Although I would never willingly admit it, over the nearly 40 years I have been sailing I have had occasion to go aground. (It is always an embarrassing situation.)One time I dragged anchor in a storm (that I can assure you was not in the forecast) and the other times I managed to wander t...

I am always chatting with potential sponsors for The FENG and from time to time the character of each of our chapters comes up. They are, of course, all different.Here in the Northeast I suppose there almost aren’t any boundaries. Pre-COVID-19 we used to get visitors to our Westport chapte...

There is no greater truth about our profession than the one about our having transferrable skills.Like lawyers and marketing folks, us financial types come to the world with talents that can be applied in a variety of situations. (Sort of sounds like the introduction to Superman, doesn’t i...

There was a time in the not too distant past when our evening newsletter on Sunday evening ran to over 120 pages. The newsletters during the week were typically 50-75 pages.Now that we have a Job Board, I no longer have a “page” count, but we are running at about 50 active jobs. After my r...

I’m sure I don’t need to go into the details, but it goes without saying that the past 9 months of unending stress have been hard on all of us. I don’t know what happened to it, but when I worked for “the great corporation,” I had a bulletin board in my office with one section covered in c...

When I became Chairman of The FENG in 1996, there was at the time an emerging technology called the Internet. (Rumored to have been invented by Al Gore.) I was working for The Thomson Corporation at the time and had learned how to use email. Some days I got as many as 10 emails! (This was ...

At the beginning of time itself in 1995, there was only a Westport Chapter of The FENG. In fact, the name of entire organization was The Financial Executives Networking Group of Fairfield County Connecticut. Over the past 25 years we have grown into an International organization with 37,00...

Ever the wise sailor, I always (well, almost always) check the weather forecast before heading down to the boat to go out for the day.This may or may not be a valuable activity. My wife jokes that in her next life she wants to be a weather forecaster. They never have to be right and they s...

I sometimes wish I didn’t publish job leads at all. I know this is shocking for someone who is sending out a newsletter full of job leads, but it is the truth.Our newsletter contains a wealth of information as do our membership directories. For those of you determined to never learn anythi...

If losing your job wasn’t bad enough, the reluctance of business associates at your former company, as well as those who serviced your company as attorneys, accountants or recruiters to return your phone calls can be particularly disheartening.Actually, if you gave it some thought, you wou...

With just about everyone in the ENTIRE world running around like their hair was on fire, I personally wouldn’t fault you if you too were feeling that way. Whether we are watching the news or reading the newspaper, it is impossible at the moment to find any escape from what is going on WORL...

More often than not, members of our networking group prefer to change industries when they change jobs.I have to agree that changing industries isn’t such a bad idea. In fact, the opportunity to apply the knowledge and skills we have learned to a totally new situation is an attractive conc...

I’m sure tonight’s topic will generate a lot of comments. Those of you who would like to join in on this discussion are invited to send your comments to [email protected] short answer to the question of the moment is: I hope so! If you weren’t, I’m not really sure how you were added to...

Some time ago a member wrote to me lamenting that although he was responding to a great number of opportunities, no one was contacting him about his credentials.It is a sad fact of life that the way job search works with regard to posted jobs is that it is atypical if anyone even acknowled...

There was an article in The Wall Street Journal quite a few years ago that made the following points:1. The unemployed are damaged goods2. Recruiters prefer finding those who are not actively seeking new jobs3. Networking groups are of little valueWhile to a degree I hesitate to take excep...

Stop me if I am wrong, but I guess many folks find job search a painful process. Perhaps it is the lack of a steady paycheck, or the uncertainty, or the rejection. Just like beating your head against a wall, it sure feels good when you can stop. (Is this why we are having so much fun or wh...

For those of you who I have not convinced about the value of networking, I thought I would share my own thoughts about something I have observed about the world and why I think it is so.During my various job campaigns since I started working in 1971, I always noticed a decided lack of publ...

One of the foundations upon which The FENG has been built has been relying upon our members to exercise good judgment about the jobs for which they are a fit and only responding when they are. I could no more police this activity when we were smaller than I can now that we are huge.In the ...

As I hope all of you know, I have a consulting practice called The Financial Executives Consulting Group, LLC. (As time permits, please visit our website: www.TheFECG.com to see what we do.) Bruce Lynn is my business partner. We both also devote significant amounts of time on a volunteer b...

I know it may sound strange coming from someone publishing hundreds of pages of job leads a month, but job leads are overrated.If you are over the age of 40 and all you are doing is answering job leads in our newsletter or from any of the well respected jobs sites, you may as well be writi...

I am more often than not surprised by the amount of time it can take for a company to develop a position description and yet at the end of the day not really be able to capture the essential elements for a particular opportunity.I suppose in part this is because senior level position descr...