griebcw1, Author at Building Careers

How to Develop Your Soft Skills to Advance Your Career

Leave a Comment / Blog, Resume Ideas, Set Yourself Up For Success

We’ve all heard what an asset it is in the job market to know data analysis, be able to code in C++, and speak fluent Spanish. But what about being able to listen well, to manage your time like a boss, and to lead a team meeting that leaves everybody smiling afterward? While more difficult to measure and quantify, these types of skills – soft skills – are the glue that hold together any workplace.

Being able to identify your soft skills and give examples of them is a critical part of any job interview. Many people choose to list soft skills on their resume to make it stand out. If you’re having trouble identifying your soft skills – or know what soft skills you have, but want to develop them more – you’ve come to the right place. This guide will help you single out and develop your soft skills – which will ultimately lead to more successes in interviews and on the job.

What are Soft Skills?

Soft skills are character traits, personal attributes, and other non-technical abilities that help you work and communicate with other people. To develop your soft skills, some you might have to study and learn, and others might come to you naturally. Listening, communication and delegation are all examples of soft skills.

The opposite of soft skills are hard skills, which are technical abilities like knowing how to code in python, make a graph on excel, or speak a foreign language. While hard skills can be more easily defined and measured, soft skills are more difficult to measure. But that doesn’t mean they’re any less important – in fact, if you’re not a good communicator, you’ll have a difficult time even getting past the first interview!

How to Identify Your Soft Skills

At many points during your education or career, you’ve probably worked on a team. But are you good at teamwork? Are you so good at teamwork that you would include it on the skills section of your resume? Not sure? Let’s talk about identifying your soft skills.

Identifying your soft skills isn’t necessarily something you can do alone, either. Ask friends, colleagues, and even former employers which soft skills come to mind when they think of you. You can also ask them to bring up specific examples of when you used that soft skill well. You might even discover things about yourself that you didn’t know before. For example, if you think you’re disorganized, but everyone you talk to points to your organizational skills as somewhere you excel, you might want to consider changing that perception of yourself – and including it on your resume!

Here is a list of soft skills. Do you identify with any of them? Can you point to examples in your career where you used them to accomplish something?

Time management
Teamwork
Communication
Adaptability
Ability to perform under pressure
Innovation
Listening
Delegation
Problem-solving

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Signs You Aced The Job Interview…Or You Didn’t Ace It

Leave a Comment / Blog, Interview Tips, Job Search

You just wrapped up a job interview for a role you’re excited about. You think it went well. But wait, did it?

Now that you’ve had some time to take a breath and reflect on that conversation, the confusion and self-doubt have kicked in. You’re chewing your nails and overanalyzing every answer, offhand remark, and facial expression, searching for clues about whether or not you can expect a second interview. Were you the candidate who stood out the most from the interviews?

You aren’t alone—we all do it. The job search is filled with a lot of uncertainty, and there’s no surefire way to get inside your interviewer’s head. Fortunately, there are a few signs you aced the job interview (and conversely, there are some clues you can pick up on if it didn’t go so well).

Signs You Aced the Job Interview

Before we jump in, a friendly disclaimer: When it comes to the interview process, there’s really no such thing as foolproof signs. While the things we’re about to discuss are generally positive, they aren’t a guarantee. Similarly, if these things didn’t happen in your interview, that doesn’t mean it was a disaster. There are always exceptions.

Got it? Good. Now, let’s talk about some signs that you likely hooked that interviewer and are one step closer to landing that job.

Your Interview Ran Longer Than Scheduled

Your interview was scheduled for half an hour, but it was closer to 45 minutes or an hour before your conversation wrapped up. Chances are, your interviewer is interested in you and was highly engaged in the information you were providing.

Your Conversation Flowed Naturally

While this is easy to forget when your nerves are running high, interviews really are human-to-human conversations. Kaplan explains that if your interaction flowed more like a natural discussion and less like an interrogation, that’s a positive. Polite small talk and some friendly back-and-forth indicate that the interviewer was not only interested in you, but also felt a certain level of comfort.

Just be aware that some companies conduct very structured interviews with set lists of questions asked in a certain order to satisfy diversity and inclusion criteria or abide by other company policies, so don’t get discouraged if your interviewer seemed to stick to the script.

Your Follow-Up Email Got a Quick Response

You know the importance of sending a thank you note after your interview, and you took that advice and wrote a friendly, personalized email. That message received a response almost immediately to thank you for your time and to tell you that they’ll be in touch soon.

A quick reply is confirmation that you’re top of mind and they want to keep you engaged in the hiring process. Even better than that? There was an email about next steps in your inbox before you even had a chance to press “send” on your own thank you note.

Signs Your Interview Didn’t Go So Well

Now let’s talk about the flipside: You have this sinking feeling that maybe your interview didn’t go as well as you hoped. If you noticed some of the following signs, they could mean that you need to continue your search and prepare to nail future interviews with other employers.

Keep in mind that nothing is a guarantee, and the only way you’ll know for sure is when you get either a polite rejection email or hear that the company wants to invite you to do a second interview, an interview assignment, or another next step.

Your Interviewer Wasn’t Paying Attention

If your interviewer appears to be somewhere else mentally or you notice them looking at another screen during your video interview, Kaplan says, they might be disinterested or disengaged from your conversation.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that they were taking a quick look at your resume or their list of interview questions. So don’t place too much weight into a brief distraction or break in eye contact. That’s way different from a lack of commitment to your entire conversation.

You Didn’t Have an Opportunity to Ask Questions

If you were given the opportunity to ask questions but your interviewer provided really curt or vague answers, that’s also not a great sign for your candidacy or for that employer’s commitment to respectful and transparent communication.

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7 Helpful Tips to Engage Employees Remotely

Leave a Comment / Blog, Employers, Set Yourself Up For Success

As many CRE companies return to work, while balancing distancing measures and restrictions, it’s crucial for employers to understand how to continue to engage employees remotely. It’s hard motivating and managing from a distance, but it’s probably going to be a common reality going forward.

It pays for competitive CRE firms to get this right. Maintaining a cohesive and productive team – even through remote work – is vital adapting for the future.

Is Remote Work Here to Stay?

While many of us hoped to get back to our old office life as soon as possible, many others found they preferred work from home. And there are numerous reasons to believe working remotely will be far more common in coming years than it ever was before. Let’s look at the data:

Remote working has increased 140% since 2005.
Allowing remote work is better for employee retention, with a 25% improvement over companies who don’t allow this flexibility.
It’s also better for productivity, with a 24% boost over employees at non-remote companies.
16% of all companies hire only remote workers.
94% of professionals in CRE believe remote working will continue after the crisis is over.

It’s Not That Hard to Engage Employees Remotely

With remote work growing and becoming more normal, it’s absolutely crucial to know how to drive a positive team synergy from a distance. But how do you engage employees remotely? How do you get them excited about the mission and keep tabs on their progress when they’re not even in the office?

Fortunately, it’s not that hard. Here are some tips to help you inspire and engage your work-from-home and telecommuting employees just as well (if not better) as in an office!

7 Helpful Tips

1. Set clear expectations Don’t let employees feel alone and isolated. There is a danger they could wither on the vine without a clear understanding of their position in the team. Make sure there are written details and expectations laid out from what their working hours are to progress points and goals to achieve.

2. Communicate Clearly Professionals in the commercial real estate business already know how important it is to communicate – both with clients and internally. Effective business communication is all the more important when engaging employees remotely.

3. Schedule Regular Video Calls

There’s something about getting on a video call with your supervisor and/or fellow team members that brings you out of your shell and forces engaged creativity. Schedule them at least once a week, even if only for 15 minutes.

4. Use Chat Make sure you and your team share a chat app in common to allow for more casual back and forth. So much of the success of the in-office dynamic was water-cooler chit-chat. It just can’t be adequately replaced by formal video meetings and email exchanges. A chat app will allow for both quicker responses and more casual conversations.

5. Be Flexible Remember, the beauty of remote work is the flexibility. To really engage employees remotely, be sure you don’t try too hard to re-create the office structure virtually. Whenever possible, give employees autonomy over their schedule, etc. This helps to build trust, creative liberty, and engagement.

6. Be Sociable Virtual team building may be a challenge, but it should not be overlooked. Set up hangout times, activities, or even in-person events if possible, to stave off loneliness and disconnect.

7. Mix It Up

Gallop found that the optimal mix for employee engagement is 3-4 days remote and 1-2 in office. When possible, engage employees remotely by bringing them back to the office a day or two each week. They’ll appreciate the change, and you’ll find managing and engaging them to be much easier and automatic.

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Questions to Ask to Have More Meaningful Conversations at Work

If You’re Stuck in a Job that’s Not Inspiring You, It’s Probably Because of This

Leave a Comment / Blog, Set Yourself Up For Success

What motivates you to leap out of bed in the morning?

Affirmation Words | Approach Life and Career in the Same Way

Talking to career seekers all day, I can tell you that not everyone is motivated by what you think they might be. Some people just want to work 9-5, punch out and go home, while others want a powerful title, which may come with additional working hour requirements. Some see the learning opportunities in a role, while others are aiming to get paid solely for their current skill set.

Whatever your motivations may be along your career path, make sure they are yours and yours alone. Most importantly, as describes in this article, make sure where you are in life aligns with your values and not what society may be telling you is important. Do you!

Ready to find that inspiration? Read the full article here: If You’re Stuck in a Job that’s Not Inspiring You, It’s Probably Because of This

Originally published by Zoë B in the Huffington Post Blog on Feb 18, 2016

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Carly Glova Sits in on University Panel to Talk about NAIOP

Leave a Comment / Blog, Building Careers

After years in the commercial real estate industry on the finance and acquisitions side, most recently with BioMed Realty, I have turned my passion for career matchmaking into a full-time (and overtime!) career. Employees are what fuels your company, perpetuates your culture, and are the resources that serve as the heart and soul of growing your business. Don’t you want to share that success with the best people possible?

Now every day I have the pleasure of getting to know folks in the commercial real estate industry and learning what their motivations are, what their idea of success looks like, and how they work best. I wake up every day excited to be able to make a difference in the trajectory of local commercial real estate contractors, consultants, developers, investors, and managers. I accomplish this by finding these companies the right mix of talent, personality, and drive that will blow their business out of the water.

I am also a NAIOP member so I can surround myself with smart, successful, go-getters. NAIOP provides advocacy, education and business opportunities by connecting members in a powerful North American network in the commercial real estate development and investment industry. NAIOP is an amazing resource for our industry, and along with the wealth of information and experience that NAIOP offers, there is never a shortage of excitement within the organization.

Here is the most recent event where I was able to sit in on a University Panel and had the chance to connect with students:

https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/play/0e3ifwL2TFE1S51WuupZjrrKgWaqrHB8tpq4AXAFPyN-DqfmvTsGs_bl6JoZR94FFZ0DJ-PEvi9FC1lC.RpDTJK8RUhOuSVfT?startTime=1615938785000&_x_zm_rtaid=9B3LfY4-SYWuHuUFyc8B2w.1616438184210.a7d684745e20ae58c3f169cb56140905&_x_zm_rhtaid=369

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Key Steps to Successfully Conducting a Behavioral Interview

Leave a Comment / Employers, Interview Tips

There’s nothing worse than a bad fit. There are many hidden costs associated with hiring the wrong person. Successfully conducting a behavioral interview is a great way to sift through the fluff and open up key areas of compatibility in a potential new hire. If your CRE company is interested in improving your interview game, read on for key steps to incorporate into your process.

What Is Behavioral Interviewing?

Traditional interview methods ask how a candidate may react in a given situation. After all, a hiring manager is after key information to ensure the candidate is qualified for the job. So, questions in this mode directly ask what the candidate’s responses might be.

However, conducting a behavioral interview is different. In this mode, the hiring manager asks how a candidate has already responded to a situation like this. What specific solutions did they innovate? How did they adapt in a previous incident on the job?

The premise is that a new hire will act according to their set patterns or previous record. If you can look into their past, you’ll more accurately predict their future.

The Process of Conducting a Behavioral Interview

Boiled down, there are basically three steps to nailing this interview approach:

1. The first priority with this approach to interviewing is identifying the skills and experiences required for success in your agency or organization. What key traits or skills do you find common among others who have been successful in this or a similar role? Valuable traits to look for may include:

Confidence
Adaptability
Focus
Integrity
Enthusiasm

2. Second, craft a list of interview questions that solve for these skills and traits. If communication is important, ask for a specific example of their clear communication. Some effective interview questions you might ask while conducting a behavioral interview are:

Describe a time when you had to work with a person whose personality or work style differed from yours.
How have you anticipated a problem in the past and successfully taken steps to prevent it?
Have you ever faced a looming deadline with multiple priorities? How did you balance them to meet the deadline?

3. Thirdly, evaluate candidate responses and ask detailed follow-up questions. Behaviorally-based interview questions have been around for decades, and job seekers may prepare polished answers in advance. Rather than simply asking what they did, follow up with detailed questions about why they did it, how they did it, and how their colleagues might have described the incident.

Additional Helpful Steps

In addition to the three process steps described above, here are more helpful steps you can benefit from in conducting a behavioral interview more effectively:

Write a job description that solicits candidates who excel in the traits and experiences at the top of your priorities.
Review the hiring documents (resume, cover letter, application) with your target traits in mind prior to the interview.
Narrow down the talent pool with a phone screening that discusses your most crucial target traits or qualifications.
Ask multiple questions about a high-priority trait for a multi-dimensional understanding of their qualification in that area.
Partner with a high-performing recruiting firm to ensure a pool of qualified talent and for help with often overlooked interview tips and practices.

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How To Make Tough Decisions

Leave a Comment / Ask An Expert, Blog, Set Yourself Up For Success

Peter Bregman perused the restaurant menu for several minutes, struggling with indecision, each item tempting me in a different way.

Maybe I should order them all . . .

Is this a silly decision not deserving deliberation? Maybe. But I bet you’ve been there. If not about food, then about something else.

We spend an inordinate amount of time, and a tremendous amount of energy, making choices between equally attractive options in everyday situations. The problem is, that while they may be equally attractive, they are also differently attractive, with tradeoffs that require compromise. Even when deciding between kale salad (healthy and light), salmon (a heavier protein), and ravioli (tasty, but high carbs).

If these mundane decisions drag on our time and energy, think about the bigger ones we need to make, in organizations, all the time. Which products should we pursue and which should we kill? Who should I hire or fire? Should I initiate that difficult conversation?

These questions are followed by an infinite number of other questions. If I am going to have that difficult conversation, when should I do it? And how should I start? Should I call them or see them in person or email them? Should I do it publicly or in private? How much information should I share? And on and on . . .

So how do we make hard decisions of all kinds more efficiently? Peter Bregman has three methods that he uses, two of which he talk about in his book, Four Seconds, the third which he discovered afterwards.

The first method is to use habits as a way to reduce routine decision fatigue. The idea is that if you build a habit —for example: always eat salad for lunch — then you avoid the decision entirely and you can save your decision-making energy for other things.

That works for predictable and routine decisions. But what about unpredictable ones?

The second method is to use if/then thinking to routinize unpredictable choices. For example, let’s say someone constantly interrupts me and I’m not sure how to respond. My if/then rule might be: if the person interrupts me two times in a conversation, then I will say something.

These two techniques — habits and if/then — can help streamline many typical, routine choices we face in our lives.

What we haven’t solved for are the larger more strategic decisions that aren’t habitual and can’t be predicted.

I discovered a simple solution to making challenging choices more efficiently at an offsite last week with the CEO and senior leadership team of a high tech company. They were facing a number of unique, one-off decisions, the outcomes of which couldn’t be accurately predicted.

These were decisions like how to respond to a competitive threat, which products to invest more deeply in, how to better integrate an acquisition, where to reduce a budget, how to organize reporting relationships, and so on.

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Real Estate Hiring Trends For The Year Ahead

Leave a Comment / Ask An Expert, Blog, Industry Insights, Job Search

2020 was a challenging year for virtually all industries, but for real estate, it was a particularly bumpy road. Offices were left vacant, retail shops shuttered, hotels and restaurants faced unprecedented hardships, and 2020 left many real estate professionals working from home, scheduling virtual tours and pivoting their business models the best they could to face the road ahead. But now, it’s a new year.

Real Estate Hiring Trends Going Forward

As we enter 2021, real estate professionals are cautiously optimistic about their roles and hiring across the industry as a whole. While many are excited about the prospect of a pandemic-ending vaccine and a return to normalcy, most recognize the road to recovery will be long and filled with hurdles, especially for the hardest-hit asset classes like retail and hospitality. Despite that, 45.8% of respondents said their compensation actually increased in 2020, and 59% believe their compensation will increase in 2021.

The pandemic was not the only major event of 2020. Protests across the country sparked discussions about race, and while some in the industry believe these rallies will have little impact on the way the real estate world approaches hiring, others think that they could be a major turning point that will cause the industry to re-examine some of its hiring practices and place a greater emphasis on hiring diverse talent.

And while many things changed, some remained the same. The vast majority of survey respondents said they are still employed at the same job they had prior to the pandemic and a majority also said they would consider relocating or making a career move — just as the bulk of respondents replied in 2019.

So what are the major challenges the real estate industry is facing in 2021? Where do industry professionals see the year heading?

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How to Ask for a Raise Made Simple

Leave a Comment / Ask An Expert, Blog, Set Yourself Up For Success

Asking your manager for a raise can be nerve-wracking, so much so, that some people wait for months or even years before asking for a raise they deserve.

The truth is, there’s nothing wrong with asking for a raise that reflects the hard work that you do, but there are some approaches and best practices that will always get better results than others.

Even though your manager has data on the hard work you’ve been doing, you still need to present your case for why you deserve a raise and you need to be prepared to negotiate through effective business communication. We’ve made it simple and broken down how to ask for a raise. And it all starts with preparing!

Prepare to Ask for a Raise

You should never ask for a raise without preparing for this conversation. No matter how good your relationship is with your manager, they will be expecting you to prove that you deserve the salary you’re asking for and won’t respond favorably if it seems like you did not prepare.

Build your Case – Look back to recent projects and periods of time where you went beyond what was expected and provided real value for your company. Always use specific performance data when possible. Also, having your job description in front of you and pointing out how your current role is elevated or you’ve gone above and beyond will tangibly justify your raise.

When to Ask

Picking the right time to ask for a raise is just as important for preparing for this discussion. Find out when your company’s fiscal budget planning takes place so you can be sure that you aren’t asking for the impossible. A few great times to ask for a raise are:

Annual Performance Reviews – A natural time for this conversation may be at your annual performance review, when the topic of salary is not only timely, but often expected.

After Completing an Important Project – A great time to ask for a raise is after successfully completing an important project or showing excellent work.

When your Manager is Happy – Asking for a raise during of a stressful or hectic period will guarantee that your manager is short on time and patience. Wait to ask for a raise until the dust has settled and you have, once again, proven your worth.

How to Ask for a Raise

After preparing your evidence for why you deserve a raise and choosing a good time to talk to your manager, it’s important to think about what you’re going to say during your raise conversation.

You don’t need to have a strict script, but you do need to be clear and specific in your delivery to help set you up for success. It also helps to have a few phrases up your sleeve to help guide the conversation.

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