EditorialsBy Matt Bud, Chairman, The FENG

People rarely ask or even want to know why the sky is blue or why the sun comes up in the East and not the West. And, when you are sitting in an interview, these are not questions you need to have answers for. The difficult thing to determine when the rubber finally meets the road is what nagging and potentially terminal (at least to your candidacy) unasked questions exist in the mind of the interviewer. We usually find out that there were such questions when we get the call telling us the job went to someone else, or that they are going to keep looking. Unfortunately, the reasons we get as to why they passed on our obvious qualifications [ Read more… ]

Many years ago Lily Tomlin had a skit on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In where she played Ernestine, the telephone operator. This was one of her great gag lines. In much the same way, those of us who make a lot of phone calls are in the same pickle. I’m not sure if people just never call their phones or if privacy considerations are what have caused the problem, but a very large number of folks don’t seem to have their voice mail properly set up. The voice message I get sometimes very helpfully tells me the number I called. Being an accountant, punching numbers into the phone pad isn’t all that much different than a calculator, and I rarely [ Read more… ]

As I hope all of you know, The FENG is not a fee for service. Our most important “folkway” is that in order to be accepted as a new member, you either need to have a sponsor, or you need to find one. As Chairman since 1996, I take the time each and every week to review new member applicants, and I don’t accept everyone. Clearly you have to be a Chief Financial Officer, Controller, Treasurer or one of many other titles that mark you as a senior level financial officer. That said you don’t have to have a sponsor at the time you apply. No one who is qualified is ever turned away. If you qualify for membership, one [ Read more… ]

Over the past few months I have completed several projects on or for my sailboat. My father was a plumbing and general contractor, and having worked for him from the time I was 13 until I graduated from college, I am pretty handy with tools. I also had a lot of very old cars, and not being independently wealthy at the time, I learned how to fix them myself. I find that now the scarce commodity in my life is time. As a result, many of the projects I decide to do have long planning cycles. Sometimes I draw myself sketches of what I want to do. Nothing too elaborate you understand, but enough so that I have a pretty [ Read more… ]

Sad to say, the typical email cover notes I see bear a strong resemblance to classic kidnap notes. You know the ones I mean. Randomly selected letters and words cut from magazines and newspapers and pasted together on a piece of paper to communicate a demand for money. Perhaps this is a little harsh, and I apologize in advance, but my son sent me a funny saying recently: “Any fool can use a computer. Many do.” Yes, that TV looking screen in front of you with the typewriter keyboard is a COMPUTER, and you would be best advised to figure out how to use it. It honestly isn’t that hard. The “troubles” probably began quite some time ago when Microsoft [ Read more… ]

Networking is what The FENG is all about. And, it has a lot of not so obvious twists and turns, one of which I am going to go over tonight. I hope all of you are becoming pros at using our Member Directory Search feature and calling up other members. I hope that those members you are contacting are going out of their way to introduce you to individuals that they know, because it is one of those things that really works. One of the aspects of introducing your friends in The FENG to individuals you know is that it is beneficial to you as well. Your friends want to do favors for you, and actually it is easier for [ Read more… ]

I had lunch a long time ago with one of our members. I always enjoy meeting and talking to the members of our august body because I am reminded of issues that I have discussed before that bear repeating. And, when I discuss them again, it is usually with a different twist because I continue to learn. The subject for tonight is how we allow others to wear us down. The way this usually happens is we set up a lot of networking calls with friends and recruiters who really can’t help us. We all believe that the first thing we should do when we are out of work is networking, and I encourage everyone to network as much as [ Read more… ]

I have given much thought over the years to how sailing is a lot like life. In dreamy meditation at the wheel of our sailboat, I have often thought about the unseen and uncontrollable forces affecting our progress and how through the skills I have acquired at her helm I have been able to make her go where I wanted her to go. A long time ago my wife sent me some quotes from a lecture she attended and I thought I would expand on some of those ideas for tonight’s editorial. Here are the quotes: “You can’t direct the wind, but you can adjust your sails.” “Life is a voyage in which we choose neither vessel nor weather, but [ Read more… ]

For those of you who are new to the networking process or who claim to not be very good at it, please know that even I am still learning. Friends are always in short supply, especially when it comes to managing your career. But, unlike all the consumer goods available just by taking out your credit card or writing out a check, you have to pay for friendship by giving of yourself. It is often a more costly process than most people imagine, but one well worth the expense. All I can do in tonight’s editorial is to share what I believe are a few truths about the process. Let me start with the care and feeding of old friends. [ Read more… ]

There is no more important space on your resume than that first section after your name. Alas, I rarely see it used to good effect. Although cover letters allow you to “cover” matters perhaps not easily “covered” in your resume, more often than not your cover letter isn’t sent to the decision maker. In a very real sense, your resume stands alone and needs to be done in such a way that it gets the job done. If you agree that you never get a second chance to make a good first impression, that first section sets the stage for what follows. By taking the time to really focus on your value added, the summary section can allow you to [ Read more… ]

When you actually get into the finals for a significant “work opportunity,” you don’t want to muff it. (Just so you know, work opportunities used to be called jobs, but that implies they will last a long time, and we know they don’t.) Anyway, one of the rituals or hoops that many firms make you jump through is providing references. A delicate topic considering that you might be currently working or you might have left the firm where you got your most significant work experiences quite some time ago. Selecting references can be easy if you have kept in touch with old bosses and co-workers, but the place where most folks miss the boat is providing these individuals with the [ Read more… ]

A jack of all trades, a master of none. In the world of CFO’s, Controllers and Treasurers, the primary skill sets of members of The FENG, it is certainly true that we can probably do anything. Still, at this stage of our careers the likelihood of anyone considering us to do “anything” is remote at best. The world seeks experts. And, in your own way each of you is an expert at something. The statement “I am just like everyone else” is rarely true. As I talk to members about their careers, with careful questioning I can get them to tell me their industry and skill set. Sad to say, it is usually more like pulling teeth than an easy [ Read more… ]

As you all can probably imagine, I get a lot of email and phone calls every day. A previous editorial of mine titled “Say what?” focused on the content of your message. Tonight’s editorial is a little more on the mechanical side and touches on providing sufficient information to the person on the receiving end to enable them to take appropriate action. I know everyone is probably getting a headache from my mentioning outgoing signatures one more time, but until I see them on 80% of the messages I get on a daily basis, instead of the 20% I would venture to say is my normal average, I will continue to beat the drum on this important feature of your [ Read more… ]

To tell you the truth, I almost never read cover letters first. Perhaps you remember the joke about the doctor who told his patient to take a warm bath and 4 aspirin. When he called the next day, the patient informed him that he could barely get the warm bath down. It is much the same case with cover letters. I only hope and pray I can get through all the resumes I have to review on any given day. Still, you have to write a cover letter. The best advice I can offer is to be brief, interesting, informative and not make it a regurgitation of your resume. Truth be told, I only read cover letters when I have [ Read more… ]

There was an article in the New York Times several years ago about how employers and recruiters no longer seem to get back to job seekers, even when they have been serious candidates for particular opportunities. As easy as it is to click reply when you first send in your credentials, the follow up process is a lot more complex. Everyone should recognize the incredible volumes that those on the receiving end are experiencing. And, clients seem to take forever to review candidates and coordinate interviews for those they have selected. “The great lament” could go on forever. I am sure that each of you has your own special story. However, the explanations as to why this is the case [ Read more… ]

The subject of tonight’s editorial is “Your many hidden talents and the ones you are developing.” I talked to one of our active members recently and the thought occurred to me that all of you are probably developing skills and not even aware of it! Life does have a way of sneaking up on you. The subject was nominally being able to sell. Most of us went into finance never expecting to engage in the honored profession of personal selling, but all of us who have gone through a job search, perhaps unbeknownst to even ourselves, have become reasonably good at personal selling. If you think about it, everything about searching for a job develops the skills required in personal [ Read more… ]

If there is anything that typically jumps out at me when we have our meetings here in Connecticut it is the need for us financial folks to be completely honest, even in our assessments of ourselves. When our senior members provide their job hunting tips they usually end them with “but of course I’m still here.” (As if we didn’t notice.) However, interviews and 90 second announcements are no time for an extensive evaluation of why you lost your last job. For the most part in our fast changing world, there may not even be a need to explain it at all, let alone in depth. What everyone is interested in hearing is why they should be talking to you. [ Read more… ]

Although everyone thinks that spring is a time of renewal, actually (just like networking) any point in time and any excuse will do. For those of us who are in their 40’s and 50’s, periods of unemployment early in our career have probably been non-existent. The experience of being unemployed can be stressful unless you use the time to good advantage. One way of doing this is to, in part, create a new you. I’m not talking about plastic surgery, but there are always things you can do that will make you into a “new” person. After you have gone through the initial steps of preparing your job campaign and networking with everyone you can think of, it may be [ Read more… ]

With the upcoming 4th of July holiday weekend, a great opportunity will be presenting itself to you in the form of gatherings of those who know you (and presumably love you). In order to enjoy the greatest benefit, you need to paint on a smile. I don’t care if you have been out of work 3 or more years or if you are losing your job in July, being down in the dumps or coming off as a “sad sack” won’t help your cause. In the opening scene in Patton, you may recall that George C. Scott explained why America wasn’t going to lose the war. Very briefly, Americans love a winner and won’t tolerate a loser. No matter what [ Read more… ]

What is a qualified member? With many members out of work these days, and search firms with assignments in short supply, I thought I would take the time tonight to restate our approach to leads posted in our newsletter. Those leads which include “please use my name in contacting” and generally speaking leads for positions being handled by retainer based search firms, are not for distribution outside of our network. Recruiters are always afraid they will lose control of a search by having it broadcast too widely. Confidentiality and professionalism is vital on our part to keep recruiters as allies in our respective searches. Each member is asked to abide by these guidelines. With regard to “please use my name” [ Read more… ]