EditorialsBy Matt Bud, Chairman, The FENG

There isn’t much I personally can do about the job market. I caught a few minutes of the evening news tonight, and as many as 20% of the work force in the USA is now unemployed. These are staggering numbers. Equally staggering is that almost 64,000 Americans have died from Covid-19. With headlines like these in front of you, it can be hard to focus on much of anything. That said, I have worked very hard this week building programming for Chat with Matt. (I’ve even allowed myself to fall behind in my email.) This is something I CAN do. I hope to bring you the best minds I have met over the past 25 years to inspire you, encourage [ Read more… ]

One of my favorite “sayings from the Chairman” is: I try to make things so easy that anyone can do it. That way if I try hard, I can too! KISS or “keep it simple stupid” is one of the most often violated principles of job search and part of the reason that we fail to communicate our true value. Yes, I know that many of us have arcane skills. But you need to keep in mind that the burden of communication is on you. How often have I heard “but it was all right there in my resume.” Oh, if that simple statement were REALLY true. Sure, it was there all right, but it was buried in a less [ Read more… ]

If getting up in front of a large group and doing your elevator pitch isn’t bad enough, giving it over the phone is worse. At least in front of a group, large or small, you have some visual feedback as to whether or not it is going over well. Add to this that many folks call you from cell phones with “CB radio” quality connections (i.e. you can’t talk unless they stop), and you have a communication challenge of the first order. There are several suggestions I have heard over the years and some that I use that I will share with you tonight. The first thing to keep in mind is that you never know when an important call [ Read more… ]

One of the problems with being a senior financial executive is that we have all the answers. We have, for good or bad, “been there and done that.” Frankly, it is hard to conceal that knowledge and experience in an interview. Call it “overqualified” or whatever name you like, but it is difficult to imagine ANY job that at this stage in your career represents a huge challenge. Most likely, it will only occupy a portion of the many skills you have acquired over the years. There are so many things that only happen once or twice a year, and if you have 20+ years of experience, you have likely seen them 30 times or more. So, what’s a person [ Read more… ]

As all of you know, The FENG is going “all in” on Zoom. To prove my commitment to all of you and to our mission of educating members about the job search process, I will be hosting a daily 30 minute Zoom meeting. Details about tomorrow’s meeting appear below. I hope you will join us. The daily times for “Chat with Matt” may change each week and during the week. Tomorrow’s meeting is scheduled for 4PM. That’s a little late for our members in London, but should work reasonably well for everyone else. I will nail down a guest or guest for Tuesday tomorrow. I have a few calls/emails out. (Sorry, but I only came up with this idea Friday [ Read more… ]

I do tend to rattle on. Some night I will tell you the FULL story about how I removed my own home heating oil tank from my property. (It is a long story with many fascinating twists and turns.) The problem is that most folks really don’t want to hear about it. And, even those who have interest appear to be plagued with a total lack of attention span when it comes to one of my favorite stories. I suppose I could also regale you with the story of “The midnight terror,” which very briefly is the evening we dragged anchor off of Milford, Connecticut (when I was unemployed) and almost lost the boat. It is one of my longer [ Read more… ]

I spent almost the entire day today learning how to host meetings on Zoom. In addition to my desk station, I had two laptops set up in my office so I could see what you will be seeing. I also roped my wife and son (who is also The FENG’s webmaster) into helping educate me on the ins and outs of this “new to me” program. Of course, I started from a very high base of knowledge due to the leadership of my two Co-Chairs, Bruce Lynn and Marty Latman. Bruce and Marty took the lead over the past few weeks in experimenting with Zoom. Based on their research and experimentation, it was clear this was the correct choice for [ Read more… ]

The changes that have taken place in the past 20 years in our ability to communicate are truly remarkable. What with personal computers, email, cell phones, voice mail, iPads and iPhones you can use just about from anywhere and now Zoom, you would think that those of us engaged in business pursuits would make the effort to master all of these many technologies, or in true managerial fashion, find someone who could set them up for us. But, you would be wrong. Hard to know where to start, but let me begin with email, my own personal favorite communication tool. Do you think it is possible that there are people out there who don’t know that there is a shift [ Read more… ]

Several years ago in the movie “A beautiful mind” about John Nash, the mathematical genius, one of the things that made him brilliant was that he could see patterns in numbers and words that no one else could see. Detecting hidden patterns or reading between the lines is one of the skills that a good researcher learns to develop. When examining data, looking beyond the obvious can create value when at first there appears to be none. Let me start with the evening newsletter, that mountain of data that comes to you 5 days a week. On the surface, there are our routine sections – the evening editorial, good news announcements, members in need of assistance, and job leads. One [ Read more… ]

One of the themes that I like to present from time to time is the idea that each of us can make a difference. For those of us who live in these United States, it is all very easy to fall into the accepted American concept that everything in this world is actually someone else’s fault. Hence we have the tendency in this country to sue anyone and everyone who might have wronged us. It has created a nice living for the contingency lawyers in this country, but has done little for the American sense of pride and individual responsibility for ourselves and others. Here in our little society we call The FENG we have a unique opportunity to do [ Read more… ]

As we head into yet another week of lockdown, I hope that tonight’s editorial finds you and yours in good health and good spirits. If you and yours are at least in good health, I would be happy with that alone. I will admit that with each passing day it is getting harder and harder to remember what life was like before the novel coronavirus. I was speaking with Bruce Lynn earlier in the day. (As one of my Co-Chairs, and my business partner in The FECG, I do try to call him several times a week to see what ideas he has and to test his reaction to some of mine.) I remember fondly our lunches at Gold’s Delicatessen [ Read more… ]

One of the many concepts I learned when I worked for a large corporation (that will go nameless) was “just in time budgeting.” When I worked for this firm I thought it was a bad idea, but as life has gone by, I have come to appreciate some of its finer qualities and applicability. You see, they never seemed to get around to finishing the annual budget process at this firm, so, each month’s actual was just assumed to be “budget.” The beauty of the approach, of course, was that there were never any variances. No variances, and therefore, nothing to explain. The applicability to job search is the whole concept of the unnecessary expectations we set for ourselves. What [ Read more… ]

With each passing day, it has become clearer that face to face meetings of The FENG are not going to be happening any time soon. At the beginning of time itself, when The FENG consisted of only the Westport Chapter and was only about 50 members, some folks in Philadelphia got wind of the fact that we were sharing job leads over my AOL account daily and asked to listen in. At first, I was not really open to their joining our distribution. After all, how could they possibly come to Westport for our meetings every two weeks? Their solution was that they started their own in person meetings. This made perfect sense and changed my perspective of what we [ Read more… ]

Although there are NO job leads in tonight’s newsletter, one of the very important issues facing us as an organization is the “care and feeding” of our many friends in the search community. (Even before COVID-19 there weren’t many left.) While studies have shown that only about 15% of the jobs in this country are handled by recruiters, to me they are still an important audience for us to treat with respect. And yes, they have feelings too. (I will let you guess how the other 85% are filled. Okay, I’ll tell you: Networking, networking and more networking.) Our first rule as an organization is that any job posted in our newsletter is to be responded by “qualified members only” [ Read more… ]

As we begin another week with a significant percentage of the US economy shut down, I hope tonight’s newsletter finds you and yours in good health. In terms of everyone’s priorities, I would politely suggest that this be your primary focus. With respect to the economy, at this point in time, I have no clue how they are going to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. It is my perspective that no one else does either. There are far too many pieces of the economic puzzle that have been seriously dislocated for you to use the prognostications coming from various sources as a guide for future actions. There are only certain aspects of what is going on that are within [ Read more… ]

If there is any one thing that is consistent among senior executives who are in the job market for the first time in many years, it is their inability to distinguish between good and bad advice. The simple story is that if you hear it from me, Marty Latman or Bruce Lynn it is good advice. If you hear it from someone else, please exercise a little common sense. (Just kidding. I would ask you to apply common sense to the things we suggest as well. They may not be right for you.) Stop me if I am wrong, but none of you were born yesterday. To become a member of our little circle of friends you generally have to [ Read more… ]

For those of you who I have not convinced about the value of networking, I thought I would share my own thoughts about something I have observed about the world and why I think it is so. During my various job campaigns since I started working in 1971 I always noticed a decided lack of published job leads in either Fairfield County Connecticut, where I live, or in New York City, a place to which I was willing to commute. (Please note that my career began well before the Internet, and that nothing much has really changed about job search.) With all of the people who live in this part of the country and with all of the well-known companies [ Read more… ]

During this period of time when all there is going to be over the next few weeks is bad news, it is hard to think about a path forward. I’m sure there is one, but I don’t see it yet. Earlier today I got a call from a Demetria Clark. As we began our conversation, I think she picked up on the fact that I thought it was a crank call. As she went on to explain that she had recently been in Nashville and had been pulled out, the personal nature of her tone started me actually listening to what she was saying. Turns out, she really does work for the U.S. Small Business Administration, Disaster Assistance office and [ Read more… ]

I hope tonight’s newsletter finds all of you in good health and good spirits. It is vitally important during this national crisis to not be “deer in the headlights.” There are things that all of us can do. Some for ourselves and some for others. As you all know, I spend several hours every day serving all of you. I don’t consider it work. Earlier today I had the great pleasure of Skyping with John Yates who Co-Chairs our London chapter and speaking at length with Kim Davis who Co-Chairs our Indianapolis chapter. All of your area chairs are struggling a bit not being able to have in person meetings. It is all very well to create programming that generates [ Read more… ]

During every recession, there are typically specific industries that experience more declines than others. One of the truths about the job market is that in any piece of time, one or more industries are usually singled out “for punishment” and lots of folks in those industries lose their jobs all at the same time. For those of us who remember the dot.com bust, pre-bust if you weren’t working for a dot.com you were considered stupid. Post-bust, having been at one proved you were stupid. As they say, you can’t have it both ways. Not much you as an individual can do about industry cycles. If you were a mortgage industry financial professional, it is pretty clear that a large number [ Read more… ]

My wife and I go cruising on our sailboat every summer for about two weeks. During that time it is a sound bet that there will be at least two full days where we won’t be able to get off the boat most of the day because it is raining too hard. Of course, I always have email to do. Sometimes Peggy and I have a search assignment we’re working on, so we do that. Other times I have a boat project or two that I have been meaning to get to. (If I have to choose between sailing or working on the boat, it is always sailing.) Given that most of the country is on lockdown at the moment, [ Read more… ]

One of the most annoying things about us financial types (at least to non-financial types) is the long-winded and seemingly endless explanations we provide when discussing complicated situations. Although we are mistakenly thought to always “cut to the chase” or go right to “the bottom line,” when it comes to communicating about important matters, no detail no matter how small or insignificant (to others) can be left out if in our minds it provides a link of logic important to the “moral” of our story. Nowhere is this more true than the saga of how we lost our last job or when asked to discuss our career progression. In the case of why we left our last job, it is [ Read more… ]