there and 20 minutes online will help you out.

Describe yourself: dont just list what your experiance is. List what makes you, you, the skills and experiance you bring. That could be problem solving, analytical skills, people skills whatever those are describe yourself and your attributes. LinkedIn bios are a good example of this, I could be a project manager for company x, but my bio may describe me as a practical problem solver with strong analytical skills in the manufacturing business.

Split up the experiance and the technical stuff: sometimes less is more, your detailed job history yes we need that, the skills and experiance you gained and challenges you faced, yes we need that. Do I need to know each and every piece of equipment, software, hardware, cell phone or app you used in that job? Maybe I do but dont include it all in one long list. Split out the detailed technical parts into a separate appendix. It’s all still there and if its appropriate to the situation the reviewer can read it. It gives them the choice and a resume that’s easier to read and pick out information from is more successful.

Training: dont list every single course you have ever completed, I dont need to know you are certified to use a printer 3000 or that you are certified to use PowerPoint. I get it they may be may be big achievements for you, but are not exceptional to the prospective employer. List the training that gave you skills and experiance or developed your knowledge in an area that’s relevant to their business and discuss what that training did for you, dont just list the course.

Hobbies and interests: yeah I know we have all been there and mine normally reads along the line, reading, music, football and golf. So compelling to the reader.

Instead list the main ones and discuss why they are worth mentioning, maybe they give you a transferable skill, teach you life lessons, de stress you etc. Many of our hobbies and interests are assets to us on a resume if we discuss them in the right way.

A good resume will run to maximum 3 pages, well formatted with spellings and grammar on point with the head shot at the top of page 1 front and centre.

Hopefully you find these tips and tricks helpful and useful.

If your struggling with this right now like I was reach out there is lots of help at hand.