Branding, Career Development, Job Search
Nii Ato Bentsi-Enchill
4 Ways Helping Others Can Define Your Brand

“You are only as good as the good you do for others.” ~Unknown

The above quote has been part of my email signature since 2011 and has come to represent both the philosophy by which I try to live my life and the mantra upon which I base my career & business. As I have worked with various clients on defining their professional brand, I have realized that more than anything -- a brand is our offer of value to others. The beauty in this perspective is that we all have something of value to offer and contribute to the world. The challenge is how difficult it can be to identify and articulate this value in a way that resonates with others and inspires them to engage with you.

If you think about it, a job posting is just the far wordier equivalent of the classic, “Help Wanted” sign, hung in a retail store window. Employers are seeking the best person they can find to help them deal with a specific set of pain points that are currently hurting their business. Your job as a candidate is to develop a brand and career platform that demonstrates your experience in resolving this or a similar enough set of pain points to be compelling.

4 Ways Helping Others Can Define Your Brand
Job Search, Culture, Career Development, Career Advancement, Networking, Resumes
Nii Ato Bentsi-Enchill
How Culture Impacts Talking About Your ...

“Don’t boast, it’s not the right thing to do.”

These are the words I often heard from my late mother during my childhood whenever she thought I was feeling myself just a little too much. The irony of her instruction was the fact that she, objectively, had a lot that she could boast about without anyone giving her the side-eye. My mother was the first woman to serve as the Director-General of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation. She was also the first woman chosen to run as a Vice Presidential candidate in Ghana’s political history.

Despite being a woman of many firsts, she was incredibly humble both by nature and by nurture of the collectivist and humility-led Ghanaian cultural context she grew up in. You would never catch her bragging and she taught me accordingly. To this day I feel awkward in the face of praise and uncomfortable when discussing my own achievements.

Does this feel/sound familiar to you?

How Culture Impacts Talking About Your Achievements
Career Development, Career Advancement, Job Search, Motivation
Nii Ato Bentsi-Enchill
Speak Up, You Never Know Who is Listening

It’s been an interesting journey so far in my 18+ months of adventures and lessons as a new solopreneur. I am still yet to “arrive,” but looking back, I’ve made significant progress thanks to the community I’ve found and built on LinkedIn. One of the scariest things about joining, and more specifically, contributing to a digital, public conversation, is a fear of the unknown. This “unknown” relates both to peoples’ receptivity and response to what you or I share. This is a valid fear/anxiety that we can all trace back to the butterflies in our collective stomach when we raised our hands to participate in the classroom. On LinkedIn, similar to the classroom setting, everyone is listening, our participation matters, and also counts toward our grade.

Let me ask you a question... why did you join LinkedIn?

Was your goal simply to create a profile just to say that you have one, or were there some higher aspirational purposes for the time and effort you expended? I’ll bet that you had goals of (re)connecting with friends/professionals you already knew, meeting new people to expand your network, and furthering your professional development, including finding new jobs. The challenge is, it’s very hard to achieve any of these goals if you remain a silent observer or passive member in this digital, public, professional square.

Speak Up, You Never Know Who is Listening
Job Search, Job Search Wellness, Mental Health
Nii Ato Bentsi-Enchill
5 Ways Therapy Can Benefit Your Job Search

I’m no actor, but conducting a job search can certainly feel like an endless cycle of auditions. You do research, memorize lines, & deliver several tailored monologues to countless people in hopes of landing your coveted role. Through all of this, you are doing your best to be your best authentic self when you show up to each interaction. Doing this consistently is hard, but it can be even harder if you are also feeling depressed, anxious, or managing challenging life circumstances, nevermind a global pandemic.

Let’s not forget that while you are job searching, there is no pause button for the other roles you play in your life. You don’t get to temporarily stop being a spouse/partner, parent, caretaker, or friend, just so you can focus on your job search. The regular demands of your time and energy in these roles coupled with the added stress of conducting a job search can be a lot for anyone to handle. Let’s collectively acknowledge that this isn’t easy, and that’s ok. The question is, how can you manage these various roles/responsibilities, demands of your time, energy, & emotions in a way that works best?

For some, the answer might be... therapy.

5 Ways Therapy Can Benefit Your Job Search
Resumes, Job Search
Nii Ato Bentsi-Enchill
What Kids' Show & Tell Can Teach About ...

My 8yo daughter just started 3rd grade and even in virtual scooling, “show & tell” (S&T) is still a thing. It struck me that S&T is the first practice any of us ever get in delivering a presentation to an audience. While there’s no pressure to convince anyone of anything, and there is little at stake except for potential “cool points” based on your item, one thing is universally true -- kids must have a physical item to show or the whole exercise is pointless. Kids must show evidence of the thing they tell their classmates about or they won’t be believed. If we learn this lesson so early on about the need for evidence to back up stories, why as adults do we forget about it when it comes to writing our resumes?

Stop me if you’ve seen any of the language below in a resume -- no judgments if it’s in your own ;-)

  • “Proven track record of increasing sales.”

  • “Extensive experience delivering projects on time and under budget.”

  • “Demonstrated success in program development.”

While these statements don’t sound so bad at first, upon further review, they offer nothing of substance. Though meant to sound impressive and allude to success/accomplishments, in their current form, they are nothing more than claims. Further, since there is no evidence that substantiates them, they’re essentially baseless claims → until proven otherwise.

What Kids' Show & Tell Can Teach About Resume Writing

Career Narrative

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Speak Up, You Never Know Who is Listening

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Speak Up, You Never Know Who is Listening

It’s been an interesting journey so far in my 18+ months of adventures and lessons as a new solopreneur. I am still yet to “arrive,” but looking back, I’ve made significant progress thanks to the community I’ve found and built on LinkedIn. One of the scariest things about joining, and more specifically, contributing to a digital, public conversation, is a fear of the unknown. This “unknown” relates both to peoples’ receptivity and response to what you or I share. This is a valid fear/anxiety that we can all trace back to the butterflies in our collective stomach when we raised our hands to participate in the classroom. On LinkedIn, similar to the classroom setting, everyone is listening, our participation matters, and also counts toward our grade.

Let me ask you a question... why did you join LinkedIn?

Was your goal simply to create a profile just to say that you have one, or were there some higher aspirational purposes for the time and effort you expended? I’ll bet that you had goals of (re)connecting with friends/professionals you already knew, meeting new people to expand your network, and furthering your professional development, including finding new jobs. The challenge is, it’s very hard to achieve any of these goals if you remain a silent observer or passive member in this digital, public, professional square.

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What Kids' Show & Tell Can Teach About Resume Writing

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What Kids' Show & Tell Can Teach About Resume Writing

My 8yo daughter just started 3rd grade and even in virtual scooling, “show & tell” (S&T) is still a thing. It struck me that S&T is the first practice any of us ever get in delivering a presentation to an audience. While there’s no pressure to convince anyone of anything, and there is little at stake except for potential “cool points” based on your item, one thing is universally true -- kids must have a physical item to show or the whole exercise is pointless. Kids must show evidence of the thing they tell their classmates about or they won’t be believed. If we learn this lesson so early on about the need for evidence to back up stories, why as adults do we forget about it when it comes to writing our resumes?

Stop me if you’ve seen any of the language below in a resume -- no judgments if it’s in your own ;-)

  • “Proven track record of increasing sales.”

  • “Extensive experience delivering projects on time and under budget.”

  • “Demonstrated success in program development.”

While these statements don’t sound so bad at first, upon further review, they offer nothing of substance. Though meant to sound impressive and allude to success/accomplishments, in their current form, they are nothing more than claims. Further, since there is no evidence that substantiates them, they’re essentially baseless claims → until proven otherwise.

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How to Trust Your Own Voice in Your Career Narrative

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How to Trust Your Own Voice in Your Career Narrative

Whose voices are in your head when it comes to your career narrative and what are they saying?

Depending on our experiences to date, the composition of these voices can range from largely negative to mostly positive. Where we find ourselves along this continuum can be heavily influenced by our identities and intersections. Our identities, especially those that are visible, can play a strong role in influencing the nature of the messages we receive about ourselves both in life and work. For those of us holding one or more marginalized identities with regard to gender, race, LGBTQ status, or having a disability, the voices we have heard may have trended toward the negative.

In the career setting, these negative messages can infiltrate, influence, or even impede your own voice when it comes to telling your career story to advance or land a new role. These voices are the manifestation of systemic racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, and more, that are ingrained in the corporate world.

This looks like my client who is an accomplished black professional with ~30 years in her field worrying about formal and informal performance feedback she’d received years ago impacting her ability to find a new job today -- in a new industry…

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There's No 'I' in Team and No 'We' in Resume

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There's No 'I' in Team and No 'We' in Resume

Repeat after me, “I am allowed to speak exclusively about my achievements on my resume, even if I work in a heavily team-oriented environment.” (Repeat 3x for good measure or as often as needed ;-)

I want you to give yourself permission and freedom to focus on you within a sales document that is meant to sell only one thing, YOU. I’m starting here because I know how challenging it can feel to be self-focused for many professionals, especially those in environments where the team is clearly prioritized over the individual. The factors of humility, accuracy, & truthfulness are often at the core of my clients’ hesitation and concern in highlighting their individual contributions within their resumes. Know that these feelings and values are both valid and normal.

While it’s good & noble to desire to reflect that your achievements took place in a team setting, here’s the challenge -- your next employer can’t hire your whole team, they can only hire YOU. For this reason, it does you no good to be overly concerned about sharing team-based accomplishments that don’t highlight your individual contribution, as they don’t make the case for why you deserve the job.

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How to Find the Thread in Your Non-Linear Career Path

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How to Find the Thread in Your Non-Linear Career Path

Career development is a funny thing. If you’d told me in the summer of 2010 that I was going to be a career coach 9 years later and have my own business, I simply wouldn’t have believed you. Where I am today wasn’t on my radar then. It wasn’t even on my radar in January 2019 before I had to unexpectedly resign from my full-time job and then launch this business to support my family. From the start of my career to this day, no two jobs I’ve held have been within the same industry, let alone the same function, however, everything I have done has prepared me to be the professional I am today because of the unique path I’ve traveled. If you don’t read another word of this article, I want you to know that you have the ability to find the thread in your non-linear career path, own your story, & build your brand around it.

Let me illustrate...

I had a client who is a very talented writer/content creator/storyteller. Across the span of her 15+ year career, she had worked for around 6+ different employers in 5 industries, held 6 different titles, and worked in 2 countries. Even though she was a storyteller by nature and function, she came to me neither able to identify nor articulate the whole created by the sum of those disparate parts. If you feel the same way, know that you’re not alone.

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Do You Believe Your Own Hype?

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Do You Believe Your Own Hype?

Do you believe what you are saying?

Do you believe in the value that you offer?

Do you believe that you can make a difference?

Do you believe that your target employer should hire you?

What was your honest, gut response to these questions? Was it a confident and resounding ‘yes’, a hesitant, ‘I think so’, or an anxious/resigned, ‘no’? First, know that wherever you are on this continuum is ok. The most important thing is to locate yourself on it and simply recognize it as your starting point. I recently wrote about the importance of the stories we tell ourselves during the job search, and how they can impact what we believe. I realize that in addition to the content of our beliefs, the strength of our beliefs can significantly influence how we move through the world and how we show up in both our personal and professional lives. The question, ‘Do you believe your own hype?’, is not about whether or not you have an over-inflated self-perception, it’s about how confident you are in your beliefs.

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Why the Stories We Tell Ourselves Matter in the Job Search

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Why the Stories We Tell Ourselves Matter in the Job Search

“If you don't believe you are worth it -- why would the person across the table?”

This was part of my comment on a great LinkedIn post shared by my friend and colleague, Nadia De Ala, CPCC, about salary negotiation, and it got me thinking more broadly about the stories we tell ourselves in the career space -- especially during the job search. By definition, job searching is rife with negative messages in the form of silence, outright rejections, & near-misses that progressively wear on our emotions and psyche. We have little control over the external narratives directed at us, but what happens when our internal narratives -- the stories we tell ourselves -- either are or become negative? Where do we go from there and how does that impact our process?

5 Reflections After My First Year in Practice

5 Reflections After My First Year in Practice

This wasn’t my plan. At the start of January 2019, I had no clue that four months later I would be launching my career coaching practice, Avenir Careers. I’ve experienced a lot of life in the past 5 years, and much of it has been quite difficult. I lost my mother to pancreatic cancer in 2016. I’ve gotten divorced, found love again, and remarried. In the midst of all of this, at the end of January 2019, I had to resign from my last full-time role for family reasons. It’s been a lot. Life comes at you fast sometimes and we are forced to adjust. This said, I’m honestly grateful for where it has brought me to today because I get to help people one-on-one, which is what I’ve wanted to do since my senior year of high school when I decided I wanted to be a psychologist. The path I took to arrive here has certainly been an interesting one, but it’s real, it’s part of my story, and it’s what makes me and what I have to offer unique.

In no particular order, here are a few lessons I’ve learned looking back on 1 year in business.

5 Reflections After My First Year in Practice

1. “...mais ce qui compte c’est pas la chute, c’est l’aterrissage.”

Relevancy + Recency + Tenure: 3 Guidelines to Structure Your Resume Content

Relevancy + Recency + Tenure: 3 Guidelines to Structure Your Resume Content

“How many years of experience should I include on my resume?”
“How long should my resume be?
“How much space should I allocate for each role?”

These are just a few of the many questions clients have about the mechanics of crafting their resumes. Writing or updating a resume can be a challenging exercise when looking back across your career and trying to select the best highlights to fit into a limited amount of space. It’s not an easy process both from a storytelling and structural standpoint. I fielded all the questions above and many more as a Career Advisor at a company supporting mid to senior-level executives with their job search and career development. Over 5 years and 6,000+ calls spent critiquing resumes in that role, I realized that all these questions surrounding how to structure your resume content were best summarized by the same three guidelines, in this specific order:

  1. Relevancy

  2. Recency

  3. Tenure

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How to Take the Pain Out of Tailoring Your Resume

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How to Take the Pain Out of Tailoring Your Resume

Product marketers invest a lot of time and effort in researching the needs and desires of their target audience. Their goal being to learn the most effective ways to make their product appealing to said audience and convert them into buyers. They also segment their audience into groups and create targeted/customized advertisements that will better connect to their specific needs and sensibilities. In the case of the job hunt, you as the job seeker pull double duty playing the role of both the product and marketer. In an ideal job search, you have done the work to identify your target audience (companies), conducted thorough research (online + informational interviews), and you are now ready to create tailored ads (your resume) to get them to buy what you’re selling -- right? The challenge with this last step is the tedium that comes with customizing your resume for every application. Too many job seekers skip this step or do it minimally -- to their own detriment. So...how can it be done, and done less painfully?