EditorialsBy Matt Bud, Chairman, The FENG

One of the more interesting ideas floating around these days is giving up. I can’t say I am an expert on this topic, other than to say that I have heard about it at length from others. Not that they have actually bought into the idea; just that they were talking about it. As you all know, I am a sailing buff. As such I indulge myself in good sailing stories from time to time. Some of the most memorable have been the ones about those who have had to abandon ship. Although the sailors rule is to “always step up into a lifeboat,” there often comes a time when you have to grab your “abandon ship bag” and do [ Read more… ]

I’m not sure if everyone understands the importance of our Good News Announcements, so I thought I would share with you tonight some of my thoughts as to why they are so important. Since the very beginning of our newsletter, the Good News Announcements have always appeared at the very beginning. We were a small group of individuals back in 1997, perhaps a 100 or so hardy souls, and we DID actually know each other. So, the good news announcements were particularly exciting. As the group has grown, it is less and less likely that you will actually know the person making the announcement. And, although it may appear to be “always about you,” good news announcements are really about [ Read more… ]

Many years ago, my son and I were rowing out to our mooring to go sailing with my father-in-law. My son, who was probably 8 or 9 at the time, asked my father-in-law if he knew the EXACT difference between a rhinoceros and a piece of paper. After several totally wrong guesses, my son gave him the answer: You can’t make a spitball out of a rhinoceros. Fortunately, my father-in-law was wearing a life jacket because he almost fell into the water, he was laughing so hard. The EXACT difference I would like to address tonight will probably not cause you to laugh quite as hard, but it appears to be a distinction that is lost on most people, so [ Read more… ]

I am sure you have heard it too, the at length explanations others give as to why they are looking for another job. Sometimes I forget to mention at the beginning of our meeting in Connecticut that I really don’t need to know and you don’t really need to tell anyone. No explanation is actually required even when you go on a job interview. What you need to do is separate yourself from the situation a little bit and develop a short factual explanation that will address the issue. The reason it has to be short is that the more you talk about it, the more important it must be to who you are and whether I should hire or [ Read more… ]

Perhaps because we fill in so many forms during the course of our careers, it seems that as financial types we are always looking for a fill in the blank approach to just about everything. Is there a formula for 90-second announcements, I am frequently asked? Well, there are some basic guidelines, but beyond that, the time frame is so short that only you can actually decide what should fill that time. (Perhaps with a little help from your friends?) I doubt that it has escaped your notice, but many of the individuals you call “friend” in your life have something in common with you. I suppose we all have a few old friends from college, and that is the [ Read more… ]

I know that many of our members are faced with the unpleasant truth that they have been out of work for a significant period of time. Having been out of work myself for almost two years, I know that this unpleasant question of “Why have you been out so long?” gets asked. Like anything else in life, if you don’t prepare a “proper” answer, you will begin to stammer. (Or, sweat!) The natural tendency of financial folks that you need to avoid is the very detailed answer. The good old “primarily due to, partially offset by” approach that we take to providing information is not only a bad idea, it is also unnecessary. As the defense attorney on TV would [ Read more… ]

I have often noted to my friends who aren’t into boating that the difference between a power boater and a sail boater is that power boaters usually use their boats to go somewhere, whereas sail boaters are already there once they step onto their boat. In our goal driven, management by objectives, over achiever world, the difference in philosophy between someone who has an obsessive desire to reach a goal versus someone who lives for the journey is considerable. The truth is, of course, one can do both as long as you think about both. To me the purpose of sailing is to enjoy good times and adventures with my spouse, members of our family and our many friends. Whether [ Read more… ]

Job search is in many ways a unique experience. In contrast to the world of work where we have had folks reporting to us and have had folks that we reported to, the world of job search can tend to be a lonely place. Outplacement facilities with their rabbit warren of cubicles at first glance seem to place you with a lot of other people. There are classes to attend, and at least in my own experience with this kind of environment, you have others with whom you can have lunch and share experiences. Not a totally bad situation. But still, everyone is on a different track and when they find work or their time ends, they typically disappear. And, [ Read more… ]

Ah, the great age of sail! For many hundreds of years, men built great numbers of wooden sailing vessels for commercial purposes and for the making of war. The truth, as hinted at by the saying above is that there was very little that was actually romantic or desirable about a life at sea. Much of the poetry and writing about life on these vessels was written safely on land. The building of a large sailing vessel was quite a project in days before computer aided design and no power tools. That said the processes involved in ship construction were well known and changed very little over this period of time. A shipwright from any country or from any of [ Read more… ]

Although by and large, the one thing we make more often than anything else for dinner on our boat is reservations, there are times when the fog giant descends upon us and if there is nothing else to eat, we make fog sandwiches. To make fog sandwiches, of course, you need fog. To this one should add bread, mayonnaise (if you are making a fog sandwich with chicken or turkey), and mustard or ketchup (if you are using roast beef). The type of bread is your choice. I prefer fog sandwiches made on whole wheat, but that’s just me. The problem with fog sandwiches is that the fog portion provides no recognizable flavor or for that matter substance. (Unlike smoke [ Read more… ]

There is a memorable scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in which Paul Newman is challenged for control of the Hole in the Wall Gang. They agree that the best way to settle their disagreement is with a knife fight. Paul suggests that before they get started that they should decide what the rules ought to be. His challenger counters with “What are you talking about? There are no rules in a knife fight!” Let’s face it, as financial professionals we tend to believe in rules. (Do you think that perhaps Butch Cassidy was also an accountant?) Frankly it makes us a little uncomfortable participating in an activity of any kind in which there are no rules. Unfortunately, [ Read more… ]

Over the years, I have found that I keep certain CD’s in my car and I play them over and over again. I supposed I shouldn’t admit this to a wide audience, but one of my favorite music categories is sea shanties. (It goes along with my hobby of sailing). When I had cassette tapes, I actually wore out 2 or 3 copies of some of them because I played them so much. Thank goodness CD’s don’t wear out. That which rings true about our lives is in a career sense our theme song. As I look back over my career, one of the themes is my concern for others in the organization wasting their time on things I could [ Read more… ]

Being successful at getting meetings with potential decision makers who don’t have a job right now, but who might make one for you after they meet you, is why networking is the most successful approach to finding a job. Frankly, this is how most business is really done at our level. If you have only gotten interviews through ads or recruiters you are probably wondering how do those lucky dudes do it? How do they manage to get in front of the right people and sweet talk them into offering them a job? Keep in mind that you are not a pea in a pod. You are a unique accumulation of talents acquired over a number of years. If you [ Read more… ]

Tomorrow I will begin processing a rather large batch of new members. It is actually a two week batch as I was on vacation the past two weeks. I realize that new members are not totally indicative of how everyone is doing their resume, but I have to tell you that their resumes aren’t all that different from the ones attached to applications I see for positions posted by The FECG, my consulting practice. (Please visit our website: www.TheFECG.com for information about what we do.) The statement has been made that most resume reviewers are really only interested in your most recent 10 years. This is true. That is NOT to mean that you should leave off your early work [ Read more… ]

One of the comments I have heard from time to time is that the new job that someone just found isn’t as exciting as the one they lost. It seems at times that most of our members find themselves in a downward spiral as they change jobs. The companies are smaller and often the pay packages are as well. While I have no empirical evidence that all of this is true, it probably is. There are a variety of reasons why new jobs tend to disappoint. The most important reason is within us. As an old job is coming to an end, we know all about it. If it was with a large corporation in particular, the shades of meaning [ Read more… ]

Since not all of the members of The FENG are sailors, I really need to start this editorial with the idea that you can’t sail directly into the eye of the wind. In fact, you generally have to be about 45 degrees off the wind to make any headway. However, this is only a real nuisance at those times when the wind is blowing from where you want to go. Sailing as close as you can to the eye of the wind is called being “hard on the wind.” As exhilarating as sailing hard on the wind may be to us die-hard sailors, it has an entirely different effect on those who are only putting up with your hobby. You [ Read more… ]

To quote George Bernard Shaw: “The biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” With respect to our power to communicate, we live in a remarkable period of time. I normally respond to 50-100 unique emails every day. I have been doing this for many years and yet I still marvel over it. Before email, this would simply not have been possible. What is most disconcerting about many of the email messages I receive is that the person communicating with me believes they are sending me what I should consider to be a complete and actionable piece of correspondence. This is rarely the case. I know I beat this dead horse several times a week, but [ Read more… ]

In my continuing “joys of sailing” series, I thought I would talk about docks around Long Island Sound. Although one can drag anchor, one rarely drags dock. (A little sailing joke for you.) Sure, it is a rather arcane topic, but hopefully it is one that you can use to amaze and astound your friends. You would think that docking arrangements everywhere would be pretty much the same. After all, you have a boat, you have water, and you need to tie it up for the night. Well, you would be very wrong. The truth is that just about every place you go is a little different. Some marinas have pilings you have to snag on your way in. (And [ Read more… ]

Since we have so many new members each year, I thought I would write something tonight about the mission of The FENG and how we accomplish our objectives for one another. Sailors are a naturally friendly lot. (Yes, another sailing analogy!) As one of the other couples my wife and I met at a marina pointed out, it would be considered more than a little strange to go to a motel or hotel and start introducing yourself to other people and ask them if they wanted to join you and your wife for dinner at some restaurant. Yet, sailors do it all the time. When you “blow in” from another harbor you have so many stories to tell and they [ Read more… ]

At the beginning of time here in Connecticut, we spent most of our meeting gathered around the table discussing job leads. The idea of a 90-second announcement followed by fellow attendees suggesting who to call in our august body for networking had not yet been invented. Since people over value job leads, I thought I would provide my perspective on this important topic. I don’t claim to know everything. And, I would never stop our chapter chairs from trying things at their meetings. Who knows, they might be right and I might be wrong, but in my humble opinion, job lead information is best shared in writing. There are several reasons for this. First, speech is the slowest form of [ Read more… ]

It has only been since about the time of the American Revolution that sailors have had the technology available to find their exact location on the face of the earth. Although determining your latitude was possible (those are the lines that run around the middle of the earth like the equator), knowing your longitude, or how far East or West you were, was simply not possible. What sailors did before that time was sail down to the appropriate latitude and then sail East or West and hope they didn’t arrive at a landfall in the middle of the night or in a storm. Alas, this happened all the time and many lives were lost. If you would like to learn [ Read more… ]