EDITORIALS

I had an interesting comment from one of our members of long standing several years ago to the effect that no one was calling him. Of course, the ultimate revenge would be to give all of you his phone number and ask you to call our very own “lonesome George,” but that would be mean. While ...

The newsletters the past few weeks have been a little thin, so I thought I would take this opportunity to remind all of you of our mutual commitment to share job leads, even those in which we are an active participants. Yes, I know it is counter-intuitive to share leads in which you are an...

I hope I will not sound like I am in a bad mood or anything, but I have to tell you that the bulk of the messages I get from members need a lot of work to make them appear as proper business correspondence. I wish I could believe this is only how you write when you are corresponding with y...

Ah, if only there were such a thing when it came to job search. Alas, there isn’t. From time to time I get emails asking about the various “blood suckers,” who claim to provide variations on outplacement. They profess to be able to do either mass mailings, mass emailings or the ability to ...

I don’t know if you will agree, but I’m almost convinced that email is going to stick around for a while as a business tool. This being the case, I would like to make the bold suggestion to all of you who write emails (and hopefully that is everyone in The FENG) that you “get with the prog...

As you know, each week I publish a list of our new members and I ask each member of our august body to call at least one person from the list. I sometimes spend close to a full day out of my personal schedule to review new member candidates. I only ask that each of you call one person &#82...

Most of us CFO/Controller types find talking on the telephone one of the more difficult things we do. I believe one of the reasons is that most of our work is accomplished in written form. When we do present our work to the boss or to our peers, it is usually done face to face and to a ver...

I’m not sure why people go their own way, but the standard resume framework is very much the “gold” standard. If you accept the idea that most resumes only get 10 seconds, I think you can begin to appreciate why straying from the traditional structure can get you into trouble. Of course yo...

There is nothing worse in this world than to finally get an interview and to blow the opportunity because someone asked you a question you weren’t prepared to answer. I don’t know why some very obvious questions can take a seasoned financial professional by surprise, but they do. Perhaps w...

If I had to put my finger on the one issue that confuses senior financial professionals it is the subject above. Who is the customer for your services, and what is your product? When I have chatted with or had email exchanges with members who were going through outplacement, the bad advice...

Despite all the financial scandals that we have seen in the past few years, most of us financial types by our nature have a hard time lying. For the most part, it just isn’t part of our DNA. While we may be burdened with many secrets of the organization such as payroll, we get around the q...

Many years ago, my son and I were rowing out to our mooring to go sailing with my father-in-law. My son, who was probably 8 or 9 at the time, asked my father-in-law if he knew the EXACT difference between a rhinoceros and a piece of paper. After several totally wrong guesses, my son gave h...

I am sure you have heard it too, the at length explanations others give as to why they are looking for another job. Sometimes I forget to mention at the beginning of our meeting in Connecticut that I really don’t need to know and you don’t really need to tell anyone. No explanation is actu...

Perhaps because we fill in so many forms during the course of our careers, it seems that as financial types we are always looking for a fill in the blank approach to just about everything. Is there a formula for 90-second announcements, I am frequently asked? Well, there are some basic gui...

Ah, the great age of sail! For many hundreds of years, men built great numbers of wooden sailing vessels for commercial purposes and for the making of war. The truth, as hinted at by the saying above is that there was very little that was actually romantic or desirable about a life at sea....

There is a memorable scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in which Paul Newman is challenged for control of the Hole in the Wall Gang. They agree that the best way to settle their disagreement is with a knife fight. Paul suggests that before they get started that they should decide ...

Over the years, I have found that I keep certain CD’s in my car and I play them over and over again. I supposed I shouldn’t admit this to a wide audience, but one of my favorite music categories is sea shanties. (It goes along with my hobby of sailing). When I had cassette tapes, I actuall...

Tomorrow I will begin processing a rather large batch of new members. It is actually a two week batch as I was on vacation the past two weeks. I realize that new members are not totally indicative of how everyone is doing their resume, but I have to tell you that their resumes aren’t all t...

One of the comments I have heard from time to time is that the new job that someone just found isn’t as exciting as the one they lost. It seems at times that most of our members find themselves in a downward spiral as they change jobs. The companies are smaller and often the pay packages a...

To quote George Bernard Shaw: “The biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” With respect to our power to communicate, we live in a remarkable period of time. I normally respond to 50-100 unique emails every day. I have been doing this for many years and ye...

There was mention of an article several years ago in The Wall Street Journal that Americans have fewer close friends. Intrigued at the time, I “Googled” and found a few press reports about the article. According to an article in American Sociological Review, in 1985, the average American h...