In This Issue

When considering your career path, organizational development (OD for short) is not the first thing that comes to mind. Frankly, it may not even be the tenth thing that you'd think about. However, having a basic understanding of organizational development can accelerate your climb up the corporate ladder while landing you the coveted corner office.

When OD is well thought out, it can improve the efficiencies within a company. OD is usually driven by the executive team or the HR department, but the most astute career planner can become a master of understanding OD principles and use their skill set, experience and ambition as the solution needed to fill organizational gaps, and accelerate their career at the same time. To do this, you need to interpret the current state of the organization, identify how it needs to shift to meet its business goals, and then execute your own action plan supporting growth and positioning yourself for your next promotion.

As VP of Finance and Corporate Controller of Network Appliance, a $3B data management and storage company, Leslie Paulides had the opportunity to build a finance organization from a small team of seven to over 300 people. This required a deep understanding of OD principles. Not only did she find it personally gratifying to spearhead this expansion, but she learned a thing or two about being proactive in career advancement applying basic OD principles. Below she shares five great ways to be proactive in your career planning.

1. Know where you want to go
   Be specific when describing your next ideal position, include a date as to when you'd like to be there. Identify the pains experienced by the organization and notice how your skill set and experience can be the solution. At times, a new position may be created for you! Communicate your vision for career advancement with your manager and ask for their feedback.
2. Adopt mentors
   An ideal mentor is someone "in the know" who is willing to help you align your strengths with the direction of the company and who expresses candid feedback, including areas to improve.
3. Devise solutions for the areas of inefficiency
   Seeing yourself as the solution for the inefficiencies in an organization can be your golden ticket to a great career. In fact, the more knowledge that you obtain about your company's goals and the gaps related to these goals, the greater control you acquire over your career advancement.
4. Keep learning and developing
   Know what kind of training and development is required to move to the next level. It is far easier to obtain a new position that requires new skills within a company that already knows you.
5. Be courageous enough to know when it is time to move on
   Decide upon a timeframe to explore all options available at your current company. If there is no room for growth, then network with individuals who can help you identify your next career step and can help you get there. This individual could be a mentor, a trustworthy recruiter that has high ethical standards, or an industry professional.

The more you know about yourself, where you would like to take your career, and where you can ease the pains of an organization, the easier it will be for you to grow in your career path.

Our highest priority at STRe Solutions is building long-term relationships with both jobseekers and hiring managers. The Recruiter Relations section of our newsletter offers ongoing tips to help you maximize your experience with a recruiter, regardless of whether you're seeking top talent to seamlessly join your team or searching for the ideal job.

This quarter we highlight what candidates and hiring managers should be aware of before logging in to their favorite job boards to post their resume or review resumes of jobseekers.

Candidate Tip #102
TRUE or FALSE: Posting your resume online can actually reduce the quality of opportunities available to you. True! It's obvious that when you post your resume online, you sacrifice control over whose desk your resume may cross. But posting your resume can also create unforeseen problems for the jobseeker in search of their next job.

For starters, some recruiters take resumes from the boards and distribute them in mass to any company without discretion or your prior approval. Their recipient list may include your current employer or the employer of your manager's Sunday golfing partner, which let's face it, would create a very awkward Monday for you. You ALWAYS want to manage who has access to your resume.

In addition, a novice internal corporate recruiter can deem you as an unsuitable match based entirely on your downloaded resume, causing you to be permanently stored in their database as "not a good fit"; forfeiting all chances to interview. Furthermore, good recruiters are unable to fully represent you if your resume has already been sourced by internal recruiters. Choose a trusted recruiting partner BEFORE you post your resume online. Ask about their client relationships so they will be able to present you as the professional that you are, not just a bunch of words on paper.

Finally, if you want your resume to be posted confidentially, then double check with the vendor on how to do this. You would be surprised by the amount of people who think they posted their resume confidentially and are taken aback to receive phone calls from recruiters who know their names and where they work.

Hiring Manager Tip #102
What you see in an online resume is not always what you get in the interview. There are at least three things to keep in mind when reviewing resumes posted online:

• It takes a lot of time and energy sifting through resumes to discover the stellar candidates, still leaving one unsure of whether a resume is a factual representation of a candidate.
• Professional resume writers can polish up anyone's resume; transforming even the ugliest duckling into a swan.
• On the other hand, financial professionals are not exactly marketing writers so even the most phenomenal candidates with self-written resumes can look lackluster to a hiring manager.

Choose a trusted recruiting partner who will eliminate the burden involved in qualifying candidates; completely freeing you up to put your focus into your "real" job of keeping the company financially on track. Plus, recruiters have access to passive candidates, who are "A players" not currently looking for a new job but would jump at the right opportunity. Working with a trusted recruiter who can find you an "A player" to seamlessly join your team is worth its weight in gold.

A trusted recruiter can also deliver the right consultants to fill in the gap while you are looking for the ideal new hire to reduce the pressure created in the hiring process.

STRe Solutions welcomes Leslie Paulides as the new Director of Business Development. Leslie is a former Big 4 CPA with 20+ years of experience in finance, accounting and management. Before joining STRe, Leslie was the VP Finance and Corporate Controller for Network Appliance, a $3B data management and storage company. She successfully grew the finance organization from 7 people to over 300 during her 10 year career at Network Appliance.

Prior to Network Appliance, Leslie spent 10 years in finance management at Quantum and three years as an auditor for Arthur Anderson where she received her CPA. She graduated from San Jose State with a BA in Finance and a minor in Economics.

Today Leslie is passionate about organizational development where she enables organizations to structure themselves for sustainable success. She is active in the Los Gatos Union School District, serving as a committee member and belongs to other professional organizations.

Congratulations! We made it through the holidays and into another year. For those of you considering a career change as your 2008 new year's resolution, we have included this fun self-assessment as a guide for your decision. Your next career is identified by your reaction to the following scenario.

Scenario: The person that you were interviewing with left you in a room with only two tables and a chair for two hours without instructions.

A. If you took the table apart, go into Engineering

B. If you count the butts in the ashtray, go into Finance

C. If you wave your arms and talk aloud, go into Consulting

D. If you are talking to the chairs, Personnel is the place for you

E. If you mention anything about the good price that we got for the table and chairs, then Purchasing suits you

F. If you write about the experience, then you are a good fit for Technical Documents

G. If you try to tell people that it wasn't as bad as it looks, then it's Marketing all the way