It continues to be my observation of our members that for the most part we tend to move from large companies to small. Part of the reason is that we have no choice. Large companies generally speaking don’t hire senior executives from the outside. They try to grow their own. In any case, th...

As the sailing season begins here in Connecticut my thoughts more and more turn to sailing stories and how they might apply to job search and the management of your career. (Of course, I think about and read sailing stories all the time, but I digress.) One of the great perils of sailing i...

I have often been heard to say that it’s always better to be working. Being overqualified for most of the jobs published out in the world can be a little unsettling. But, I think you just have to accept it as a fact of life that once you have 20-30 years of work experience, you have probab...

One of the comments I have heard from time to time is that the new job that someone just found isn’t as exciting as the one they lost. It seems at times that most of our members find themselves in a downward spiral as they change jobs. The companies are smaller and often the pay packages a...

As it has been said, never put off until tomorrow that which you can do today. Of all the things one can buy with money, time is not one of them. For those who “walk among us” who are thinking that the time is not far off when they might have to look for another job, I would suggest that t...

Ah, the great age of sail! For many hundreds of years, men built great numbers of wooden sailing vessels for commercial purposes and for the making of war. The truth, as hinted at by the saying above is that there was very little that was actually romantic or desirable about a life at sea....

One of the little jokes I used to tell back at the office was how hard it was to get anything done, what with an hour coffee break in the morning, two hours for lunch, another hour coffee break in the afternoon, combined with leaving early, there just isn’t much time to get things done. In...

The newsletters the past few weeks have been a little thin, so I thought I would take this opportunity to remind all of you of our mutual commitment to share job leads, even those in which we are an active participants. Yes, I know it is counter-intuitive to share leads in which you are an...

I have often joked that I am known for “in the box thinking.”Thinking outside of the box, whatever that means, isn’t easy. As financial folks we just aren’t built that way.Still, being boring and unimaginative doesn’t have to become a way of life. And, although this may sound counterintuit...

There are a lot of counterintuitive ideas out in the world. (It is sometimes called “out of the box thinking.”) What may not be fully recognized is that The FENG, our little circle of friends, is based on quite a few radical ideas, and amazingly they all work.The earliest premise of our or...

It is at all times important to remember that Americans live in the present and the future.If you want to sound like an old person all you have to do is spout phrases like “I remember when gas was 25 cents a gallon.” Or, “I remember when we did spreadsheets with pencils and calculators.”To...

One of our members wrote to me a few years ago seeking some career advice. It seems his firm is restructuring and his job is being eliminated. That said, he has some “work opportunities” that are available to him, (some at his current firm) but all of which are a little off task to his pri...

The classic cruel joke of job search is that the client is looking for someone just like you, but much younger.Of course, no one can use these exact words out of fear of getting sued for age discrimination, which we all know is illegal. Setting illogically low levels of experience and/or d...

When I first got into sailing as a young man (I was in my 30’s), my father-in-law suggested we take a class – what a concept!Sailing is actually pretty simple. First, you can’t sail directly into the wind (I wonder why?). Next, never spit into the wind. And finally, if you feel yourself ge...

As an avid sailor these many years, I have found a certain comfort in the predictability of the tide. For example, at one time we had our sailboat in a harbor that prevented us from leaving or entering at dead low tide. An inconvenience to be sure, but one that was manageable given publish...

Ever the wise sailor, I always check the weather forecast before going sailing for the day. When out on vacation, the weather forecasts I listen to and study frequently cover a much broader area than I am planning to need for a particular day. I like knowing what the weather is going to be...

For those of you not familiar with the story of stone soup, I would encourage you to go to: http://www.extremelinux.info/stonesoup/stonesoup.html (Is the Internet great, or what?)It’s not a long story, but it explains in easy to understand terms how you can turn nothing into something, and...

While many things in this electronic world we live in are a lot easier, keeping your job search a secret isn’t one of them.My wife reminded me recently of the hours I used to spend at my typewriter during the 1980’s responding to job ads. Yes, there was a time after candles were replaced w...

For those members who are looking for a job just like the one they had, it may be time to take a good hard look around and see if this is a practical problem.Like the buggy whip manufacturers of old, some jobs and some industries are just not coming back.If you are in one of the hard struc...

I’m not sure if all of you are aware of it, but The FENG is driven off of the ONE database we maintain of your directory listings. Our RSVP system and The FENG Member Discussion board all derive their usefulness from being driven off this primary source of information and never have to be ...

One of the very lovely things we do in our family is spend several days each summer at the Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, Connecticut. And, if luck is on my side, we get to be there on the 4th of July when the excitement is palpable.What is unusual about this museum is that it is a livin...