EDITORIALS

From time to time, I have been accused of tilting at windmills. Actually, I am never offended when I hear this because in large part everything we do in The FENG has elements of it, and I’m proud of it.It has indeed been a long road developing The FENG. Most importantly, I haven’t had to d...

For those of you who are movie fans, there was a memorable scene in a totally forgettable movie called “The Mexican” with Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt. Julia is throwing Brad’s clothes down on him from a balcony while having an argument with him and screaming: “It’s always about you!”Well, ...

Everyone has a “too hard pile.” (Even I have one!) It’s all that work that sits in a pile by your desk and you never seem to get to it.I suppose there ought to be a law or something that would prevent us from leaving things in the “too hard” pile for very long. Of course, many of us (mysel...

I know how disheartening it can be to get to the bottom of a job posting and see those deathless words: “Local candidates only.”Still, the facts are that there are always lots of qualified folks applying for any great job, and at least in major metropolitan areas there is no need for a com...

The amount of follow up to do with recruiters and networking contacts is always a tough call.It is hard not to feel like a pest when you call. (After all, you ARE being a pest.)However, if you aren’t persistent and keep in touch with those who might be in a position to help you on the day ...

Presenting your credentialsJob search is a draining and discouraging process at times. (Or, is that most of the time?) Well, maybe not, unless you make it so.The truth is that most of us financial types stay in jobs a lot longer than those in other disciplines like marketing or sales. In a...

In a sense, a sailboat isn’t a complicated machine. Compared with other means of transportation such as cars or planes, there really isn’t much to a sailboat. Sails are pretty simple, and if you are like me, you don’t use the motor if you can avoid it. (We typically burned about 50 gallons...

The story I hear more often than not is how perfect someone was for a particular posting and their amazement that they didn’t get a call.Of course, there are a lot of possible reasons why someone doesn’t get a response. It could be they applied too late. It could be that there were require...

Several years ago The Wall Street Journal had an article about the many steps people take when applying for jobs to conceal their age.I understand where this comes from. Ageism, as with all forms of prejudice, comes from ignorance.If you think about all of the ways of earning a living, it ...

I guess the desire to shorten just about everything is part of human nature. I once worked with a guy named Harry and the boss insisted on calling him Har. I suppose he could have called him H, but maybe that was TOO short.When I was in college, everyone was talking about the ATGSB. For th...

For almost a decade I was Chief Financial Officer of an Advertising Agency.In addition to learning how to deal with a wild and crazy bunch of folks, I learned a lot not only about the advertising business, but also about advertising in general.One of the facts that I learned was that a goo...

I try to take a few minutes of your time every year at this holiday season to remind you what a gold mine this time of year is to your networking efforts.Whether you are working or not working. Whether you are looking for a job or very happy where you are, this is the time of year when you...

In 1991 when I was last out of work I was at a point in my life where I didn’t want to move.Although born in Chicago and raised in northern Indiana, I had lived in Connecticut for almost 20 years and I liked it here. My wife’s parents lived nearby and I had a daughter and son in high schoo...

I’m a pretty organized guy. If I weren’t, it would be impossible to get all the things done in a day that I try to accomplish. (Sometimes I have even gotten all my email up to date!)Still, a few times a day I get an email from someone with incomplete information.A few years ago, I wrote to...

Every once in a while, The Wall Street Journal publishes a cartoon worthy of discussion.Many years ago, the “Pepper … And Salt” cartoon showed a job seeker, obviously older, explaining his credentials to the interviewer with the following words: “Don’t think of me as a 54-year-old job appl...

There are some who would argue that in this day and age of email, texting and Tweeting, the world has become a more impersonal place than in those halcyon days of yesteryear.Please say it isn’t so. In this electronic age, it has become SO easy to be personal, that I can’t for the life of m...

Up until the age of 46 I didn’t spend a single day unemployed. From the time I got out of the Army in 1971 until 1991 I only changed jobs twice. It doesn’t give you a lot of time to think about your career or to consider that you might be doing other things.During the two years I was out o...

For those of you who have been there, I’m sure you recognize the Disney way of concluding a conversation. It is kind of cute, don’t you think? And, in the context of Disney, it sets you up for what you should be experiencing.The more common phrase in the United States, of course, is “Have ...

Let’s face it, sooner or later you are bound to have a bad day. The odds of having 365 perfect days in a row just aren’t high. It’s sort of a reverse thing to the odds of your winning the lottery. Sure, someone wins it every day, but it never seems to be me. (I guess it would help if I bou...

While confession may be good for the soul, it is deadly when it comes to job search. The dreaded question: What is your greatest weakness?This is one of those questions we could easily do without. And they often catch us by surprise.Enron aside, the problem is that most senior financial fo...

The quest for eternal truths“Must have industry experience” often appears on position descriptions in this newsletter as well as ones one might see on the various job boards that exist in the nether world of the Internet.The question is whether to respond or not to respond when the require...