Florida Conference for Women Speaker

Happiness Trap: Circling the Career Track

Many women in business get caught driving toward a career goal, not open to options that would allow greater personal life harmony. Like race horses with blinders, professional women often forget about everything else as they race toward work-related finish lines, not knowing what they are passing by, and in some cases, what they are passing up.

In my book What Happy Women Know, I talk about Shelly Taylor’s research on the female stress response.  Women are inclined to “tend or mend” as opposed to males, who exhibit a “fight or flight” response.  Also, women’s brains develop differently then men’s as the female prefrontal cortex, according to Luanne Brizendine, MD, matures earlier, affording women greater patience. Combined with a female focus on relationships, women sometimes neglect their own personal lives to dedicate themselves to “tending and mending” at work or for others.

The guilt of not doing their best with tending and mending can be a source of dissatisfaction, dysfunctional as it may be, and often comes at the expense of having children or a full life of their own. Lack of success in a life of career devotion frequently can be explained by choices made to conform to other people’s dreams, or made in haste to avoid disapproval. While onlookers can make suggestions to these women, the best outcome is to help them focus more on their own fulfillment.

Here’s how to help yourself or others:

• Increase your awareness of the preprogramming you have been exposed to through the media, your family and friends that guide your choices.
• Look at your life as a bigger picture, before missing opportunities, by sharing your concerns with trusted peer groups, mentors, coaches and colleagues who share a similar passion for a professional career and a rich personal life.
• Question your basic emotions around relationships that may be driving you and which can cause conflicted feelings or guilt.
• Learn and use personal affirmations and self assessment tools to support what is truly right for you.

Re-establishing healthy work life happiness is always possible, even after entrenching oneself in an imbalanced career heavy life for years.  Five key ways are: 1. Reorganize to work smarter not harder.  2. Nurture personal life by scheduling social time and allowing space to rejuvenate. 3. Encourage yourself with positive self talk.  4. Help co-workers adjust by politely setting better limits. 5. Believe in yourself.

Florida Conference for Women speaker Cathy Greenberg's books are mainstays for executives who seek to harness the power of happiness in the workplace. Named a "Top 100 Leadership Coach" by Executive Excellence Magazine, 2008 she is a business talk show host on Voice America and founder of h2c, LLC Happy Companies Healthy People, a beacon for successful leaders. All registered attendees of the Florida Conference for Women will receive a FREE copy of her latest book, What Happy Working Mothers Know.

Should You Dumb Down Your Resume?

If you constantly hear the words "you're overqualified" from potential employers, it might be time to make some adjustments on your resume. We're not talking about denying your expertise or years of experience on paper -- just some strategic editing so that your resume doesn't shout, "I'm Old And I'm Expensive."

A few tips:  

• If you graduated from college when the Doobie Brothers were hot, great, but putting 1976 on your resume screams you're middle-aged. It might put off a recruiter who graduated in 1996. Name the school and degree but omit your graduation date.
• If your career spans 15 years or more, forget about work experience beyond the 15-year mark. List what you've done for the last 15. If that doesn't impress, nothing will.
• A lofty title -- say senior executive vice president of marketing -- may make a potential employer fear that you'll demand big bucks and a corner office when all you want is a friggin' job! Avoid that by omitting your former title. In this case, noting that you were a marketing executive, and where, will suffice. Instead of words like "led customer service department," consider downgrading to "handled customer service issues."

by Tory Johnson, Women for Hire
Career expert Tory Johnson is founder of Women for Hire and Workplace Contributor on ABC's Good Morning America. She joins the Florida Conference for Women as keynote speaker and co-host of its ReWork Career Fair.

5 Steps to Build Your Brand

Whether you want to land your dream job or take your business to the next level of success, building your brand is an essential first step to realizing your goals. The steps to building your personal brand or your business brand are basically the same.  Take a look at the five steps to achieve brand awareness and foster brand reputation below.

1. Definition: Define the message and image you want your brand to portray in the marketplace and how you want it to be positioned against the competition.
2. Communication: Communicate your brand message, image and promise.
3. Consistency: Your brand messages should be consistently communicated, so there is no confusion about who you are, what you offer, and what people can expect from your brand.
4. Persistence: Keep communicating your brand messages over and over until they stick in people's minds.
5. Restraint: Be persistent but pick and choose where and when you want to communicate your brand messages to ensure every opportunity matches your brand position and enhances your brand rather than detracting from it.

When you're building a brand online and offline the underlying key to success is patience. Your efforts will build over time, but it takes time to meet your objectives.  Brand building is not a "get rich quick"scheme.

Instead, it's a strategic path that you have to nurture and let grow in order to realize the ultimate benefits.

This blog post was submitted by Florida Conference for Women speaker Susan Gunelius.

Boomers in a Post-Boom

The New York Times' Michael Winerip recently featured Tory Johnson, who will speak at the Conference, in an article about job fairs in today's economy.

Tory and Women for Hire will co-host the exclusive ReWork Career Fair, featuring local and national employers with current job openings, for Conference attendees.

More Women Than Men in the Workforce?

Will it finally be a woman's working world? A recent article in The New York Times notes that due to the recession, women are close to surpassing men on the payroll for the first time. Now more than ever, women need to connect, support, share best practices and inspire one another--and ride this wave to the top!