EditorialsBy Matt Bud, Chairman, The FENG

Ever the wise sailor, I always (well, almost always) check the weather forecast before heading down to the boat to go out for the day. This may or may not be a valuable activity. My wife jokes that in her next life she wants to be a weather forecaster. They never have to be right and they still get paid. I have to agree that they are frequently wrong, and sometimes I have taken their prognostications to heart and they have caused me to miss a perfectly good sailing day. (As you may know, the sailing season is very short – it is less than 52 weeks per year, so I hate to miss even one day.) There is also [ Read more… ]

Several years ago I spent an evening out with an old friend of mine who previously had been in the search business. He is a very special friend. We first met in 1977 when I was Business Manager for CBS College Publishing and we have been close friends ever since. Since he lived nearby, our families also had the opportunity to bond as well. He was instrumental in my career development in that he made a point of getting me invited to leadership meetings that I am sure I would not otherwise have attended. When I was out of work in 1991 and 1992 he was in the outplacement business and as a courtesy provided me with a place to [ Read more… ]

Every once in a while I get an assignment for The FECG that draws more than its fair share of attention. I think our all time high a few years ago was an assignment that drew 225 responses. However, even when you get an assignment that draws more than say 40 responses, it can get a little difficult to see the forest for the trees. And, with all that talent to choose from, those who provide the clearest presentation of their credentials are the ones we are most likely to send to our client for consideration. To be very honest, it’s hard to justify forcing our client to “read between the lines” when you have so many better submissions. Here [ Read more… ]

Based on the email cover notes I see, I’m not sure we have all made the transition from messages sent in envelopes to those sent by email. Personally, I have always found electronic files to be maddening, especially very highly developed Excel spreadsheets. Adopting naming conventions so that you can be clear which version of a file was the latest one, used to and still does drive me crazy at times. And, as you can imagine, I’m a pretty organized guy. Purging files from your computer can also be unnerving because when it’s gone, it’s gone. The problem in a nutshell (Help, I’m locked in a nutshell!) is that reviewing the files on your computer by opening them is like [ Read more… ]

People who know that my wife and I are into sailing often ask us what we most enjoy making for dinner when we are on the boat. My standard response is reservations. The hard part is, of course, picking the restaurant. Are we in the mood for Mexican food, Pizza, French, Italian, or Chinese? Fortunately for us, although you can’t always tell by the name of the restaurant what they serve, all restaurants have enough common sense to stake out their areas of expertise when being listed in the telephone book, or in the many local brochures available at our favorite harbors. No restaurant would consider keeping their area of expertise a secret. It just wouldn’t be good for business. [ Read more… ]

With the holiday season coming up fast, it is perhaps the time to repeat the simple advice that now is the time to be making phone calls and trying to schedule Zoom meetings. One of the great misunderstandings about networking is that things slow down during the holidays. Nothing could be further from the truth. This year, more than any other, very few people will be taking vacation time. And, with all we have been through so far this year, lots of folks will be doing less work next week, and hopefully will become bored and welcome your calls. For those of you who can’t think of any other excuse to make phone calls to old friends, what better excuse [ Read more… ]

Much as I hate using cliché phrases as the one above, I don’t really know if there is a better one to describe the process of self-examination that is required when faced with looking for another “work opportunity.” (I call them work opportunities instead of jobs, because they don’t generally last long enough these days to be dignified with that “job” label.) Of course, I should preface my comments with the very obvious fact that changing industries or professions in any job market is very difficult. There are plenty of folks who are “local candidates,” or from the required industry. Competing against them in any sense isn’t an even contest, but competing rarely is as much fun as folks make [ Read more… ]

No one ever said it would be easy. And, when it comes to finding a job after the age of 40, it can easily become a demoralizing situation. For those of us who are even older, like in our 50’s or 60’s, it can be extremely difficult. Let me start you out with the idea that you are no longer the least expensive product out on the market. You bring a wealth of experience to the party, and those on the other side of the desk feel obligated to pay more to you than for someone earlier in their career should they decide to hire you. It’s true, of course, that they should pay more, but what is often missed [ Read more… ]

The world is actually built on a series of personal relationships. The truth of this statement was brought home to me many times during my near decade in the Advertising business, and subsequent to that from my experiences during my job search in trying to get to know people in the Venture Capital and Search business. It is hard to get people to trust you when their income depends on who they introduce to whom. From 1997 to just before the recession that began in 2001, I worked the search community one recruiter at a time to sell The FENG as a resource. Unfortunately, recruiters don’t talk much to each other. And, even within firms, they pretty much run an [ Read more… ]

For those of you who are new to networking and for those of you who think you know everything about networking, I thought I would take tonight’s editorial space to distinguish for you the 3 kinds of networking. The first kind of networking is identifying new networking contacts. The recommended way to do this at in person meetings (I’m sure you remember those.) was to introduce yourself to people you didn’t know, the theory being strangers are only friends you haven’t met. Today we have to rely on Zoom meeting rooms. My suggested approach is to take charge and go first. It really is pretty painless. You just say: “Hi, I’m Matt Bud.” (Be sure to use your name and [ Read more… ]

It is in some ways a shame that the idea of networking has gotten itself so tightly connected to job search. One of the reasons that I call members who have found new jobs is to remind them to continue networking. Sad to say that many people allow themselves to get so absorbed in their new jobs that they get disconnected from their network. I often refer to The FENG as a circle of friends. I also refer to those with whom you have the most in common and with whom you should stay in contact as your “inner circle of friends.” However, to describe it as “your very own insurance policy” puts it in the context of job search, [ Read more… ]

At the beginning of time itself in 1995, there was only a Westport Chapter of The FENG. In fact, the name of entire organization was The Financial Executives Networking Group of Fairfield County Connecticut. Over the past 25 years we have grown into an International organization with 37,000 members, 85 Chapters and 35 Special Interest Groups. Our first Special Interest Group was started by Bruce Lynn, one of our Co-Chairs who, in his modest way, suggested it would be nice if the Treasury folks could identify each other. We are an army of volunteers. Bruce Lynn, Marty Latman (our other national Co-Chair) and yours truly are ALL volunteers, just like the other 200 folks who head up our organization. The [ Read more… ]

I’m sure I don’t need to go into the details, but it goes without saying that the past 9 months of unending stress have been hard on all of us. I don’t know what happened to it, but when I worked for “the great corporation,” I had a bulletin board in my office with one section covered in cartoons. (People liked to kill time in my office.) In one of them a man is sitting on the edge of his bed trying to get up for the day. He clearly didn’t sleep well, hasn’t shaved, and he has the appearance of someone who is ready to give up. The caption has his wife saying: “Yeah, well you didn’t know how [ Read more… ]

When I became Chairman of The FENG in 1996, there was at the time an emerging technology called the Internet. (Rumored to have been invented by Al Gore.) I was working for The Thomson Corporation at the time and had learned how to use email. Some days I got as many as 10 emails! (This was referred to as being buried in emails.) I thought, email could really prove useful and enable The FENG to more currently send job leads to our 60 members. Utilizing my AOL account, I started what is now our evening newsletter. As they say, the rest is history. Moving to current times, I had an at length Zoom meeting last week with Steve Parkes and [ Read more… ]

It has often been said that I am a sensitive guy. I don’t think anyone who does what I do as a volunteer could be characterized as anything different. Still, when it comes to job search, being sensitive probably isn’t a good thing. You know the golden rule: “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” When I was looking for work during 1991-1992 (yes, two long years), it seemed as if not many folks in the world were aware of this idea. After many successful years in business always returning the phone calls of others, I found mine going unanswered. And, the same thing was true about responses to my many letters. Primarily silence on both [ Read more… ]

Just to prove to you how old I am, there used to be a show on TV called “The Millionaire.” (The show was in black and white. Need I say more?) It seems there was this wealthy man who wanted to give away some of his money and each week he would send this poor sap out into the world to hand someone a check for, you guessed it, a million dollars. Hard to believe the difficulties he ran into just trying to get folks to believe that there wasn’t a catch. I think about that show every time I get a phone call or email. What if the sinister purpose of the message I have just received is actually [ Read more… ]

Gosh, please don’t call me. That’s the message that I seem to get from time to time when I am trying to track down candidates for the consulting assignments and full time jobs I am handling through The FECG. I have also been alerted to this fear by one of our chapter chairs who noted that folks weren’t putting their phone numbers on his meeting attendance sheet. Okay, you do have one phone number on your resume and you may even have this same number in your outgoing signature. That said, you can’t be reached there. If you are still employed, it is your home phone number. I’m sure you will find my message when you get there at the [ Read more… ]

Although I constantly repeat our two mantras that all jobs are temporary and that one is never actually employed, only between searches, when this truth rears its ugly head I don’t know if anyone is really prepared. As the clock winds itself down on a current assignment, it is usually a stressful period of time prior to the actual event of your being given the bad news. This is hardly a time when you will be thinking clearly and focused on your goal of finding that next great “work opportunity.” The FENG is now so old that many of our members have been with us long enough to have gotten 2 or 3 or more searches under their belts. I [ Read more… ]

Top of the list is, of course, to vote if you have not already done so. My second suggestion is to NOT call anyone until at least Thursday. Everyone is “deer in the headlights” over the election. Hopefully it will be decided by end of day Wednesday so we can all get back to doing whatever passes for our normal activities by Thursday. If you call anyone earlier, you risk getting dragged into a political discussion, which let me assure you, you don’t want to have. Politics and Religion are the two biggies to avoid when it comes to job search. Let me suggest you spend the next several days working on expanding your list of networking contacts by using [ Read more… ]