Friends and Followers, here are the top guide posts for this week. This week is about Career Limiting Decisions and Marketing Yourself. Enjoy!

A Career Limiting Decision

Even the so-called titans of industry make "career limiting decisions" by hiring the wrong people.

In the late 90's, Michael Eisner hired Michael Ovitz as his presumed successor at Walt Disney Co.

A good friend of mine who worked as a junior executive said from the moment Ovitz started it was a train wreck. Ovitz was a disruptive and destructive force. Allegedly, he would yell at people, disrupt meetings and perhaps even throw chairs.

While I obviously did not witness this behavior, clearly something happened. Just one year into his tenure, he left with a severance of $90 million. And according to the compensation consultant that structured the deal, Ovitz would only receive this severance if he were fired.

For this, and other career limiting decisions, Eisner was pressured to resign by the board in 2005.

The Moral: Hiring the wrong people is a major career limiting decision at ALL levels!

Don't let a bad hire limit your career!

Learn more about how Due North can help you build World Class Commercial teams?click here?to schedule a meeting.

Marketer, Market Yourself!

What is the best product that many marketers appear to never want to market? It’s themselves!

Picture this, a CEO named Jesse hops into an elevator with a marketing manager named Jane. Recognizing her, Jesse says “Hi Jane. What’s new?”. Jane says “Not much” or talks about her new puppy. Either response is unlikely to impress Jesse although I am sure she would ask to see a picture of the puppy.

Now imagine instead that Jane says “You may have heard that we had a very successful product launch. We expect to beat our planned first year revenue by X%”. Jesse would undoubtedly be more impressed by this news and perhaps ask to learn more about it. When she does, Jane should be prepared to tell a brief impactful story. Have confidence in your marketing accomplishments

So, what is the solution? I suggest that people be prepared to interview at any point. Much like networking, so many of us do not do it until absolutely necessary (otherwise known as needing a job). All it takes is a few moments to write up your latest success in a STAR response format when it is fresh in your memory. For more on that, see this recent post on STAR responses (Be A Star!).

In over a decade of marketing executive recruitment and during my prior marketing career, I have seen many exceptional marketers get passed over for promotion because they fail to promote themselves. Conversely, I have seen some marginal marketers promote themselves relentlessly. This includes one who tried to pass off a solution that I had created at a prior employer as his own. Suffice it to say, I did not present that candidate to my client.

To be clear, I am not talking about relentlessly bragging about yourself or fibbing about your accomplishments. I am merely stating that many times we miss opportunities like this simply because we are either too humble, too reserved or are just unprepared to tell our story. You need to think about yourself as the best product you have to promote. And taking credit for the successes you have had is smart career management.

In short, Marketer, Market Yourself!

Chris Gustanski – Founder and Lead Talent Guide

Chris is a classically trained marketer with over a decade of executive search experience. He moved into recruiting because he was someone that was frequently recruited and was tired of recruiters hounding him to consider roles they didn’t understand, and he wasn’t interested in pursuing. He was determined to disrupt Marketing Executive Search to deliver a better result and experience for companies and the Marketing Mavens they need.?After over a decade seeing the dysfunction in executive search firms large and small, he formed Due North Executive Search in collaboration with his wife Amie.

To learn more about how Due North can help you build World Class Commercial teams?click here?to schedule a meeting.