5 Ways To Increase Your Employability

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increase_employabilityBy Elizabeth Harrin (London)

While things are looking better for job seekers, the financial sector has not yet returned to its pre-recession state. There are still fewer jobs around. And even if you aren’t looking for a new job, the risk of more redundancies hangs heavy in the City. Nobody wants to be out of work at the moment, and although it’s a bit late for New Year’s Resolutions, you still have time to commit to improving your employability this year. Here are The Glass Hammer’s top five tips for improving your CV or resumé.

  1. Speak in public

    Enough already with the excuses. You will not die if you stand up and speak in front of a crowd. Cutbacks means fewer industry events this year but there are still plenty of conferences and seminars looking for speakers. You are an expert in something, and you only have to know a small amount more than the rest of the room to look like that expert. Speak at an industry conference about a project or initiative you have worked on – no one will know more about it than you and case studies are a perennial favourite on the conference circuit.

    How do you get to be a speaker? It’s really easy – just ask. Look at the fliers that fall out of your industry publications or look on the internet for forthcoming events. By the time the schedule is published it will be too late for you to attend that session, but ask for your details to be put on the call for papers list and next time they are looking for speakers you’ll get a notification. You’ll be asked to prepare a short abstract about your presentation. The organisers take all the abstracts and choose those that would make a coherent conference schedule.

    If that still sounds too scary then start small with a talk at your local professional institute branch. Or offer your services to a women’s network – they would love to hear about your career journey. If you are just starting out, talk to university groups about how you landed your finance job.

    2. Read more

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Helping Professional Women Band Together and Build Strengths

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networkingBy Jessica Titlebaum (Chicago)

There has been a noticeable change in the way women help other women in the workforce.

“In the past 10 years, I have seen a huge push among senior level women who are passionate about mentoring,” said Jo Miller, Founder of Women’s Leadership Coaching “to help emerging women leaders gain access to networks, role models and opportunities.”

Miller offers seminars, coaching programs and webinars that are designed for businesswomen to create roadmaps into leadership positions. She launched a webinar series as a cost-effective solution for career advancement and advice. Divided into two categories to meet the needs of emerging and executive leaders, the webinars feature speakers who have broken through the glass ceiling and want to share their experiences with other like-minded women.

Miller also speaks at seminars and workshops regarding career advancement for women. Topics include winning at the game of office politics, creating your own brand as an emerging leader and becoming a person of influence.

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2010 Gender Equality is Here, and Other Media Myths that Keep Unconscious Bias Alive

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Nicki HeadshotA weekly column by Nicki Gilmour, Founder and CEO of theglasshammer.com.

Welcome to my new weekly column on the latest news, surveys and trends on professional women in the workplace (I’ll sometimes write and sometimes podcast). I aim to keep you updated and to provide deeper insight into positive changes both employers, and women who are breaking the glass ceiling everyday, can make to improve working life. Feel free to comment and continue this discussion on the social network which can be found on our community page.

The Economist kicked off the year with Rosie the Riveter on the cover, proclaiming “We did it.” What exactly did we do?

Well, we became 50% of the workforce, generally, across all industries. We can interpret that in two ways, either as a positive advancement for women as they are able to have economic freedom by earning their own wage or that that women have to work to support themselves and their families; it does not necessary mean that we are actually getting somewhere as leaders and managers in equal numbers to men.

I have to be honest. I had to check that I wasn’t reading an old copy of the Economist from January 1980 when I read the words, “The revolution has been achieved with only a modicum of friction. Men have, by and large welcomed women’s invasion of the workplace.” Invasion of the workplace? Last time I checked, going to work to try and strategically improve your processes, and therefore the company as a whole, by delivering results in whichever area you work isn’t like invading Poland.

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Female Execs: The New Metric

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By Elizabeth Harrin (London)Young business woman posing over white background

There’s been a lot written about getting more women on to boards. But boards act as an oversight body. Could you even name half the members of the board at your own company? Using the number of women on boards is a useful measurement in how enlightened or competitive a company is, but it’s rarely the case that having more women on boards means that lower down the organisation women are being promoted and supported in more senior management positions.

Enter a new study – Womenomics 101. This survey, from the consultancy 20-first, looks at a different metric: women on the Executive Committee. After all, it’s easy(ish) for the corporate board to elect a woman or two and say that the job of creating gender equality is done. Much harder for a company to promote its home-grown talent up through the ranks to a position on the Exec.

“This survey invites you to look deeper into companies, and to use metrics that distinguish those serious about gender balance from the rest,” says Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, CEO of 20-first and co-author of authored the book Why Women Mean Business. She’s also the woman behind the new annual survey. “That’s what Womenomics 101 proposes to do.”

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Mind the Gap: How to Increase Your Salary

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By Elizabeth Harrin (London)Photo of a young business woman holding currency notes and smili

If you’ve been following the release of various studies into the gender pay gap, you might be wondering what you can personally do to increase your chances of not falling into the chasm between men and women’s pay. In this difficult economic climate – although there are some small signs that things are looking up – can you really get a pay rise?

“It is far easier to fix your own situation on a one-on-one basis than to lead a revolution on behalf of woman everywhere,” says Cy Wakeman, HR expert and President of Cy Wakeman, Inc. “If each woman would step up on an individual basis – the issue would be fixed and we wouldn’t need mandates, audits and programs.”

Not everyone would agree that it’s that easy. You can’t just walk into your boss’s office and demand more money. Well, you could, but you wouldn’t get very far. It’s also difficult to work out how to pitch your request, as ‘John earns more than me’ is unlikely to win you many points in the argument, even if that is your primary reason for wanting to approach the topic of salary increase. Your employer’s first reaction is liable to be ‘How did you find out?’, especially as many companies make use of gagging clauses in contracts – or at the very least make a special point of telling employees not to share salary and bonus data when it comes to pay review time. Therefore it is worth putting together a case for why you deserve a rise, particularly if your compensation package – or lack of it – is a major concern for you at work.

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The end of the road for women’s networks?

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By Elizabeth Harrin (London)Group Disscussion

“About 30 years worth of effort has gone into promoting more women into senior leadership,” says Avivah Wittenberg-Cox. “We have to stop bringing groups of women together to talk about what we know is going wrong.”

Traditionally, women’s networks have been the ‘answer’ to the issue of getting more women into senior positions. Networks provide the opportunity to, well, network, and to meet and listen to senior women who then become role models. After all, if your after-dinner speaker made it to the top, why can’t you? But according to the women on the podium at a recent event hosted by Morgan Stanley, women’s networks are an outdated concept that do more harm than good.

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The Glass Hammer / Stone House Consulting Survey of Buy-Side Industry Trends

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iStock_000001000665XSmallContributed by Holly H. Miller of Stone House Consulting, LLC

Executive Summary

Margins in the investment management industry are under siege, facing threats from both directions – lower fees and rising costs. The Glass Hammer / Stone House Consulting Survey of Buy-Side Industry Trends indicates that while regulators are contributing to the cost pressures, the industry’s own client base, together with the investment consulting firms that advise those clients, are a key factor in the equation. Not only are investors demanding greater due diligence, improved risk monitoring and controls, but they are calling for lower fees without any concession on the performance expectations, high levels of customization and quality client service they have always required.

Many managers, seeking to protect their margin, have responded in the market crisis with staff cutbacks and hasty outsourcing deals that, in some instances, have resulted in increasing operational risk within an investment management firm – or have set the stage for potential problems as the job market improves.

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Considering More and/or Better Regulation at SIFMA’s Annual Meeting

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By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)iStock_000000724728XSmall

On Tuesday, October 27, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) held its annual meeting in New York. While speakers covered a range of topics, foremost on the conference agenda was the coming changes in regulation, their potential effects, and whether more and/or better regulation is the right direction for the industry.

“We are by no means out of the woods, and even if we were, it would be irresponsible to forget” past events and the practices that have led to the current economic situation said keynote speaker Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro. Schapiro opened the conference with a strong call for new regulation, and explained its necessity.

The right questions had not been asked in the past, Schapiro said, and the SEC intended to change that. In fact, the SEC now receives hundreds of thousands of tips each year, and the agency is working to develop a new tracking system to better identify promising leads.

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Preethi Nair at Deutsche Bank’s Women on Wall Street Conference

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By Erin Abrams (New York City)

How often do you get to attend a conference related to your Wall Street job, and hear a story that involves high intrigue, risk taking, impersonation and leading a double life? Well, I guess this isn’t so uncommon these days if you, like me, work in the field of white collar criminal defense. However, I’m happy to report that Preethi Nair’s story at Tuesday night’s 15th Annual Women on Wall Street Conference (probably) didn’t involve any criminal activity and had a much happier ending than the tale of your average financial fraudster. Indeed, her exciting and frequently hilarious explanation of her journey from frustrated management consultant to internationally acclaimed author and creative project entrepreneur ended the presentation on a high note and inspired many of the women in attendance.

Ms. Nair, author of 100 Shades of White, The Colour of Love and Gypsy Masala and founder of Kiss the Frog, a project tasked with reintroducing creativity into the workplace, has experienced quite a reversal of fortune from just a few years ago. In those days, Ms. Nair explained that she would get up in the morning and get dressed in a suit to fool her British Indian parents into thinking that she was headed to the job as a management consultant that she had prematurely quit, and would sit in the public library in London dreaming up ways to become a successful, internationally recognized novelist.

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Sandra Pianalto, President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland Speaks on the Current Economic Crisis and the Coming Recovery

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By Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)iStock_000003731985XSmall

Economic recovery is likely to be “gradual and bumpy” according to Sandra Pianalto, the president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. In her remarks to a packed house at the Market News International event on October 1st in New York City, she shared her thoughts on both the current economic conditions and the potential challenges on the road to recovery.

The Economy Was in Critical Condition

“My colleague Janet Yellen, president of the Federal Reserve bank of San Francisco, compared the economy to a hospital patient who was in the intensive care unit and only gradually stabilizing,” said Pianalto, adding that she believes that the economy was in “critical condition.” As evidence, she pointed out that the current recession has already lasted nearly seven quarters, almost four times as long as a typical two-quarter recession. “Even with today’s encouraging signs,” said Pianalto, “we have a lot of ground to make up before we even get back to the levels of output seen in 2007.”

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