Black In Business

Dan is a young man I admire. He has a heart of gold and a mission to give back to his community. I met Dan when we both worked at Abbott Laboratories. Dan worked for several corporate Giants, including IBM, Gartnerand Pepsi. Dan was prepared, primed and recruited to be a corporate star. He had his degree, stayed out of trouble and was full of talent. White folks loved him but he was and is a true brother.
The point of this article is to pick up your phone and call a friend. Dan and I keep in touch and have nice conversations which end with us promising to get together fun the infinite lunch that never happens. Yesterday was one of those days and we spoke about 20 minutes, a very long talk for 2 men! I caught up with Dan and was reminded of why I enjoy his outlook so much.
Dan walked away from an almost sure ride to corporate success in order to do his own thing. Dan is the owner of 3D Development Corporation. Dan’s company is the complete source for human development. He has worked with school districts, not for profit and for profit corporations. He is doing well and is content being his own boss. He still has great ideas including, working to enpower blacks through realestate, and setting up a speaker site geared toward low budget organizations that want to use outside speakers.
Dan has great business ideas and he should look into blogging, I am going introduce him to my friend Chris Baggott of Compendium blogware so he will learn more about the blogging community.
In closing, pick up the phone and call an old friend, if you call someone like Dan, you will be glad to see how positive his life is and what a good reflection he is representing Black men! Dan thanks for keeping hope alive.

I am in the executive recruitment industry. I have been for the past 20 months. As you know our economy is challenged these days.Some people are in the job market that never thought they would be. My specialty is the Laboratory Medical Business, representing companies that market medical products to the diagnostics, life science or medical device industry.
Many of the candidates I speak with are highly accomplished and armed with great educations.Often times they have experience from some of the best corporations in the world. In today’s world there are people for whom their career advancement strategy is to move around to different companies. Some companies consider job hoppers more valuable because they have shown flexibility and may have experienced more growth by seeing how different companies work.These candidates are usually very good at a job search and interviewing.
Another category of candidate are people like myself that may have spent several years with the same company and is or were highly regarded there. For this candidate everything is new about the job search; from the resume to the offer.
I will refer to 3 different case studies and speak to what went wrong and the lesson learned that will help me be a better coach for candidates.
Case 1, involved a mid career woman that works for a great health care company that is reflected by a long history of financial success. She was interviewing with a fairly new company with sales in the millions instead of the billions. The smaller company is a dynamic organization and lead by some terrific people. They are doing well and being smaller they pay better than the big corporation.
My candidate did a great representation of herself and was the top candidate and could have double her income and cut down on her over night travel.
The day she was supposed to go to her final interview she got cold feet and gave a lame excuse to postpone the interview.The company decided to extend the search and came up with 2 other candidates of which one won the job.
Lesson learned, my candidate , shared her opportunity with some of her peers and they scared her about the potential risk, thus the cold feet. I make sure now to advise my candidate to not share their plans with co workers until the deal is done. My candidate felt her credentials would sell them selves and we were outsold by a lessor candidate , one that made clear they wanted the job.My candidate did not properly sell their virtues until it was too late. My advice is to close the deal first, sell yourself and then have them sell you on their company.
Case 2,my candidate has a 30 year career of success and has remarkable diversity of experience. The issue is he is laid back and in many ways quiet. His burning desire is hidden. we have not lost this one yet but we slipped from top candidate to top 3 in a competition.My candidate misstep was a result of his demeanor not being reflective of his drive. this is more difficult, because it is a personality trait.We have now outlined his skill dimensions that will make him a winner in the position. We further illustrated examples in his long career with quantitative interpretation of his impact. We showed money growth or cost saved . My candidate will go back to the home office for another round of interviews and we will role play prior to his visit.
case3, my candidate had a opportunity to meet with the decision maker for a company, needing a regional sales manager but also anticipating a national sales manager opening as well.My candidate had recently loss his position from a company where he had excelled for over 20 years.He opted to wait for the bigger job to open. The decision maker decided not to consider this candidate for either. My advice for job searchers is to take the opportunity to network and show your value.
Those are the 3 cases, I was successful in one with another candidate and have another chance in case 2.The take away, is to be prepared to sell yourself in an interview and do not assume that your greatness is obvious to all. Does anyone have any similar stories they have witness as a hiring manager or as the person being interviewed. Keep Hope Alive!

Much has been said about Rev. Jackson’s unfortunate comments about Senator and Presidential candidate Obama.Rev. Jackson’s comment caused him to say he was sorry. Many of the black community agree with Jackson saying, you got that right Rev. you are sorry!
Cam you imagine the embarassement, you are whispering about someone so no one unintended will hear. Shortly there after, you learn, the whole world heard you vulgar comments. You have to admit, that part is funny!
Rev. Jackson is an icon, a hero and a legend. He has worked tirelessly on behalf of civil rights for 5 decades.He has fought all comers for the benefit of black people. He was with Dr. King when King was shot.He was the face of boycott of corporate giants, to force inclusion of black America in many big jobs. Rev. Jackson brought us all pride as he ran for President. Without Jackson, the Obama run would have not met the same acceptance.
Yes, I support Rev. Jackson and it is a shame and a disgrace, that so many blacks want to turn our backs on the Rev.This stinks of disloyalty and we owe Jackson a debt of gratitude for his 5 decade run for the betterment of black America.
Having said that, Rev.did screw up, and the criticism of his comments are warranted. His son Congressman Jackson and namesake, handle this situation with a stern yet classy rebuttal on behalf of his candidate and choice for President, Senator Obama.
Senator Obama accepted the apology.Black America, it is fine to be critical of Jackson but it is dangerous for us to allow his becoming irreverent. Remember all that he done for us.

The early days of Affirmative Action was marked by resentment and Quotas. For some , it also meant unqualified. We now have witness many diverse stars of politics and business.
This morning’s news about the cover for the New Yorker brought back memories of a business meeting I attended for Abbott Laboratories.
Our meetings were festive and exciting, this one had a country fair theme. I entered the ballroom of the hotel where the first night’s “Ice Breaker,” was taking place.
Much to my dismay and shock, a confederate flag was part of the decoration. The meeting was held in a southern state. I went to find the VP in charge of this meeting for Abbott. I was in my first management job with the company.I was not the only black at the meeting but as the first black sales manager in my division,I felt it my duty to speak up.
I was prepared for a confrontation but the VP of US Sales, a job I would hold later in my career, understood my dismay and the flag was removed.
Back to the New Yorker, I bet when the discussion for the satire cover to depict the Obamas as terrorists, there were no blacks in the meeting. I further think, there were no woman. I would hope a woman would have protested a potential first lady shown with an AK47 over her shoulder. I would hope a African American would have protested our first family of Black America, being viewed as potential killers.
I think it was a bunch of white men all of whom felt this cover was right and funny. What are your thoughts?

I used to have a job title of Senior Recruitment Manager for Abbott Diagnostics Division. It was a position I enjoyed and it consisted mainly of doing interviews. After a while the same old questions, asked the same old way, provided the same old programmed responses.
I would still ask the same old questions, things like, what did you like about your previous job, why are you looking, what are your weaknesses? For variety I would throw in things like; do you find that you always have to win? Why or why not? What do you do when people bitch, bitch bitch? I am looking for a superstar not just another salesperson, what about you make you a star? Give me some examples!
If the interview went well at the end I would ask the candidates to, “Tell me a story, about anything you would like.”
I wanted a story to see, how quickly they thought on their feet, how spontaneous they were, were they of interest, did they have energy and enthusiasm. I heard some great stories and some duds.
I have a candidate going on a final interview tomorrow with a strong biotech company as a candidate for their vacant position of director of global sales and marketing. She was asked to provide a committee a presentation about herself as a part of the interview process. The presentation is to end with examples of 3 things she wants to do in life prior to her last day of life.
Think about it, you want this great job, it is an interview and you are asked to think about your mortality and aspects of your legacy that you still need to fulfill. And you cannot say one of the things is to get the job.
How would you answer?