Laura's Winning Ideas

Here’s why it is good business to deploy the proposal team to help with resumes for departing colleagues.

1. These departing colleagues will be back again.

Many of these folks will go to work for your clients and be involved with your firm again. Some will go to work for smaller firms who may be good teaming partners for you. Some will go to work for larger firms who may buy your firm out someday.

2. It eases the departure for those leaving, to have a purpose in their final days.

Most often, folks avoid talking to the soon-to-depart, as if layoffs are contagious. Others commiserate and moan and groan. No one needs to nurture a bad attitude as they are closing out their work and emptying their desk.

This will be the fourth time I’ve made myself available to help job searchers. When layoffs, RIF, downsizing, or closings happen, folks get jolted from their desk and exposed to the harsh elements of job hunting. As a proposal expert, we have skills to offer our friends and associates during these times.

Most often, my team has put out our shingle and spread the word that we would help with resumes. If your team has the ability, and your organization is going through change, you might consider doing the same.

Here’s the first steps I recommend:

1. Suggest they get a book to help

My favorite is The Damn Good Resume Guide by Yana Parker. This book is short, has lots of examples, and guides you through the process of writing a great resume. The resume and cover letter are simply a proposal, and getting an interview is the same as making the shortlist. In this book, the page of action verbs is worth the price of the entire book.

2. Suggest they start a master resume file

The goal is to look like you’ve been preparing for the specific opportunity at hand for years. The goal is not to work hard on the perfect resume and then make 200 copies to send out.

Sigh. Everyone should update their resume regularly in your proposal database, but not everyone does this. Sigh. Your corporate resume database should include career long activities so you have lots of fodder to customize resumes for proposals, but many organizations only maintain the latest version of each person’s resume.

Therefore, most folks will need a list of everything they’ve accomplished in their career, not just their latest activities. As they remember brilliant things they’ve done, these should be added first to the master resume file before using them in a current resume.

Most job searches will take longer than hoped for. You’ll need to create custom resumes on the fly, responding to opportunities within a day. With a career long master resume file, you have a checklist of your experiences from which to quickly build a responsive resume.

As a consultant, I’m always looking for work. I often find an opportunity in another industry, one with which I’m familiar only because I worked with that industry many years ago. My master resume file jogs my memory for those less recent activities.

A master resume file is just a list of all your previous activities. You’ll edit the ones you use for a resume, and update this file every time you create a new resume. I keep mine in MS Word, and any software will work.

3. Order personal business cards

If possible, they’ll want to hand out new business cards to everyone as they depart. And they’ll want to have them handy to give to everyone they meet along the job hunt.

Don’t be cute. Just have name, address, phone and email on a professionally printed card with a blank back so folks can note where they met and how impressed they were!

My favorite printer is VistaPrint. Pick a style from the FREE BUSINESS CARDS and then pay ($9.99) to leave off their logo on the back. Don’t use the microperf business card stock you print at home. It looks unprofessional, and costs more.

4. Bring in their sample resume for editing

Finally, you can edit their resumes. Fresh eyes and a professional writer are valuable gifts you can offer. Sometimes outplacement is offered, and you may be just an extra option. Sometimes placement doesn’t cover resumes right away and your offer may calm nerves. If no placement assistance is offered, you will be most welcome.

I would normally wait until I have several cool tools to mention, but this one is too hot to wait.

How about YouTube behind your firewall? Google Apps is offering a free video service, allowing you to upload videos for internal use with the same ease as 13 year-olds are uploading stupid dog tricks to YouTube.

• Announce a major contract win corporate-wide, interviewing the Project Manager live, for everyone to see when they get to their desk in the morning. . .no matter what time zone they work in!
• On-line proposal training can include video.
• Oral Presentation rehearsals can have the Red Team Review on-line.
• Teams can video-tape field work so the proposal writers can see how that gizmo is used in Bangkok to describe for the World Bank proposal.
• Proposal software tricks can be demonstrated so your remote coordinators learn the latest tips and tricks without waiting for a training session.
• Make your next plea for that resume update Up Close and Personal.
• Include your partners around the globe in your celebration of a proposal shipped.
• etc. etc. etc.

And the price is my favorite price to try out new technology: FREE for the next 30 days, and $50/year after that. (just launched September 2,2008)

Your IT department doesn’t have to host the video, and you aren’t shipping video files around (Yikes! Can you say mail server crash?!?).

Be a hero and pass this tip along to someone at your organization who has a need, or try it out by video taping your next team meeting and posting for your group to play with the technology.

This Google service pairs beautifully with the flip video camera reviewed here:

The flip video cameras are available for just over $100.

Here’s an even better idea!

1. Get one flip camera, video tape a cool proposal tip and post.
2. Mail the flip camera to a proposal person in another office for them to do the same, and
3. continue shipping the camera around until everyone has a chance to be the star of their own video.

Lots of fun seeing each other in action when you don’t usually get to meet each other. Everyone has some special nugget the others don’t know about, and it’s a great way to share the wealth and have some fun along the way.

(Tip of my hat to Agile Mind, the Virtual Government Blogger who first posted about Google Video.)

In the latest issue of Government Executive, Alyssa Rosenberg writes about telework among government agencies. The US Army is cited as one of the agencies ahead of the power curve on using technology to link in teleworkers.

Telework involves workers setting up to work from home, usually for a few days each week. It is a virtual management challenge we’ll see more of over the next decade.

Incoming workers value greater flexibility and see telework as one way to answer this desire. According to the article, this can be a key draw for a generation that places value on workplace freedoms.

Telework saves time and money because the worker avoids the time of commuting and the expense of commuting. This is an attractive feature for many candidates.

Plus, friendly environmental awareness is an attractive recruiting tool. According to a recent survey, 92 percoent of young professionals are interested in environmentally friendly employers. Eighty percent are interested in jobs that have “a direct positive impact on the environment.” Telework supports this interest as well.

Management concerns include: