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Do you think you have what it takes to be BPOC (big person on campus) in your company or another one?
Do you have the required characteristics to be the person in the corner office, in other words the CEO?
Most of the clients I work with aspire to achieve such lofty goals, but many of them don’t really know what it takes to get that job and succeed at it. Here are five traits you must-have to be a successful CEO:
Well, job seekers, are you ready to hear some good news? More than three-quarters of U.S. private companies plan to hire over the next two years, according to the PricewaterhouseCoopers Private Company Trendsetter Barometer. Additionally, the majority of Trendsetter CEOs identified skill gaps in their current workforce. Could they perhaps be looking for someone with your skills?
Talent management will be a top priority in the next 12 months, as many private companies are focusing on strategic growth in their workforces. The largest skill gaps identified were in middle management (53 percent) and skilled labor (48 percent).
The top workplace skills hiring companies will need in the coming months are as follows:
Work today is a whirlwind of activity and change. So workers need to stay flexible and able to switch their priorities and focus as quickly as a short order cook moves from eggs and bacon to veggie burgers.
In the year ahead, you may have to accept and adapt to a myriad changes: new software or systems; a new boss; new duties or hours; a new initiative or priorities at your organization or even, a new employer. Some companies may merge or file for Chapter 11; others will outsource departments and jobs will disappear. Even if your employer is growing nicely, it may hire someone who outshines you or shakes up your department.
No wonder then that adaptability and flexibility were rated the most important skills for both experienced and new workers…
I was an HR person for ages, so I know about dogma. Dogma is a kind of thick, sticky stuff that takes hold in an organization or institution and never lets go. It chokes the life out of an organism, like the kudzu that covers the trees in parts of the U.S. One of the worst bits of dogma out in the advice-o-sphere is the myth of transferable skills. My take is that transferable skills are a crock. Here’s why.
We are taught in book after book, in seminars and podcasts and job search networking events that people get jobs by trumpeting their Transferable Skills. What are transferable skills? They are things like Communication Skills and Negotiation Skills. We’ve cultivated and deployed these skills in one arena, goes the logic, and by gum, we can do it somewhere else! There is one big problem with the Transferable Skills dogma. People are not actually ambulatory sets of disembodied, abstract skills. Describing ourselves as packages of skills is about the worst way imaginable to get a hiring manager excited about us.
Remember Neil Armstrong? He was the first person on the moon (as far as we know!). Neil Armstrong is a pilot, an astronaut, a scientist and a leader. That’s what the average person knows about him — undoubtedly he has hundreds of other talents. Now, how would we describe Neil Armstrong using the Transferable Skills model?
A man came to see me, and he told me his story. He’d just sold a business that he’d launched with a partner nearly twenty years ago. When his partner retired, my client had stuck around to grow the business, and he’d done a great job of it – so much so that the proceeds from the sale of the business made it possible for him to retire on the spot. “But I don’t want to retire,” he said. “I want to work for at least one more company, and I don’t want to have to start it from the ground up. Too much work.”
The gentleman wanted to job-hunt, and he wanted some advice. “Do you have a resume?” I asked. “I have one,” he said, “but I’m not crazy about it. A resume-writer put it together for me, according to what I hear is the latest resume-writing fad.”
“A new resume fad?” I asked. “I can’t wait to hear about that.”
“Skills!” said the CEO. “Transferable skills. My resume is loaded up with ‘em.”
“Oh dear,” I said. Resume fads take ages to die, and the skill-based-resume fad is going strong. The poor gentleman’s resume was crammed with skills from one end to the other, from Leadership Communication ...
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