EDITORIALS

Ever the wise sailor, I always (well, almost always) check the weather forecast before heading down to the boat to go out for the day.This may or may not be a valuable activity. My wife jokes that in her next life she wants to be a weather forecaster. They never have to be right and they s...

Much as I hate using cliché phrases as the one above, I don’t really know if there is a better one to describe the process of self-examination that is required when faced with looking for another “work opportunity.”(I call them work opportunities instead of jobs, because they don’t general...

I know you will all find this hard to believe, but there was a time when The FENG only had 20 members.In May of 1995, I was invited by Ed Devlin, the then Chairman, to join what was at that time The Fairfield County Financial Executives Networking Group. (Ed had recently taken over from Do...

People who know that my wife and I are into sailing often ask us what we most enjoy making for dinner when we are on the boat. My standard response is reservations.The hard part is, of course, picking the restaurant. Are we in the mood for Mexican food, Pizza, French, Italian, or Chinese? ...

I don’t know if you have noticed, but all of the job leads from The FECG include a sentence that says “You may forward this to other members of The FENG if you are aware of their background and/or interest in this kind of opportunity.”I wish all the job leads in our newsletter had this sen...

I am not going to suggest to you that the world of The FENG is a perfect place. That said, I hope that someday we will be recognized as one of the organizations that “started it all.”We all know that common courtesy is very rare in today’s world, which makes you wonder why they call it com...

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...

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

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 don’t know if all of you know it, but I started my career in retailing at B. Altman & Company, one of the old line “Carriage Trade” retailers in New York City, and an interesting place to be sure.To be successful in this retailing segment you had to treat your customers’ right. All m...

Walter Mitty was an interesting guy. Although he did one thing in his real life, he had the opportunity to do lots of exciting things in his imaginary life.As we advance in our careers, I think all of us want the opportunity to do new and different things. It is only normal to want to chan...

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...

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...

As the days of fall begin to arrive in the Northeast and the trees begin to change colors, it is all very beautiful. (However, it has been very windy.) Earlier this month I started decommissioning our sailboat for the season. This coming weekend I will wrap up a few remaining tasks. For th...

I once got a note from one of our members listing several websites with job listings. The question was which ones to sign up for given that some of them had fees associated with them.I will now talk out of both sides of my mouth, so pay attention.Here in The FENG evening newsletter, we mak...

I often wonder to myself how politicians can do so much lying and get away with it. Okay, sometimes we boot them out of office for lying, but we only replace them with new folks who also lie.The truth I suppose is subject to each person’s individual judgment. What one person considers to b...

One of the core values of The FENG is our willingness to share job leads with each other.For some reason people seem to overvalue job leads. There are lots of things that are wrong with published job leads. For one thing, it is a fair fight. I much prefer networking where there is often no...

For those of us who read the newspaper from time to time, one can’t help but notice that just about everyone who is mentioned in any story is given a label.The label selected is usually something very simple such as “a 46 year old truck driver from Illinois.” In this case it is someone’s c...

I have written many times that there are only 3 ways to find a job and manage your career: Networking, networking and more networking.There are actually 3 kinds of networking. The first is making new friends. The second is keeping in touch with old friends. And the third part of networking...

For those of you who have the pleasure of earning frequent flier miles, I can understand that you may no longer be paying strict attention to the very helpful discussion that precedes take off.Personally, I don’t think that anyone who doesn’t know how to work the seat belt should really be...

The process of self-assessment is never easy. It is sort of like taking out your own appendix, but without anesthetic.As senior financial folks, it is often the case that we don’t have to engage ourselves in the game of “What is it we do? And, who are we?” until very late in our careers. U...