Sue Ekberg, Career Counselor
When I called Sue Ekberg (314-752-1373, careerfocusstl.com), I wasn’t surprised that she had already looked me up on LinkedIn and read a few of my articles. As a career counselor she’s always telling her clients to conduct research before interviews, and, apparently, she takes her own advice.
After getting her PhD in education with an emphasis in counseling at Saint Louis University, Ekberg herself needed some career guidance to decide on her next steps. So she completed all of the exercises in Richard Bolls’ job search book What Color is Your Parachute. After a few informational interviews, she decided on career counseling and in 1982, started working with SLU students to teach them how to prepare for job interviews.
Now, as an independent counselor, Ekberg helps clients discover their strengths, breeze through job interviews, and negotiate a top-notch salary so they not only get their dream job, but also find peace of mind.
Most important job search advice: Know your strengths. Be able to articulate those and then maximize the heck out of them. Look to optimize them rather than spending most of your time trying to shore up your weaknesses. Strengths are not just what you’re good at. They’re also what you like to do because some people are good at certain things but they don’t like it. So for longer-term satisfaction you’ve got to like what you’re doing.
How your lifestyle affects your career: I believe in simplifying financially. I think people are hostages to their lifestyle. Either they’ve got a lot of debt or they’ve been living beyond their means, and then they want to do some work they like better but they may not have the flexibility to do something different.
Importance of a complete job search: Even though it seems to cost more in terms of time and money to get clear about your strengths, talk with people, identify paths that you may want to pursue, and build connections, in the long run it’s simpler to do a search that way and to get the results that you want, versus what most people do, which is just look online. I call the Internet the electronic fortress.
How to figure out your strengths: Marcus Buckingham [author of Now, Discover Your Strengths] has this exercise called “Love it and Loathe it.” During the day when you catch yourself doing something that you love or that you loathe, jot it down. As a person jots down those specifics over a day or two or three, those can be clues to the kind of tasks or projects where they would be most likely to excel.
How to ace the job interview: Do a little bit of research ahead of time. The person you’re interviewing with may have a LinkedIn profile. Certainly look at company or department information. I remember when I was director at Webster, a young woman was interviewing for an internship. It was the end of the day, and we sat down, and I asked if she had any other questions before we wrap things up. And she said, “I wonder what concerns or reservations you have about me as a candidate, because I’d like the chance to address that before we end our meeting.” It blew me away.
Questions to ask in an interview if you want to see what your future boss would really be like: Some people will ask what’s your management style like? I wouldn’t ask because [your future boss] doesn’t always know how other people perceive him or her. I’d ask, How can I be a great employee for you? And I’d ask the other people that you’re meeting with in the interview the following questions:
- What do you like about working with [name of boss]?
- What’s the most challenging part of working with him or her?
Biggest mistake people make when conducting a job search: Asking the question, “What’s out there?” instead of saying, “What’s in here and how can I bring that to bear on what’s needed out there?” I call it the menu mindset. Your choices aren’t limited to what you see posted in ads.
Advice for college graduates: Many colleges and universities provide some kind of career assistance to students and alumni too. Some even offer it at a distance. I had a client who was a graduate of Northwestern and he was able to get some good help through their career office.
Benefits of career counseling: It helps people find a way to integrate their natural strengths and interests with the needs of the world through the workplace. It also helps people avoid getting into work that calls on their weaknesses or bores them.
