Follow-up From “Never Look For A Job Again” Teleseminar

Last week I dialed into the teleseminar that I blogged about, remember, the one for $17? The title was “never look for a job again,” and Kathy Simmons is probably one of the best qualified speakers on the topic. As president and CEO of Netshare she has seen tens of thousands of CxO-level execs over the years, networking with them virtually and face-to-face. I was completely intrigued by what she had to share.

Here are some of my notes from that call:

• People at work pay attention to the strategy of their companies while they neglect their personal career strategy.
• average tenure of a CxO is 4.5 yrs (Chief Marketing Officer is 22 months! — CFO’s is 18 months to 24 months!)
• Just as a company has to reinvent themselves, and have a plan, you must do this also! Every 3 yrs! (Jason: I had not thought about reinventing myself as a professional, the same way that I would reinvent a company based on the market and competition!)
• It’s a lot easier if you are keeping up with this during your entire career.
• You need to figure out how to develop a career plan so that you are the hunted, not the hunted!
• It’s important to understand your personal brand, and who you are (Jason: these can be two different things)
• You need to understand how to communicate your brand.
• When you figure out your brand, then it’s time to network more effectively (with your brand – this is part of keeping your brand out there, and keeping yourself visible).
• “It’s very hard when you are an employed individual to network” because you are busy all day.
• Make sure you use social networking (Kathy specifically mentions LinkedIn)
• How to care for and feed (nurture) your network? Send contacts an article that they might be interested in.
• Don’t “bug,” rather “keep a friendship” … when you see something that someone might be interested in, send it to them.
• Another great networking opportunity is by participating in trade association networking groups (Jason: on yahoo groups), and with Cindy Kraft’s CFO Forum.
• Blog, write articles… anything you can do to keep your exposure out there as a subject matter expert, that is trememdously valuable…. because one of the things that has really changed in how recruiters look for people is they spend a lot of time on Google.
• There is a lot of opportunity for finance execs in small companies, VC funded companies, etc.
• Vendors are an amazing network! When you’ve been in a position for any length of time you will have a great network with these vendors (Jason: and customers, and prospects, etc.)
• When you build so much visibility around your brand then opportunities come to you, you don’t have to find and chase them.
• If you do it properly you open a whole new list of career opportunities.
• You want to make yourself so exciting that the hiring manager says “I would be nervous if the hiring manager got ahold of this person!”
• Cindy Kraft: “networking is always about giving to get”, and “the fastest way to burn out a network is by asking them for a job.”

This was a great teleseminar – I wanted to be on the call so that I could hear what the industry leaders where suggesting. I’m pleased to know that a lot of what they said was stuff I have been thinking and blogging about, so I’m not too far off 😉

The call was put on by the CFO Career Forum. If you missed this one, you missed out. I’ll be announcing other teleseminar opportunities as I learn about them, so stay tuned!