Tag Archives: Careers

Why your ‘personality’ is getting in the way of a promotion

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by Marisa Taylor

One of my “favorite” – ie just plain awful – recent stories to expose the staggering tone deafness around gender parity came courtesy of John Greenhouse, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist. He was sharing some supposedly helpful advice for women seeking equality in the business world.

In his Wall Street Journal op-ed, Greenhouse suggested that in order for women to rise above unconscious gender bias online, they ought to go by their initials and hide the fact that they’re women. Female readers weren’t so thrilled by the suggestion that they should be the ones responsible for fixing male bias against them.

For better advice, look to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where 48% of the incoming freshmen at the School of Computer Science are women, far greater than the national average of 18%. Rather than urging women to change their behavior, the school changed the culture by launching a faculty-run mentorship group for female computer science students, which “opens doors for women across campus through networking ”, according to the college newspaper. That has attracted increasingly more women to apply to the program. Continue reading →

Give Your Team More-Effective Positive Feedback

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Christine-Porath by Christine Porath

Research shows that one of the best ways to help employees thrive is to give them feedback. It’s one of the primary levers leaders have to increase a sense of learning and vitality. Giving your direct reports regular updates on personal performance, as well as on how the business is doing, helps them feel valued. Negative or directive feedback provides guidance, leading people to become, over time, more certain about their behavior and more confident in their competence.

Highlighting an employee’s strengths can help generate a sense of accomplishment and motivation. A Gallup survey found that 67% of employees whose managers focused on their strengths were fully engaged in their work, as compared to only 31% of employees whose managers focused on their weaknesses. IBM’s WorkTrends survey of over 19,000 workers in 26 countries, across industries and thousands of organizations, revealed that the engagement level of employees who receive recognition is almost three times higher than the engagement level of those who do not. The same survey showed that employees who receive recognition are also far less likely to quit. Recognition has been shown to increase happiness at work in general and is tied to cultural and business results, such as job satisfaction and retention. Continue reading →

The 5 Elements of a Strong Leadership Pipeline

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By Josh Bersin

Investments in traditional leadership development are often misguided and a waste of money.

It’s not that development itself isn’t important. In a Deloitte study of 7,000 organizations this year, 89% of executives rated “strengthening the leadership pipeline” an urgent issue. That’s up from 86% last year, and the trend makes sense. Organizations are continuously promoting people into management, and those new leaders struggle with the transition. To help them in their new roles, companies spend almost $14 billion a year on courses, books, videos, coaches, tests, and executive education programs — and such spending rose 10% last year.

But there’s little evidence that much of this works. Barbara Kellerman from Harvard, Jeffrey Pfeffer from Stanford, and numerous other experts have pointed out that the development market is filled with fads — slick behavioral models and fun, engaging tools — that don’t really move the needle. Continue reading →

Like working in the cloud, here are three new opportunities in that space

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banner_client_testimonialsThree New Opportunities

***Cloud Advisor Managing Director –

Cloud Infrastructure professionals develop and deliver hosting solutions to meet today’s growing demand for agile and cost effective computing solutions.  Using both private and public cloud technologies, our consulting professionals implement scalable, high performance hosting solutions that meet the need of today’s corporate and digital applications.  Additionally, our teams plan and deliver legacy infrastructure transformation and migration to drive next-generation business outcomes.

Key Responsibilities:

  • Eagerness to participate on a team designing cloud based application hosting and data services.
  • Assist clients with identifying opportunities to utilize cloud based services.
  • Assist clients with the development of business cases and value realization plans for the deployment of cloud based services.

 

***Cloud Sales Origination Managing Director–

Job Description:

Owns the sales process and outcomes, leading a pursuit strategy and team of professionals through the origination and closing of specific sales opportunities for  or client’s infrastructure consulting and outsourcing services, including cloud, data center, security, network, workplace and service management. He/she develops relationships with key buyers and decision-makers at new and/or existing clients and acts as the point of contact for resolution and escalation of all key sales pursuit related items with the client and internally.

Key Responsibilities:

  • Relationship Development: establish and strengthen relationships with client C Level executives, business and technical buyers, and key project stakeholders. Network with Industry Leaders, as well as business partners, alliance partners, Industry Vendors, Competitors, and participates in key industry forums.
  • Assist senior executives at client with their strategic planning for implementing cloud services.
  • Client Demand Stimulation and Opportunity Generation: Identify specific sales opportunities within existing and prospective clients. Engage in activities focused at generating client awareness of the Firms Infrastructure Service Offerings and Campaigns and create demand for its Services (may include developing/sending promotional

 

*** Cloud Enterprise Architect- 

Responsibilities include, among others, supporting sales teams in solution development, managing an internal matrix team to scope and price solutions, leading customers through the design process by leveraging a wide range of Accenture services.  Person will work directly with Internal Domain Architects, Partner Architects, Client Architects, and project teams to design a robust solution that exceeds Client expectations. The ideal candidate will have development experience in scoping, shaping, modeling Infrastructure Services architectures, across consulting, managed and outsourcing in customer-facing roles.

Key Responsibilities:

  • Serves as Cloud Solution architect across multi domain and tower opportunities:
  • Understands the broader business strategy and defines a Cloud architecture to support the business strategy and lead the end-to-end solution development
  • Partners with solution architects to assess solution alignment to the overall architectural blueprint and drive proposal writing, solution direction, pricing and costing

 

Please let me know if you might be interested or know someone who could be, thank you.

Larry Janis, Managing Partner I Integrated Search Solutions Group, LLC

P-516-767-3030

Email: janis@issg.net

follow me on twitter @issgheadhunter

Workplace Excellence Can Be Contagious

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Image resultby Serguei Netessine

Collective outcomes soar when top performers mingle with less adept colleagues.

Big data is helping us learn much more about what drives sales in the digital environment. The traditional service sector, however, remains very much a “black box”. A physical sales environment, such as a clothing store or restaurant, is subject to even more intangible elements than e-commerce sites or apps – perhaps chief among them are the extremely nuanced and significant interactions between customers and staff. Attributing customer purchases to actions taken by an individual employee is ambiguous enough without considering how additional subtleties, such as cross-employee interactions and influence, may affect outcomes.
Continue reading →