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Archive for June, 2011

As a career counselor, career guidance professional, HR professional and staffing executive who has hired or placed 1,300+ individuals, I would like to share an exercise with you on career gap analysis.

Since sports never end during a year no matter where you reside, I have an idea and exercise for everyone to follow. The sport could any sport. Stick-and-ball, could be team, could be individual sports. But I think all of you have seen places and “fantasy” games for everyone and every sport. “Pick your team.”

Who would you select for your “Dream Team?”

But why not try something else. Why not try and pick the same Dream Team for a business application? Your business consumes over one-third of your awake life.

Why not pick your dream management team?

I don’t care if you are an admin, a network engineer, a manager, an executive or a factory worker. Pick the people you’ve worked with that you admired for leadership, honesty, forth-rightness, business savvy and slot them into a hypothetical company structure.

Design the imaginary slots for your imaginary company and pencil these folks in.

The next piece may also be interesting. Ask and answer to yourself “why did you select this person and place them into this role?”

Get some detail behind the answer, such as, “she was so fair and understanding on every HR issue ever presented.” And, “Her knowledge and problem solving skills were just so good.” Or, “she listened to every side of every discussion and made great judgments.”

Something has to set aside this individual from others. Again, it’s not important to know the industry, but okay if you do. Try and fill in positions like president, vice president-manufacturing or sales or???, vice president of human resources, vice president of technology and so on.

Don’t get hung up on titles; Rather pick the person you feel made the best company president you knew/worked with/respected and write down the name. Do the same for each title and if you need to add titles, please just do it.