Giving Thanks

I'm in my hometown of Fredonia, NY, writing this on a bright crisp Sunday morning. With Thanksgiving coming up, I've gone upstate to visit the relatives.

I had a great chat last night with my Aunt Pat & Uncle Bob – they're eighty-somethings who have lived in Western New York their whole lives. We got to talking about the old days. No, not before the real estate bust. And, no, not the first dot-com boom or the Reagan years. And no, not the '70s, the '60s, or the '50s either.

We were chatting about World War II, and graduating high school, and buying your first Ford, and everything that went with being young in the middle of the last century.

We talked about being a high-schooler graduating in the mid-'40s. The Great Depression grinding on, and the guy across the street never finding a job; crying in the arms of your best girlfriend in the high-school hallway because your older brothers were shipping out to "The War" that day; ration stamps for meat and sugar and butter and gas (ration stamps! in the United States of America!) along with the inevitable black market in fake stamps that you'd buy from somebody's cousin's friend; and the sense that your whole life had been under one darkening cloud after another, tempered only by the family bonds and friendships that had always been more important than material goods.

And so I suppose if I am going to give thanks this week, it is going to be for those family ties that got us through tough times, and our country, which has grown rich, rich, rich in the seventy years passed. We've grown into the greatest (best educated, healthiest, happiest, most-productive) nation in the history of the earth within the lifetime of my aunt and uncle – we conquered scarcity and more than a few bad guys in that time, and we do indeed have an enormous amount to be thankful for.

Of course the kids don't get it. Our kids think deprivation is waiting (a *whole* year) for the next appalling release of Grand Theft Auto, or not having WiFi in the hotel room so they can surf the web while they're watching Movies on Demand.

And maybe that's progress – just maybe progress is the shrinking of the fears of our offspring from the existential to the trivial?

So this Thanksgiving week, I am saying thank you for the country and the times I've been born in, the immense great fortune that goes along with it, and the chance to do the work I love so very much – helping this country's top talent get into their next role in life.

So here's a thanks to all of you who have made TheLadders.co the nation's best place to find professional talent. To celebrate your successes this week, I wanted to share of the stories of your fellow subscribers that we can be thankful for this Thanksgiving Week. ...


Married to Your Professional Network
We all know the best professional connections are people who work for your ideal company already. But what we forget is that they may not be strangers.

One thing job seekers overlook is the connections they already have. Craig Bodkin, a director of Information Technology, in Green Bay, Wis., initially overlooked an ideal insider: his wife.


After 20 Years, Salesman Relocates to His Hometown H.C. Alexander had made eight corporate moves during his career as a sales manager, traveling across Georgia and Louisiana, north to Chicago, and west to Dallas.

After nearly 30 years, the SalesLadder member was living in Houston; working for an information management company; and thinking he had one last move in him – if it was the right move. At the age of 59, he said, there was only one place he wanted to go.


Sales Manager Trades Flex Time for Family Time
Matthew Marshall had well-defined criteria for his next job.
The sales manager wanted to move into procurement, and he wanted to work for a global company, somewhere he could use the multiple languages he speaks and the experiences he had living in Germany, Mexico and the U.K.

He also wanted to work in an office again, but without a long commute. After years of telecommuting from Reading, Pa., to his company/s California headquarters and two-week-long trips every month, Marshall wanted a way to be part of the team everyday, without missing his family for weeks at a time. It also needed to match his salary or come close. He wanted the best of all worlds, and he had little hope he could find what he was looking for near his home.


VP of Retail Operations Works Both Sides of Network
Elaine Clarke's job search was a model of give-and-take networking. In the 10 months she spent searching for work, Clarke landed 10 successful job offers – but only two were for herself. Clarke, a global operations executive from Salem, N.H., forwarded job leads to eight friends and colleagues in her professional network who successfully landed job offers.

The strategy to pass along job leads may feel unnatural to some, but the practice of helping first, asking second ingratiated Clarke with individuals in her network who returned the favor. They sent her leads on open positions, made introductions, and called in favors with former bosses and decision makers. It landed Clarke two leads that ultimately generated job offers and a bidding war for her services.


After a 30-Year Career, CFO Scales Back
John Renner knew he needed a change. He had been working 24/7 for nearly three years on one project and wanted to scale back the intensity of his work. In his seven-year tenure as the CFO for a large Cincinnati hospital he invested an enormous amount of energy into his recent project: transitioning it from part of a seven-hospital system to independent status. Now, he was looking for another opportunity.

So, he negotiated his severance in November 2008, looking forward to a little time off but also knowing that consulting work would be a phone call away.
His consulting work was keeping him quite busy, in fact. While he could have skipped the job search altogether, at least for a while, Renner said he never doubted that he wanted to get back to a full-time job.


Sales Manager Finds a Job Close to Home
Donald Wroble has had a lot of practice selling himself the past several years. That's why, when the SalesLadder member started looking for a new job in January, he was ready to attack the job search with confidence.

"I would say, as a professional marketer, the best thing you can do for yourself is to stay on top of what is happening in your field, and find out what unique skills you can market," he said. "That way, you're ready when you have to find a new job."

In 2005, Wroble had left his position as a sales manager for BASF, a global chemical company, when the company went through a number of restructurings. In the next four years, he worked for two other companies that also went through reorganizations, each time finding another position through TheLadders.


After 1,000 Applications, Director Finds Focus
David Goldstein knew he was doing the wrong thing: sending a resume for any job for which he thought he was remotely qualified after he lost his job as a vice president for information technology at Aetna. "I knew it was wrong," he said. "All the advice says to be selective about who you send resumes to. But it kept me busy.

"Each time I sent a resume, I was refreshing my mind about my skill set. I was remembering things that didn't necessarily come to me the first time around. And it reminded me of something I could add to my resume," the TechnologyLadder member said.

Happy Turkey Day, Readers!

Warmest regards,

Marc Cenedella, Founder & CEO, TheLadders.com
www.cenedella.com/stone
http://twitter.com/cenedella