EditorialsBy Matt Bud, Chairman, The FENG

One of the many fine traditions we have in The FENG is the sharing of job hunting tips. I have to tell you that recently I haven’t been hearing as many job hunting tips as I used to hear. No, it isn’t that I have heard it all. New things are certainly happening. The problem I fear is primarily the nature of who we are and how we perceive the success or failure of the approaches we have taken in our search. The “proof of the pudding” to many of our members is that they found a job. The problem with that standard is that most likely they wouldn’t be unemployed. They would be nose to the grindstone and shoulder [ Read more… ]

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… ]

Probably one of the hardest things to do in life is to define who you are. Are you really your resume? Because we tend to be at companies longer than the members of other discipline areas, the reality of what it is we REALLY do best is not always obvious to us. A very long time ago when one of my friends by the name of Bob Graham, came to speak at our meeting in Connecticut, he shared with us a great interview question: What’s the biggest misperception about you? Believing that others have a misperception about you actually implies that there is something about yourself that you don’t accept. Unfortunately, most of us are often the last to know [ Read more… ]

I don’t know if any of you feel as I do, but when I have a cold or the flu, it is at once annoying and thoughtful that those who care about us are constantly checking up on us. Thank goodness I’m not sick very often, but when I am I prefer to be left alone during “the cure.” Human beings vary, of course. Some of us are hypochondriacs, and some of us are foolish to the point of going out when we are sick. The human experience, as in most things, runs the gamut. So, like I said, if those who care about you “discover” that you are a little under the weather, the constant phone calls or the [ Read more… ]

It is of course true that our own self-interest at times quite naturally overrides our concern for others. If I am drowning, I can’t very well be expected to save someone else. It’s a kind of a “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs” thing. For example, I find that members are frequently more helpful to other members AFTER they find a job. Now that they are safe, they can attend to others. When it comes to reasonably well compensated jobs posted in our newsletter, it is slim pickings most nights. I can understand the reasoning of those who respond to everything. They are for good and valid reasons a little desperate. Holding back from the dinner table is very difficult when you [ Read more… ]

I have often been heard to say that your 90-second announcement is a STORY about you. It isn’t a history book. And, it doesn’t have to be detailed. In much the same way, your resume is a story about you. However, being in print, you need to keep in mind that you aren’t there to present it with meaningful gestures, shined shoes and properly fitting clothes. No, I’m afraid that your opus is standing there all by itself. A frightening thought, isn’t it? No one is there to explain what you “meant by that remark.” I hope all of you have gotten into the habit of picking up resumes at networking meetings. If you have, have you taken the time [ Read more… ]

Making career decisions is never easy. And unfortunately, being a senior financial executive doesn’t make it any easier. In fact, because you are at a point in your career where you have probably held almost all of the appropriate titles for your skills, it is actually harder to be selected for jobs you would enjoy doing, but for which you appear to be taking a step back. For example, if you have been CFO of a small company, you might be hard pressed being considered for a Controller slot at a much larger firm. As I have mentioned from time to time, if we expect the world to be flexible about opportunities for which we should be considered, we also [ Read more… ]

One of the biggest half-truths in this world is the idea of saving your business contacts. The truth is that unless you “work” your business contacts they don’t know you exist. Sure, you don’t want to “bother” them, but unless you call once in a while with something they actually can do for you, or something you can actually do for them, what are you saving them for? The approach I am going to suggest to you will not only yield those hidden jobs for all of us, they will also make you a lot of friends (at least within The FENG), mutually make you aware of jobs about which you would otherwise never have heard (from others), and keep [ Read more… ]

As our organization has gotten better known, each week we get several membership applications without a sponsor indicated. But as all of you know, a sponsor is required. Our first approach is to ask “Who sent you to our website?” Usually that brings up the name of a member. But failing that, we ask the applicant to pick up that 400 pound phone and call us. Strangely, some never do. It always has been my thinking that what makes this whole thing work that we all kind of know each other. I don’t think that it is all that easy for strangers to share job leads with each other. What exactly would be the incentive? But in the case of [ Read more… ]

I think you will find as you are out and about interviewing, that there are always at least two difficult questions that an interviewer would like to ask you. And, not much will happen during an interview unless you get them out of the way. While the “elephant sitting in the room” varies by person, the most obvious question first question is why you left your last job. I tend towards wise guy answers like: They stopped paying me. Or the ever popular: When the security guard threw me out into the street with all my possessions, I didn’t think it made sense to go back to work. Why this question is so important is hard to explain, but just [ Read more… ]

In today’s mail came a note from one of our new members that warmed my heart. He forwarded a note to me with a copy of his resume and as I scrolled through his message I smiled to myself in pride at what a remarkable organization we have created for ourselves. I didn’t actually need yet another copy of his resume, but the story of why he sent it was what was important. It seems he had been in touch with his chapter chair and special interest group chair to make them aware of his joining and he had also been in touch with Jim Saylor to ask for a peer review of this important document from our esteemed Resume [ Read more… ]

Over the past few years I have had the great pleasure of reconnecting with three very old friends. Not only have I known them each for a long time, but like me, they are getting old. You would think that since all roads lead to Matt Bud, I would long ago have reconnected with everyone I ever knew from my over 50 year career, but I guess like the law of the last typo, there is always one more. And, it is always a pleasant surprise. As I moved from company to company before Al Gore invented the Internet, I wasn’t always able to stay in touch with those I knew and enjoyed working with. Try as I might, especially [ Read more… ]

In my distant past I remember seeing a commercial in which an Abraham Lincoln look alike was sitting in an employment agency office. As the recruiter was flipping through his Rolodex he was telling old Abe that without “that sheepskin” he really wasn’t going anywhere. I guess the same thing was probably told to Bill Gates. While I don’t recommend avoiding college and/or not finishing your degrees as a career strategy, there are other certifications and educational achievements such as CPA, CMA and MBA that more often than not seem to be REQUIRED in the postings most frequently appearing in our newsletter. Under the heading of “don’t believe everything you hear,” it would be foolish in the extreme to believe [ Read more… ]

I was shooting the breeze with a few of my fellow sailors this past weekend and got to thinking about the fact that for most of us, our worst misadventures happened early in our careers as sailors. When I got into sailing in my mid-30’s I started out by taking a course with the Coast Guard Auxiliary, much as many of you have had the pleasure of going through outplacement. I also did a lot of reading about sailing and subscribed to several sailing magazines over the years, much as all of you have gotten books about job search and hopefully take the time to read my evening editorial. The mistake that many members make is to view job search [ Read more… ]

When asked what I do, my gut reaction is just to say “I do the Matt Bud thing.” In a sense, I don’t know what I do anymore, I just do. You see, I have been at it a while and I don’t tend to spend a lot of time thinking about it. (Frankly, I don’t have a lot of time TO think about it.) To a degree, those of us in the financial professions tend NOT to spend a lot of time thinking about the value we bring to the organizations we serve. We are for the most part long service employees. If the company didn’t value our services, I assume that we wouldn’t be able to hang around [ Read more… ]

I don’t know if any of you remember the movie Rain Man with Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise, but Raymond had a method for dealing with his pain. He kept a journal. Anytime someone hurt him, he wrote it down in his book. I don’t remember if he ever referred to his book or reread it for entertainment, but the lesson is perhaps an easy one. If you write down what is bothering you on a piece of paper and throw it away, is it possible the pain will be gone? Let’s face the fact that there are only so many days in a year and so many hours in a day. If you count up the number of actual [ Read more… ]

Thus begins Moby Dick. Of course, I am more likely to say: “You can call me anything you like as long as it’s not late for dinner.” I have always believed that what YOU call yourself and what you want others to call you is one of the most important pieces of information you can know about someone. This is why we have a “Greeting to use” box in our membership directory. When my son Michael was growing up we mostly called him Mike. The reason was that this is what he put on all of his papers at school. Only later did we learn that he preferred Michael and only used Mike because it took less time to write. [ Read more… ]

One of the hardest things to do during a job search or even during a difficult time at work is keeping yourself energized and positive. Here again is another example of how our basic honesty as financial folks gets in the way of our success. If you ask a financial guy how he is doing, you typically will get an honest (and very long) answer. It is just in the nature of who we are that the structure of most of our answers follows that “primarily due to, partially offset by” approach to life that is just who we are. I think what we don’t consider as frequently as we should is the impact this analytical approach to life has [ Read more… ]

If there is anything those of you who have ever been engaged in a job search have learned is that NO ONE ever has enough friends. Although I count all 38,000+ of you as friends of mine, I still continue every day to try to make a few new friends. It is almost sad in a way that networking became so closely identified with job search. Except for the NFL approach to networking (that’s where you hold someone down and don’t let them up until they give you 3 names) networking is about creating real friendships. And, real friendships are a two way street. I hate one way dead ends streets, don’t you? That’s when you make networking all about [ Read more… ]

I know it may sound strange coming from someone publishing hundreds of pages of job leads a month, but job leads are overrated. If you are over the age of 40 and all you are doing is answering job leads in our newsletter or from any of the well respected jobs sites, you may as well be writing to yourself for all the good you are doing. Yes, I know you can proudly tell those who ask that you answered 20 ads today, but for the most part, you are competing with the entire world. Sure, you could do the job, and my belief is you could do it well, but clients want what clients want and search firms have [ Read more… ]

There is nothing harder than handling a negotiation that involves your own personal finances. We have all been through tough negotiations that stood to benefit the firms for which we have worked, but nothing can create more stress than when the negotiations involve our own salary or severance. Whether it is a salary negotiation or a severance negotiation, it is times like this that it just makes good sense to turn to your close friends for counsel. The purpose of this counsel, however, is not what to do, but rather to help you sort out the issues. The transactional process that is involved in a negotiation is easily sorted out if you can be objective, but when it is your [ Read more… ]