Tag Archive for: Career Tip of the Week

Its all about the money. Getting that pay rise

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money money moneyLast week we began looking at how to weigh up your options regarding staying and progressing at your firm or making a move to further your career.

Let’s start with the financial factor of feeling or being actually underpaid for the job that you do. First thing to do is to do some research on what your peers get paid online and yes interviewing is a way to do this as well as conversations with trusted peers. Secondly, before leaving, there are ways to explore pay and compensation changes with your boss and your HR team without threatening to leave and never present an ultimatum and especially if you don’t actually have a new job to go to. Do Not Bluff unless you are independently wealthy and can afford some time off.

Go to your boss and say that you would like to take him or her to lunch to chat about the past year. If you did a great job, present your case and ask for a higher base and/or a higher bonus or commission structure. Sometimes base salaries are harder to play with than commissions but ultimately if you are truly under market values ( as women often come in lower than men on base salary) there is a real case to give you the bump that aligns you with peers. If it is just about the money, and you are otherwise pretty happy, then why jump ship to an unknown workplace culture and structure? This conversation is worth having and then you can decide what to do!

By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist
Contact nicki@theglasshammer.com if you would like to hire an executive coach to help you navigate the path to optimal personal success at work

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New Year, New Job? Not so fast

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People waiting for an interviewSo, bonuses are paid and you are ready to make a move to your next job. You have your reasons for leaving and they are one or more of the following:

  • You think you can do better financially for the same work
  • You see less of a career track where you are and you think you can get further in another firm (title and responsibilities)
  • You are leaving your manager, not your company
  • You are changing industry or function and can only do that by leaving
  • You are not aligned with how things get done in your current job

Over the next five weeks we will look at each of these factors to give you a sanity check on whether you truly are leaving for the right reasons.

By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist
Contact nicki@glasshammer2.wpengine.com if you would like to hire an executive coach to help you navigate the path to optimal personal success at work

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Making the right decision for your next job.

People waiting for an interviewFollowing on from last week’s advice around dealing with an unexpected change in fortune at work and the very tangible real fallout of being out of a job in a sudden manner, we look at how to make the right decision for your next job.

Firstly, if you have any kind of financial cushion, make a promise to yourself that you will not make rash decisions and instead take the time to reflect on what you really want to do next. That in itself can feel slightly overwhelming so consider a qualified coach to help you through this time as a good sounding board is exactly what you need to help you frame this situation as an opportunity to get what you want. More satisfaction, more time, more flexibility, more money, a different title? These are all elements that you can now think about as maybe it is time to go up the ladder or go lateral? Either way, it is ultimately an ideal time to take the time to figure out what you want and what works for you at this juncture as last time you interviewed for a job, you might have been in a different place in your life. Not least, you have a chance to think about your enhanced skill set since that last time around.

By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

Contact nicki@theglasshammer.com if you would like to hire an executive coach to help you navigate the path to optimal personal success at work

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Bumps in the road. What happens when things go temporarily wrong at work?

women stressedThings can go wrong in your career, at least that is how it seems. Maybe your company is downsizing and you got a tap on the shoulder informing you that your team is being consolidated and there is no place for you. Maybe they even marched you out of the building!

What do you do in this situation? You are faced with a choice of how to recover. Yes, how to recover as there are many emotions and thoughts involved with this type of situation. The best thing you can do is let go of any negative emotion ( anger, bitterness etc) and list what you enjoyed most and what you enjoyed least about both the job itself and the company culture. This will help you figure out what is next for you, professionally!

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Is all publicity, good publicity?

Women SpeakingPersonal Branding is quite the buzzword, but does it really mean when it comes to your success at work?

Some people are more keen than others to update the rest of the world on their professional activities and that is partly to do with personality and partly to do with how you prioritize your online time. Next time you are posting something to Facebook, think about whether you could also share that update on other social spaces such as LinkedIn? The question to ask yourself is, “ does this help me show what I have expertise in?” Do you show up in a consistent manner and what then, is your message?

By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

Contact nicki@theglasshammer.com if you would like to hire an executive coach to help you navigate the path to optimal personal success at work

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Don’t be afraid of learning and using technology in all aspects of your life to further your career

women stressedWe are holding our 6th Annual women in technology career event in November if you are a woman in tech- please do apply to come to this great event in NYC.

I recently went to a tech conference (a partner organization called Lesbians Who Tech) which was great networking and generally very enjoyable to be away from my desk as it is always great to get out when you can and meet actual people.

I learned about many apps and services that can really save time and enhance how people work. So many of my Gen X friends are still avoiding technology when really you can make your life easier so join the revolution and get digital! What takes up most of your day? I find scheduling can eat away at my time so I recommend Calendy for an example of how to reduce the back and forth of arranging times to talk with clients and peers!

By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

Contact nicki@glasshammer2.wpengine.com if you would like to hire an executive coach to help you navigate the path to optimal personal success at work

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Time To Look For A New Job

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People waiting for an interviewOk ,so you figured out that you need a new job!

There are many ways to start a job search and if you know vaguely the target companies that you would like to interview with then that is a great place to start investigating the opportunities out there. Linkedin is a great way to see if you know anyone directly or indirectly at your preferred firms and a good place to start is to mine your current network to build your future one. Apply to job postings but know that any personal connection will probably help you so it is worth checking your network and refreshing your relationships with coffees and lunch with influencers and mentors.

If you don’t know what is next, it is worth working with a coach ( such as myself and the vetted coaches who partner with theglasshammer) to help you refine what is the next stage of your career and help you secure the job you want, whether it is within your current industry or perhaps a pivot into something new altogether?

By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

Contact nicki@theglasshammer.com if you would like to hire an executive coach to help you navigate the path to optimal personal success at work

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Should I Stay or Should I Go? When The Culture Just Isn’t Working For You

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Woman travelling - airportLast week we talked about organizational culture and how important it is to have your values and preferences match the way your team does things. If you clearly can see that leadership or managerial behaviors in your firm and consequently the behavior that is tacitly endorsed in the company is out of whack with how you operate then you have to think about whether you should stay or go. This question often comes up in coaching sessions because of three situations.

When there is:
  1. Perceived unethical/unfair behavior or perceived total inefficiency yet no way to address it without a negative consequence for the person working there (woman or man although the issues manifest slightly differently despite root cause being the same)
  2. No career pathway in sight.
  3. Gendered roles and behavior. If you want to spot this, look for trends across the board, such as women are relegated to support roles even though there are a few women at the top (usually marketing and HR) but they behave worse than the men ( sound familiar?) and are not interested in mentoring and developing other women because they are unconsciously forced to play ball to survive in a culture that dictates one way of succeeding and it probably revolves around very traditional traits that we have all historically attributed to male leadership.

Think about what work gets done? What gets rewarded? What gets people’s attention? Who gets rewarded? What gets tolerated? List 2-3 examples of work to help you understand what your workplace culture is!

By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

Contact nicki@theglasshammer.com if you would like to hire an executive coach to help you navigate the path to optimal personal success at work

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Why “How We Do Things Around Here” Or Company Culture Will Make Or Break You

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women stressedCompany culture matters and it always has done because it is literally the invisible glue that holds everything together and can be defined as “how do we do things around here” in teams, companies and even in societies. If you have fit and flow and it makes sense to you how things are done, you will probably experience little to no friction in your job around how you like to work and therefore will unconsciously feel happier at work.

So how do you spot culture if you are interviewing? It is hard but the difference between now and previous decades is that you have a window into it via social media and opinions of people who work there as well as sites like theglasshammer.com which offers a day in the life views into big firms.

By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

Contact nicki@theglasshammer.com if you would like to hire an executive coach to help you navigate the path to optimal personal success at work

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Taking Your Development Areas and Working On Them

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working on a computerThe theme these past three weeks from me has been dividing the tasks you like from the tasks you don’t like at work to help you work towards ensuring your next job is a very good fit ( from the perspective of the details of the work itself, cultural fit is something we will talk about next week!)

Ascertaining what you are not so good at at work is really important as then you can spend time developing yourself with or without formal development or learning programs at your company (it is great if there are programs to help you). However, how do you know what you are bad at? Well, you could have received feedback formally in a review or informally but sometimes the tasks you like least are often the ones you are least developed in and you just know that some of the elements of your job you could do with strengthening your muscles in ( see last week’s advice)

Write a list of what you want to master and carve out time to spend real time to practice – for example: budgets or excel – a lot of this can be self taught. Then there are less tangible areas such as networking which we will talk about for the month of October in this column. Good Luck!

By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

Contact nicki@theglasshammer.com if you would like to hire an executive coach to help you navigate the path to optimal personal success at work

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