It's Not You, It's Me

All the best Hollywood movies include a devastating split between lovers; the saddest line is when one party tells the other that it's not about them.

“Its not you, it’s me....” inevitably leads to a heartbreaking breakup.

It’s the same with rejection responses from recruitment agencies. Not only is the rejection praising your skills and resume, but it's just so bland and standard. In fact, after carefully reviewing numerous rejection emails (which I promised myself I would never do) - I have come to the conclusion that they were all written by either the same person, or a screenwriters guild.

Dear Lisa

Thank you for your recent application for the position of Life Guru.

We found your resume extremely impressive, in fact the quality of your resume was so outstanding that we feel we may not be able to offer you an interview for this position. You are just THAT good. Honesty, we felt you were way too good for this position, there are much better positions out there for you.

Please continue to look at our website daily for other opportunities that you may be interested in, and continue to send your resume to us so that we can review it and see if you tick the boxes on the jobs we also find on seek.com.au and careers.com.au. As we have staff and systems trawling through these websites 24hrs, we may find and  advertise the job before you even wake up. We’re clever like that.

We have your resume on record, however we are unlikely to reference this as this is time consuming and the unemployment market is so high that we don’t actually have to go find candidates. They come to us.

Have you considered a job in recruitment?’

We wish you every success in your job search,

Kind Regards

Recruitment Consultant

OK, so that’s not exactly the wording, but you get the gist of it. A response telling me how great I am, but that I don’t tick all the boxes. Hey! All of my life I have never ticked all the boxes. It's what makes me great.

Seriously, this response (or one very much like it) has been received from multiple recruitment agencies. I honestly feel that they have all gone to the same recruitment school and were given a few templates to work from. They are all identical.

The email responses I am sent directly from companies differs slightly but are along the lines of:

Dear Lisa

Thank you for submitting your application with our company for the position of Life Guru.

After careful review of your resume, we regret to advise that you have not been successful in this instance in obtaining an interview. We were impressed with your skills and value you can bring to our organisation, and very grateful that you took the time to send your resume and award winning cover letter to our company.  

We are not the right company for you, we wont treat you right. There are other companies out there who are so much better for you; you deserve better than us.

Please advise if you wish us to keep your resume on record for future consideration.

Regards

Human Resources Director.

Fortunately I don't take these to heart. It's not me, it's you! Missing out that is.

Apart from there being plenty of fish in the sea, this picture has absolutely no relevance to the blog.

Shameless Act of Self Promotion

I’m going to tell you how good I am.

Right here. Right now. After all, this is what I do on a daily basis when writing my award winning cover letters. 

I am an exceptional leader. What makes me exceptional besides me telling you? Well, I enjoy leading a team of people. I get my kicks out of developing staff, watching them grow and develop in careers and as people. In my performance reviews, in the hallway discussions with managing directors, and in emails from staff, I have been told how great I am as a leader. Its true. I have evidence. 

I am a “can-do” person. I don’t just tell you I can do it, I roll my sleeves up and do it. I have often walked into the office to find myself short staffed and the only option is for me to get in and do what I tell my staff to do. As a manager and leader, I also had to do it without error and with a positive attitude. How can I expect staff to do something well if I can’t do it? 

I am a strategist. I can break down any vision you give me and turn it into a phased plan that will knock your socks off. Or heels if you’re not wearing socks. 

I am savvy. Not just school yard savvy, but I come with the business smarts. I’ve been there on day one of a start up company that is still going strong after 16 years. I’ve provided solutions to large multinational companies that made sense, and made money. 

I am an excellent communicator. Actually, I have no idea on this one, all I know is that I communicate. A lot. In various mediums. 

I am a thought leader. Again, I don’t really know if I am, but someone on twitter told me I was. Well, I don’t really know what a thought leader is to be honest, but it sounds too good to pass up. I have now included this on my resume. Lisa Fryar - Thought Leader.  

I am beginning to really enjoy the cover letter writing exercise of applying for a job. 
Everyday I am granted the opportunity to provide some positive blurb about myself, it's like a form of new age therapy where I continually go through the list of everything I am really great at. I don’t even struggle with this anymore. 

Where I need the practice is telling people in person. 

Australians are not known for their face to face self promotion. We cut down tall poppies and eat them for breakfast, so singing my own praises seems a little unnatural. This is something I really need to start working on because walking into an interview, I need to have the same confidence that my resume promotes. 

I can't exactly walk in and introduce myself as Australia’s Next Top Thought Leader. 

Any volunteers who would like to hang out with me for a little while and listen to my shameless self promotion blurb?

PS - that's me in a "marketing poster" showcasing some of my skills. 

Silence is Golden.

I love silence. Peace and quiet. 

Unless I am waiting for a response to a job, then silence is deafening!

As a mother of three lovely kids, I have certainly had my moments of wanting to lock myself in a padded room wearing earplugs and an eye mask. The straight jacket goes without saying. I imagine after an hour of living with only my thoughts, I would return as a bit of a bliss-ninny to my beautiful family and cope with the noise so much better. Until the next school holidays when daily torrential rain forces everyone to catch cabin-fever.

Silence after an interview can be quite frustrating. When the interview has gone particularly well, and the hiring manager suggests further contact (and provides a timeline for the communication) and then remains silent, it’s confusing. I don't understand this. If I commit to making contact with someone, I always make contact. It’s about being a professional, a good communicator, someone who lives by their word.

I have had more than one experience where I have had successful interviews, leaving me on a high with an expectation of a phone call, an email, or even a second or third interview. I’ve even been given dates and times when I can expect this. When the communication hasn’t happened, I am pro-active and (after an appropriate time) – follow up.  After following up through email and voicemail, and then further silence – it’s not just uncomfortable but it also leaves me questioning my judgement and doubting myself. It’s an unhealthy place to be in my mind.  

It also makes me feel that my follow up emails are a desperate attempt at getting an answer. Actually they are. I like to complete things and close them off.

My message to Hiring Mangers: I can take constructive feedback, in fact I welcome it. It’s how I grow and develop as a person. Feedback is a gift to me. Bring it on. 

I don’t mind if you come back and tell me I’m not suitable for a role as long as I also get an explanation why.

A company that fails in communicating to a potential employee also provides an impression that they are not good at communications, and do not value honesty.

I refuse to doubt myself or my abilities through silence from a hiring manager. 

Hand me the earplugs? 

When You Were A Kid.....

Today I had a lovely lunch with my Mum, Dad, sister and nephew - a rare treat because we all live in polar suburbs of Sydney and we don't get to spend as much time with each other as I'd like. Another reason we don't see each other often is because of everyone's work commitments. My family are hard working. My Mum and Dad have worked hard every day since time began, in fact they have the strongest work ethic of anyone I know. 

When I think of my parents in old age, I cannot imagine them not working. 

Today at lunch they made an announcement that they plan to retire in twelve months time. I wasn't floored, in fact I was quite thrilled for me...... (cough cough) I mean for them. All I could see were opportunities, and rewards for a life of remaining loyal to organisations and rarely taking sick days or extended holidays. 

I begged them to build a mansion on the beach in Northern NSW. I fantasised about spending weeks over Christmas in my parents beach side mansion at Byron or Ballina. Weeks in a beach side mansion............They'll most likely think of an acreage and farm somewhere that my dad can drive his ride on lawnmower and mum can decorate to her hearts content. 

I took the opportunity to ask them a really important question. 

What did you want to be as a kid?

My dad didn't even have to think about this question, he said all he wanted to do was drive since he was nine years old. Of course he was too young at nine to drive a car, but he found the means to find a way to be driving a car by the time he was eleven. That's ambitious! He hasn't made a living out of driving, but I'm sure he has managed to drive every single day of his life since he was eleven or twelve years old. He was always proud of his cars, he changed them every couple of years when I was growing up. I also remember him driving trucks when I was little. He now drives tractors. 

My sister took a little more time to think about it and then said she wanted to be a nurse. She studied nursing many years ago, but didn't go into nursing. Its a shame because I know she would have made a really fantastic one. She is caring, organised, sensible and someone who I know I would want to be looking after me if I were ill or injured. I asked if her career took a turn for the worse would she consider retraining to become a nurse. She didn't even have to think twice to say "No" because the changes in that industry are so significant that there are no motivating factors for going into nursing. 

Tonight at a party I asked my new best friends around the table what they thought they were going to be when they grew up. 

Sally also said she wanted to go into nursing when she was a teenager. At sixteen she had accompanied her mother into the hospital and was in awe of the women who looked after the patients. She was met by the matron who dissuaded her by telling her she was too young. I don't know Sally well enough to say that she would have made a good nurse, but she went on to tell me about her career changes throughout her 20's and 30's and how much she enjoys being a successful podiatrist in Sydney today. She too said if the situation changed, she would never consider going into nursing now, but given the fact she is in her 60's might have a lot to do with that. 

Mark wanted to be an architect. He was sitting at a part of the table where I couldn't quite hear the reasons of background to this, but I have known him for a few years and followed his career through many highs and some lows. Mark became a businessman and interior designer and from the work I have seen of his - he really has found his place in life. His contracts are in the hospitality field; I have been in pubs and restaurants admiring the decor only to be advised at a later stage that Marks firm had designed it. Mark is a talented designer. (he kind of followed his childhood dream because I don't think they had interior designers when Mark was growing up).

My husband said he wanted to be an engineer, but only because he thought it would lead to travelling to distant lands building bridges and buildings. Instead, he is the founder of an IT firm which specialises in the publishing and advertising industries. My husband is an entrepreneur, and we make it part of our life to travel on a regular basis. So he too also found a way to live out some of his childhood dreams. 

So this leads to me thinking about what I wanted to be when I was growing up. 

I wanted to be a mum and a wife. Tick. 

I wanted to be an air hostess. Not anymore since my years of travelling and being a demanding passenger. 

I too wanted to be an architect. I designed so many of my own houses in my head as a child, but in reality a 6 story cascading swimming pool in my dream home wasn't going to eventuate. No builder in his right mind would ever build something like that. 

I wanted to be a police woman until I saw the training regime. 

I wanted to travel. Everywhere and all the time. 

I wanted to be a writer. Really only for the fame and overseas book tours - review point above.

I wanted to be a designer. A successful one who only ever wears my own designs. After all, Barbie looked great in them. She also didn't have an opinion. 

I wanted to work in an office. As the CEO.  

So now I find myself in a cross roads of my career - and I have been given the most amazing opportunity of being anything I want to be. As an adult, I have the luxury of life experience and skills behind me. As a redundee and wife with a supportive husband, I also have the financial backing to grasp at a dream. Or two. 

It's a really tough choice, but after careful elimination of strenuous or dangerous professions, I think I might combine a few of my passions and dreams and become a high end fashion travel writer who only ever goes to remote and exotic lands. Wearing my own designs of course! 

This is my dad. The driver. 

Just Get Busy!

They say (I don’t know who “they” are) … But they say that when you need something done, ask a busy person. I know quite a few busy people, and somehow it's true.

My friend Debra was always the first person to volunteer for a task, yet she worked as an air-hostess on shifts, maintained a gorgeous home and brought up a lovely family. Debra had extremely high standards, so everything she did was of exceptional quality and she always delivered on time. Debra would make the perfect project manager.

Jacqui is another friend who is astronomically busy! She has a family with 4 children, a beautiful home, AND she manages to run a very successful PR company, study, do yoga everyday and travels to amazing destinations - regularly! All with a beautiful smile and a great sense of humour.

I drew on these busy women (amongst others) and decided to get busy.

I tried sitting at home while looking for a job. The kids were at school and my husband was at work, so my day would consist of making breakfast, sitting at the table on my laptop searching for the dream job, and being too easily distracted by silly things.

Lunch with friends was great for a while until I realised that a bottle of rosé everyday before 3pm was not healthy. The calories were also adding up and my tummy was resembling that of a pregnant woman, with triplets.

Housework gave me a sense of pride and achievement, but after a week I realised I am not a very good housewife. Vacuuming just doesn’t do it for me.

Shopping for Akira dresses was fast becoming an addiction and was too easily justified through my stylist experience. The dresses are truly pieces of art, but they are also a strain on the bank balance that was heading south very fast!

Wallowing in self pity was taking up too much time and that’s when I knew I had to really get busy. Two days of feeling sorry for myself was enough thank you very much!

There were important and practical tasks I could have taken on - like finalising our tax returns for the past 4 years, sorting out the kids wardrobes, renovating my daughters bedroom into a guest bedroom and going to the gym. None of the above seemed too attractive.

My husbands business was going through yet another positive growth phase and I begged him for me to come in and help out. He is a man of strong integrity, and didn’t want to set an example with his staff of being a nepotist so he handed me over to his appointed General Manager who gave me a job!

It was an amazing change to the mindset. Suddenly I was able to get back into the routine of getting up everyday and out of my pyjamas! If my pyjamas were Akira, I may have had a problem with this, sadly he only does pyjamas for Qantas first class passengers, and I have never been in that category!

Another great benefit of working on a casual basis (until I find a full time job) is that I get to contribute my skills and add value. I enjoy being part of a team again and sharing my knowledge. It's heart warming to walk into an office every day and have people genuinely welcome you. The atmosphere of the office is upbeat, energetic and extremely positive. It's motivating and it's so enjoyable to wake up each day and go into such a space to add value.

Recently I was also asked to provide my formal skills of project management to a couple of large and exciting projects. I’ve always been a fan of flowcharts, getting my teeth into some amazing creative projects has boosted my soul even more.

There have been many “wins” so far by me going in and helping out - the company has benefited financially through efficient processes I was able to implement as well as identify some areas of revenue maximisation. For me the biggest win has been getting me “busy” and giving me back a sense of worth.

I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself anymore, but I do manage to find time to reflect on being eternally grateful for having a new purpose to my day and keeping myself motivated and busy.

Oh! And I also put my hand up to volunteer..... but that’s another blog!

INSPIRE ME

I am fortunate enough to be inspired by the many things I come across in my daily life. The fact that I am surrounded by many inspirational people is most likely a contributing factor, I rarely have to put any effort into being inspired. 

This week I came across three exceptional women. Two of the women I have known for many years and the third was an absolute stranger who I invited for coffee. As they might be reading this right now, I'll change their names to avoid any embarrassment. 

We'll call them Lucy, Kate and Celie. 

LUCY

Lucy reported to me many years ago and I considered her to be one of the most positive people I knew. She was born with a disability which resulted in a life spent in a wheelchair. When you look at Lucy, you don't see the chair, you see a friendly intelligent woman who has a passion for life. To make her really amazing, she is also a para-olympian with more than one medal! To be any kind of sports person, you have to have strength, dedication, discipline, courage and will, to be a para-olympian you need to have something else. Sheer determination. She has always had that. 

Living in Sydney is expensive and difficult enough, for Lucy to buy a house and get around - her options were extremely limited. But she seized them anyway and made the best of her situation, and is now living in a lovely suburb on the harbour and paying off her mortgage. That's pretty impressive in itself. Bumps have happened along the way which she fought with gusto for a positive resolution; an example is when her ground floor unit had a sloping floor which she was then required to replace soon after buying the place - she took the corporate body to court and successfully managed to have everyone in her block of units contribute to the cost of a new floor. Sheer determination! 

For over a year, Lucy had been unhappy in her work situation. She wasn't being recognised for her skills and was constantly being "managed" rather than coached. When positions were advertised internally for roles she could easily do, she was overlooked without any plan in place for career progression. She felt it was time to become more independent, so she started learning new skills. I'm not privy to the strategy used in coming to her chosen field, however I do know that the course she eventually chose suited her personality brilliantly. She is an easy person to talk to, approachable and non judgemental. She decided to do a course in NLP (Neuro Linguistic Processing). I received an email from her this week telling me that she had finally graduated from her course and was setting up shop on her own, and invited me to lunch in her new office in Bondi. To say I was so proud of her would be condescending, but I can say that I am in complete awe of her and her ability to rise above any issue thrown at her. I cant wait to visit this swanky office and share a glass of bubbles with her to celebrate. 

KATE

Kate has been a dear friend for many years after moving to Australia by herself while waiting for her husband to join her. She adopted me as a pseudo mother figure, and we welcomed her into the home as part of our family. She is one of the kindest people I know, as well as another intelligent, funny, insightful and beautiful woman. Due to her husbands work situation, Kate moved to Singapore a few years ago and established herself within the same organisation I worked for. She was knowledgable and well respected and was living the amazing life of an expat in a wonderful city. Kate was extremely good at her job, but considered there must be more than just paying lip-service to work life balance. With a friend in Singapore, she set up a business women's network who meet every month and have a guided agenda on how to be a strong female leader/business women in todays world. Kate and her friend have done an amazing job and each monthly meeting is swamped with people wanting an invitation, myself included, however I am not in a financial position right now to go to Singapore to attend a session. Instead I read the minutes and newsletters and review their Facebook page on a regular basis. I get their sessions by osmosis! 

After some planning, Kate resigned from her job to start up her own business in Singapore. Its a scary thought to resign and start something new, financially and emotionally. Kate has gone into this with a brilliant attitude and I know she will be another success story. I'm now looking into flight options so I can make it to her opening launch in February.  

CELIE

My executive coach gave me a list of people to contact and practice my networking skills on, so I sent off an email last week to Celie asking if she'd like to meet up and chat about her experiences and perhaps get some advice or guidance on my own job search. 

Celie had returned to Australia over a year ago after living the life in New York in a senior position for a financial institution. Living in New York is a dream of mine, I absolutely love the city and have fantasies about living in a grand apartment overlooking central park, drinking divine cocktails in underground jazz clubs. But I digress. Celie had that life and was made redundant after a couple of years. Her options were to continue to look for a job in NY so she could continue the high life, go to the UK where she had a house or she could return to Australia for the laid back life of an Aussie. Due to the global economic crisis, she decided to return to Australia where she thought it would be easier to secure a position and buy a house. Unfortunately with multiple margin calls, the savings and redundancy was fast becoming extinct.

When she became 'down' about her situation, she would jump in the car with the music up high and drive. One day she found herself in Adelaide. Thats a 20 hour drive! She considered the towns she'd driven through, the people she met and realised that she was one of the lucky ones. Intelligent and with a means to get herself out of her jobless situation. So she drove back again to Sydney to start all over again.

Those people or situations in her life that brought her down, she avoided. She did not want to have a negative influence in her life that would bring her down.

Celie went through many months of job searching utilising every resource available to her, and she eventually landed the perfect job after 12months. Her bank balance was crying and she was almost at the point of moving into her friends spare bedroom. She'd even started to pack her belongings.

She had complete confidence in herself and never let her attitude spiral into depression. 

Celie's job search and attitude mirrored my own, and she was able to give me some fantastic and practical tips on accepting, moving on and how to keep going. Like me, her motto is "never give up".

What I enjoyed most about meeting Celie was her enthusiasm for life - she has an infectious positive energy and the message she left me with was to remain positive with an energetic attitude and have faith that something will happen. 

Every day there will be someone I come across who has the capacity to inspire me. I'm keeping my eyes and heart open.

Stalking Is Such An Ugly Word

What I find really frustrating in my job search is waiting for the promised call, the promised email, or even the promised contract.

I don’t know if I was ever guilty of promising a call or email and failed to do so. Probably. OK, OK, OK, I know I have been guilty of promising a call back and not making it. It dates back to my teenage days when a promised phone call was confronting and I would do everything to avoid it. If a boy called me who I wasn’t interested in, I would ask my mum to lie for me and tell him I would call back. She never lied, a woman of very strong integrity – so I would have to take the initial call and promise a call back pretending I was in the middle of something else. I never did call back. I doubt these boys sat in their mothers lounge room for too long, but nonetheless I had very little regard for the other person by not making that call. Oh, how I have learnt a lesson.

My job search has been particularly frustrating when people have promised a call back (or any kind of contact) and have failed to follow through with it. While I understand other people’s lives are moving a little faster than my own right now, a promised phone is a small action that can have a huge impact. I find myself stalking my own emails (every 5 minutes) and phone to see if I have missed anything.

I asked my executive coach when the right time to follow up is. He didn’t really know how to answer this, but suggested I follow up once only because after that its considered stalking. I’m not too sure I subscribe to his theories, but he’s the one working and I’m not. 

I have been very polite and waited until after the promised phone call to either call or send a polite email to follow up. And then nothing. No returned call, no replied emails..... nada, zip, nothing!

I appreciate that everyone is busy and my job hunt is not all consuming for anyone else but myself, but the simple courtesy of a call or email to let me know either way would make such a huge difference to my day.

Signing off now to check my emails and phone again……

Image by Melissa Galt