Land a High Potential Fortune 500 Executive Fast Track Job!

My name is Dave Watkins. I built a software company that ran the human capital management function for over 4 million people globally. These professionals work for over 300 global companies today including Nike, Dollar Tree Stores, Wells Fargo, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs etc.…  

I Know What Fortune 500 Recruiters Want From You!

I have personally reviewed over 20,000 resumes, interviewed over 5,000 people and hired over 1000 to work for my Fortune 500 firm.  Unfortunately, during that time, I also had to dismiss more than 500 people.  I have a clear understanding of what is important when it comes to selling yourself and landing your next great job opportunity.

Here is what we will cover in this lecture …

1. Welcome & Introductions
2. What Employers Really Look For
3. How to identify the opportunity cost of not changing the manner in which you manage your career
4. How to project your opportunity costs over a 10-year period of time
5. How to prioritize the activities that have the most cost effective impact on increasing your payoff.

Whether you are a student or experienced professional, you strive to achieve your maximum career potential.  Upon completion of the specific steps in my special process grounding this course, you will be prepared for those moments where you realize your true potential and achieve the results you deserve.

Seven Solid Steps to a Gilded Fortune 500 Career Path into Your Corporate El Dorado!

• Step One. Define your Definite Major Purpose (read the bestseller, 'Think and Grow Rich' available on Amazon) to drill down to radio station WIFU ... What is In this For U!
• Step Two. Discover how to create and produce the self marketing materials and endorsements you require in your career search.
• Step Three. See how to launch the campaigns that drive opportunities your way
• Step Four. Identify the characteristics that define you. 
• Step Five. Craft your pitch. 
• Step Six. Practice and refine your pitch in a mock practice ‘Boiler Room Fortune 500 Job Interview Game Show’ you will set up with family and friends. 
• Step Seven. Seize the moment and identify the organizations that cannot wait to meet you.

Have you ever had to analyze why someone you know so well behaved so wrongly?  How about the exact opposite when that same person performed to a higher standard than they ever knew they were capable of.   Companies need people to support their purpose, but people hire people. Your understanding of your ability to assimilate into their culture using your developed soft skills is of the utmost importance.

This process is not complex.  Organizations spend billions on recruiting talent ALL THE TIME.   They are always hiring.  They gather candidates, screen, interview and hire them.  Experienced recruiters and managers are not consistent across companies.  At the end of the hiring process, after passing all the validation tests, skills etc. you have one final hurdle. Are your soft skills aligned with the core values of the organization you wish to join?   Companies spend billions of dollars identifying their future leaders and high potential employees. 

REQUIRED EXERCISE: But first, let’s identify why this is important to you...

As an exercise, identify the top 10 issues that are inhibiting you from really taking advantage of the job market. 

Are your skills up to snuff? Is the current company you work for restricting your ability to make progress in advancing your career? 

• Step 1: For each restriction, identify how much money each issue has cost you in your annual paycheck. 
• Step 2: Add the results up and multiply by 10. 
• Step 3: Prioritize the issues from 1 to 10.  

This list represents the cost to you if you do nothing.  This course is about to change your destiny.

Here are the key points we will cover in this lecture.  

• We’ll show you how to create your FeedYak profile to identify allies to approach for testimonial videos talking good about you 
• These include ...
• a. Managers 
• b. Peers/Work Colleagues 
• c. Friends/Family 
• d. Internal Customers
• e. External Customers 
• How contact allies as feedback providers to arrange meetings to prepare them for talking nice about you on video. 
• Guidelines for Formatting Resumes 
• Elements of a Resume (Soft Skills, Profile, Summary, Experience, Education, Affiliations, Awards) 
• Types of Resumes (Chronological, Functional, Scanned, Online) 
• Resume development 
• Guidelines for preparing cover letters 
• Resume feedback session

Two of the Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask of Those You Love!

To truly understand how you are seen by other people you have to ask them these questions: 

1. What do you think I excel at? 
   
2. What do you think I need to improve upon?    

Receiving positive feedback from others can result in testimonials that can be used to endorse you.  

This section will teach you how to effectively build your online presence such that people can identify you for their next great opportunity! 

First, you need to collect information about yourself.  You need to understand your elevator pitch. The average college alumni will not know this about themselves.  Where did you go to school? 

What have you achieved? Where do you work?  

Once you have gathered that information, download the FeedYak app from the iOS store and the Play Store. 

Fill out your profile using the prompts provided.

Next we are going to request feedback from people we know.  We are going to use this feedback for a lot of different purposes.  

You need to make a list of people that you have collaborated with including all your past managers of team leaders, 

Peers or work colleagues, close friends and family members, customers that you work with inside your company and customers that you may have interacted with from other organization. Once you have your list, identify the top three people in each category you request feedback from about yourself.  

You will ask one person from each category to identify up to three things you do well.  

You will ask one person from each category what you can improve upon.  Lastly you will ask the third person in each category what about a specific achievement you had which that person witnessed. 

It is always good to reach out to people in person and let them know that they should expect your request.  Using FeedYak, send them a custom request for feedback.  Video feedback is preferable, but voice and text are fine as well. 

Next, it’s time to prepare your resume.  

Resumes are best when written for specific audiences.  It is common for people to have more than one resume in order to address their anticipated audience.  

Format is important as well. 

You will want to prepare both an online version and a scanned (PDF) version The style in which you will create your resume also matters. 

Second, your resume should show the chronology of your experience or be organized by the functional roles you have held in various companies.  For those who have held a lot of different jobs, it is sometimes better to show the company name next to the position you held there. Your resume should be condensed down to two pages and it is most effective when you understand the position or role you are looking for.  

You will want to frame your listed experiences to align with the expectations of the new position that you are aspiring to.  

Lastly, your resume should be organized in several sections: 

• Your name
• An overview of your top soft skills
• The functional roles you have had or companies you have worked for o Your achievements in those various roles
• Your hobbies or additional interests
• Your FeedYak and LinkedIn profile.  

When written well, cover letters can make your resume pop.   If you take the time to write a cover letter, include one paragraph which sums up the highlights of why you will make a good leader and have the soft skills necessary to contribute to the innovative culture of the company to which you are applying. 

Lastly, in the bottom most section, organize your endorsements by roles within your resume and hyperlink the most complimentary endorsement you have within your cover letter.  

Here is what Dave covers in this lecture.  

1. Create LinkedIn Profile
2. Identify and provide minimal required information for LinkedIn
3. How to create breadcrumb links to your FeedYak profile from your LinkedIn profile
4. Clean up Facebook, Instagram etcetera profiles to be professional
5. Train on how to do research in LinkedIn for career paths based on others
6. Train how to identify candidate companies that are interesting to join
7. How to research positions and salaries using tools like LinkedIn, Payscale and Salary dot com.

LinkedIn is one of the largest recruiting databases used in the world.  It is important to have a presence that can be used by recruiters that compliments the resume you created for the purpose of nailing the next great job.  

Remember, your online LinkedIn profile should not be a recapitulation of a single version of your resume.  You will have multiple resumes, one for each job you desire.  Companies need to be able to refer to the LinkedIn profile and not be confused that your resume says one thing and your LinkedIn profile says another.  Incorporate basic information about where you worked and what you did at each job.  Be sure to provide contact information and your email.  

Also incorporate your FeedYak link into your profile.

Remember, a background check will most likely go through your social media (Facebook, Instagram etc.) profiles.  Make sure that you have carefully cleaned up any information that may compromise your professional image. 

People are people, but you will be a reflection of the company you are looking to work for; make sure they will be proud of how you would represent them.

LinkedIn serves an additional purpose.  

It is a great source of information about past and present people in the same jobs that you are considering applying for.  Observe and take notes because this information can help you best understand how others have developed their own career paths.  

Once you have identified a potential role to consider, now is the time to research companies that employ that role.  

LinkedIn provides you with the ability to search for roles within a geography [or functionality] so you can identify a city and company that you might want to become a part of.  Start simple, do you like to live in colder or warmer climates?  Do you want to live in a big city or an International location?

Next, use the information you have discovered to identify how much a person gets paid. Make sure you would be satisfied with that salary using PayScale and Salary websites.

Finally, clean any pornography or derogatory material off of your Facebook, Instagram, Google Plus, Blog, or another social website you control.  Alternatively, you can set your profile to private.  

This lecture covers,

1. Exercise to identify the attributes that you feel best Identify yourself.
2. Use a competency framework to ask soft skill self-calibration questions of allied friends and family.
3. Review your individual profile after filling out the FeedYak profile assessment instrument (WPAS) or some other Myers-Briggs (or Jung) Type Indicator® (MBTI®) personality inventory.
4. Show how employer uses information gathered during the process (green light to interview, red light – not the right fit).

Leading human resource firms have reported that each person owns approximately 30 competencies that are unique to them.  It is like having an emotional or soft skill fingerprint that help identify what attributes best describe you.  

We all have strengths and weaknesses. 

Recognizing them helps us better understand whether our chosen direction will be a dead end because of our own professional limitations. This is how we can empower ourselves to overcome our weaknesses so they won’t get in the way of our success and maximum career potential.

Companies typically identify the objectives and skills needed within a framework. 

This is called the job description.  Job descriptions do not describe the attributes of the people who excelled in those positions once they were hired.  Without a clear understanding of that successful person within a certain company, it is difficult to know whether your soft skill fingerprint identifies you as a person that could succeed in the culture you are about to join.

First you need to assess yourself. 

The results of the FeedYak WPAS show how you well you perform against your peers for various role types.  By using this information, you can be prepared to highlight specific competencies that you have quantified and why you will succeed at a potential job opportunity.

You can also use the competencies to formulate questions to your potential employer to better understand their culture.  The biggest alignment problems I have experienced are related to cultural fit and leadership potential. 

 Companies use these frameworks to see if you fit in.  

It is important for you to understand whether you fit into an organization's culture.  

You will invest between 40 to 80 hours a week for the next 18 months; knowing whether you have a predisposition for success based on your match with the company and the position will save you from wasting a huge investment of your time. 

Here are the steps you need to take right now to develop your elevator pitch for that next V.I.P. encounter. 

1. Self-Reflection: Work to better understand the how to best tell the story about yourself.
2. Highlight: Review how to identify personal highlights.  Isolate the sticky statement.
3. Problem: Show your understanding of the big problem and the industry trends.
4. Solution: Represent the solution to solving a big problem for your prospective employer and how your position is a key role.
5. Execution/Traction: Discuss how you have executed your career and how it has prepared you for this very moment and beyond. 
6. Market: Help the employer understand the depth of your understanding of the market they work in.  Understand exactly what the company does on a global scale and the customers it supports.  Are you interested in working in an International capacity?
7. Market Niche: Recognize how the role you are interviewing for supports the needs of the corporation in meeting market demands.  What role will you play?
8. Competition: What is your understanding of the competition in your market and how does the firm you are interviewing for differentiate themselves?  How do you differ from your competition for the job over your peers?
9. Funding: What is the market rate for the position you are pursuing?  What will it take to bring you on board?  What are you expecting your team to look like?  How many people should you anticipate leading?

We live in a world where information about people and organizations are available online in an extremely disorganized and potentially unflattering way. Only 40% of us in the labor force call ourselves entrepreneurs; but the methodologies that we must pursue in the development of our Fortune 500 career (that may start in a cubicle) use a similar approach.  

Developing your personal pitch or your elevator speech allows you to completely describe yourself, your inspiration and your pursuits within a three-minute period.  Just 3 minutes is all you have.  It is the limit of a person’s attention span. 

So you need to capitalize on their attention within that time frame.

Your story needs to be genuine. It needs to be organized and structured and leave breadcrumbs, enabling listeners to ask you clarifying questions.

This lecture shows you how to work with your friends and family to practice your interview skills. 

1. Implement a Boiler Room type of environment for individuals to pitch themselves for jobs similar to the forge-by-fire judgmental environment on the hit T.V. Show 'Shark Tank' on ABC.
2. Poll your audience as to whether they would hire you; request critique.

The only way to improve your skills is to practice, practice, practice.  Job discovery and interview skills require constant refinement based on the feedback you receive.  You need to form a mock interview team of people challenging your responses and presentation style.

These steps will help you in your final approach,

1. Preparing Yourself for an Interview
2. Researching the Prospective Company using Social Tools
3. Other Tips for a Successful Job Search
4. Guidelines for Appropriate Business Attire
5. Action Plan, Summary and Evaluation
6. Follow up – always suggest the next interaction!

Be in the moment when it comes to preparing yourself for an interview.  You have to remember; you are selling yourself to a complete stranger in a speed dating type of atmosphere.  

Make sure you have conducted background research on the company.  

Read the firm's Fortune 500 annual report online; check out Yahoo finance for recent analyst information on the company.  Review what employees have to say on GlassDoor.  Dress for success by wearing clothing styles that your boss’s boss would wear.  Conservative grey is always a reliable color.  Develop a detailed action plan and follow up with all the people you interact with on LinkedIn or from the company’s Human Resource Management  (HRM) department. 

Remember, employees typically are paid for referrals, so do not hesitate in sending email to company employees directly (without spamming).  Most importantly always schedule a follow up event with people you are communicating with, even if it is to just check in or ask a few questions.

Juan E. Figueroa is a Member of the Board of Directors at Edu-Futuro.

From childhood he wished to become an academic.  He wanted to become a physics professor. 

Physicist Juan Figueroa says that “you have to prove that you are adaptable and have an open mind. When they hire you they hire you for life.  They need to get the right guy (or gal).”

When Juan finished school he started at Bell Labs.  They gave him a year to produce the quality required to remain in the organization.  They explained that he would be invited to get another job. Finishing a project is most important because industry is ahead of school. 

Adaptability and the ability to complete a project is critical.   

Juan found his value in network communications in Bell Labs. He was there when the company moved in not networking.  They had to come to him because of his astute career positioning in advance. 

Young physicist Figueroa became an expert in cable modems.  He evolved into the marketing manager for the first chip-sets for Wi-Fi. Positioning yourself as a valuable asset is critical when you look for a job. 

You need to find a niche in the company where you can make a contribution because that is all they want.  Bell Labs was an organization controlled by AT&T to develop whatever to make communications better.  

Former Bell Labs physicist Juan E. Figueroa tells UPR students to figure out what they want in life. Once you have boundary conditions on your life then look at the company that gives you the best fit.  Figure out the requirements for the job that gives you the best fit within the life boundaries you want. 

Look at job descriptions.  Find your fit. 

If you figure out what you want for the next 5 to 10 years and work back this way you are best off.  Writing your resume is the last thing you should do.  In summary Figueroa recommends…

1.       Make a road-map of your life.

2.       Look to see if which companies fit within those boundaries. 

3.       Investigate more about the companies that fit.

4.       Look at the job description to see if it is too restrictive or allows for growth.

5.       Adapt your resume to put you in the best light always showing that you have something to contribute.

Endorsements and recommendations are important. Figueroa is sensitive to letters of recommendation.  When you ask for a letter of reference be specific to what the reference is a about.  Make sure the reference shows you have something to contribute. Make sure you know what you want your endorser to write in your letter of recommendation. 

In an interview don’t play your gender, ethnicity, or flashy personality. Just be positive, careful, and very, very professional.  Don't be "happy to be here" just be serious and professional. 

New York, Washington D.C. and Chicago are the best sources for alumni associations of native-born Puerto Ricans seeking placement off island.  Sharing your focused resume with these groups is an excellent source of networking opportunities. 

The company you work for will train you to their way. 

Look at the big companies like Boeing, Raytheon, IBM and also have a lot of trade shows and recruiting trips. Call the HR office and ask if they are going to recruit from Puerto Rico. 

Find out where they are going to recruit.  You have to make the investment of visiting the company personally.  If they are going to Cornell and they tell you go there to meet them.  

Edmundo Garza, MBA is a high potential Fortune 500 career candidate who is Puerto Rican.  He describes the challenges and solutions that MBA students from the University of Puerto Rico face.

This is a candid discussion you are sure to enjoy! 

Mr. Marrero is a Fortune 500 manager who is an alumni of the AACSB Accredited Graduate School of Business of the University of Puerto Rico.  Luis describes how he pummeled the job market with emails and any other tactic he could find to assertively push for an interview.

He fought for and won that interview.

Today he is a manager in a Fortune 500 insurance company. Listen to this inspirational journey by a fearless young executive unafraid to think independently and act out of the box! 

Dave explains the difficulty of recruiting high potential employees in Puerto Rico.  A primary problem is that university students on the island do not have their information cataloged in a central data base. 

CEO Watkins dives into deep detail regarding the solutions he is putting in place that include the creation of this Udemy course. 

Understanding the problems and solutions Puerto Rican students face helps students worldwide who are seeking Fortune 500 high potential career opportunities.  

Watch the video illustrating how to approach people in your circle with the FeedYak app to get feedback videos for your career building now.  Then download the free FeedYak app to your iPhone or Android to get at as much feedback as you can!