career ideas – Page 3

March 13, 2009March 13, 2009

The big MO and Succeeding with Your Career Ideas and Goals

There are lots of things to say about how to succeed with any long-term goals—whether starting a business, choosing careers, changing careers, changing your department’s culture, becoming a lawyer, earning a degree, or even becoming a better skier or dancer. But one thing is particularly vital, relatively easy, and certainly important to keep in mind.

The advice is:

Keep up the momentum. The big MO. Simple really.

That means take steps regularly. Any positive steps.

I’ve seen it with coaching clients, class participants, and yeh, myself too lots of times. Once you start feeling stuck, you tend to keep getting more stuck, feeling more and more overwhelmed and discouraged. It becomes harder and harder to get moving again.

With apologies to Newton and his laws of motion—it’s true that objects (or people) at rest tend to stay at rest.

Fortunately, the opposite is true too: Objects (or people) in motion tend to stay in motion.

My coaching clients make their greatest progress in finding new career ideas or making great plans when they simply complete small steps each week and are held accountable for them. They stay motivated, see at least a little progress all the time, and over time realize they are getting to their career goals.

Even very small steps qualify to keep you moving ahead like meeting with a career Success Partner for 15 minutes for a check in. Or brainstorming with someone about new ways to approach your project. Or reading something inspiring that gets you moving. Or….well, it really can be almost anything as long as it moves you along.

You’ll know if it’s working because you feel relief and energized again.

Even more important, these very small steps can accomplish very big things. Even big, challenging goals must be broken down into smaller ones anyhow. Don’t get overwhelmed by how many steps there are. Just do one of them and keep on moving ahead. Focus on that, and enjoy what you are doing now.

Don’t know what the next step should be? Just follow Lang’s First Principle of Action: You may not know THE next step you must take, but you can (almost) always come up with A next step that will move you forward—physically, emotionally, financially, etc. Each time you move ahead, any remaining stuck point can be seen from a new perspective.

Make sure you don’t wait for some wide open period of time to really move ahead.

Keep on moving and you will keep feeling energized and motivated and open to opportunities that will come your way.

March 5, 2009November 13, 2009

More than a Network: Your Career Coaching Team

In most cases, when I hear people talk about networking they mean connecting with people who can get them to the right people, companies or information they need. That’s useful. (You might also want to check out this career ideas post about how to network at events )

But these connectors are only part of what you need to really succeed in your career, job, or job search. You need a full-scale community of support. People who do more than just connect you.

At the heart of that community are your VIPs for your career. You might think of them as your unofficial career coaching team because they are performing some of the key roles of any quality career coach.

Your career coaching team should include people who fill 5 of these career coaching roles:
1. Connectors—People who can get you to others you need to meet to get moving, get ahead or get a job. What most people see as their main career building community.

2. Advisors—People who are good sounding boards and can help you with big picture thinking and with thought-out opinions about what you want to do. These people are not afraid to disagree with you, but are still strongly supportive.

3. Idea people—Creatives with great new ways of looking at things to get you out of your rut—not necessarily advice, but new frameworks and perspectives.

4. Emotional Connectors—People who help you reconnect with your own passions, motivation, and optimism. After you talk with these people you are charged and ready to act.

5. Success Partners—Another name for a success partner is an accountability partner. You typically need only one. I’ll be writing more about how to have success with a success partner in an upcoming post (or if you have Guide to Lifework you can read about them in detail there).

Can one person play more than one role at different times? Definitely. But it’s best to have a number of people who you can call on for each role (except the Success Partner).

To get going, look carefully through your list of contacts and note in one central place the names of at least one key person who can serve in each of these roles.

Having this list will remind you of the community you have to help you no matter what happens. It will also make it easy to remember who you can contact, which mamkes it a lot more likely you will benefit from other peoples help.

For instance, when you’re feeling discouraged, you may not think of some of the people you listed as emotional supporters, but if you have a list, that will prod you to call one of them. Or if you are stuck for new ideas, you may keep banging away on your own, but you can look at your list and realize you can contact one or more of your idea people.

Once you have this list of career VIPs, you can expand your list well beyond them. You can also work with social media friends for a range of advice or ideas or connections too. But don’t assume the “wisdom of crowds” as good as that can be, can replace that one-on-one support that these key people of your community can provide.

March 5, 2009March 5, 2009

Career Mentors

In the post, More than a Network: Your Career Coaching Team, I recommended you find groups of people to fill at least 5 kinds of key roles-network connectors, advisers, idea people, emotional connectors and success partners.

That’s for anyone, but especially for anyone seeking to change or advance their career or about to embark on a job search.

But some people also need a sixth kind of person, someone who knows the ropes in a particular job, company or industry. That’s a career or business mentor.

This is a person who’s been there, done that and is willing to help you navigate your specific situation. You may think you know better than others in your company or industry how to go about doing things and DON’T want to do the same old same old thing everyone has done. You want to innovate and make a name for yourself. You don’t want to follow old advice and look like everyone else. You may even have been hired specifically to bring in a fresh perspective.

To Do Something New, Talk to Someone Who’s Seen the Old

Guess what? If you’re thinking that way, you REALLY need a mentor. Not to conform to the old ways of doing things that are unproductive, but in order to understand how to get things done, how to move your bold new ideas forward, what the inner workings of your company is, who to connect with to move things ahead and how to approach these people.

They can also tell you if your brilliant new idea is what got someone else fired when it went down in flames 6 months ago They have company or industry history and understand the culture. These are things you simply won’t know if you are new in a company.

You can try out a potential mentor relationship by asking questions of possible mentors. You probably won’t want to choose your immediate boss or manager as you may need advice about working with them or be free to say things you wouldn’t feel comfortable sharing with that person. But people higher up are possible, and don’t overlook your peers who, if they are knowledgeable about the company, can be mentors sometimes too.

Know What You Want

But before you ask someone to be a mentor or even develop that relationship you should decide what you want from a mentor. What kinds of questions do you need answered, what kind of advice, what kind of networking support within your company or industry. Without that, you and your potential mentor will be floundering.

Take your time approaching people, and check out the chemistry. Maybe you’ve had mentors at school or in other companies before. Look to these experiences for examples of what things work for you and what don’t.

February 24, 2009March 2, 2009

The Creative Jobseeker–Don’t Be a Slave to Your Job Search

If you are thinking of a new job or have new career ideas, or if your company may force you to think of a new job or career, now is certainly the time to get ready, not after you’re already out of work.

But once you’re out of work, how should you spend your time? Many people say spend at least 40 hours a week on your job search–after all, it’s your new full time job.

If you can find 40 hours of productive work, and it’s not wearing you out to the point you’re headed for an illness or exhausted presentation at your next interview–then that’s fine. IN the first weeks of unemployment you probably need to spend that much time on your job search.

But this is the real world folks, and in the real world, you may be a lot better off taking time off from your job search in planned ways than pushing yourself unproductively for 40 hours a week every week if you don’t find a job right away.

I’m just not convinced from what I see that most people can put in 40 useful hours, but some do this out of a desire to prove to themselves and others that they are doing all they can. So they spend hours in social media trying to make new connections, or reply to job ads they know don’t fit what they want or what the company really wants–simply because it’s putting in the time.

What should you do?

Focus on the basics. Assuming you will be staying in your same field/career/job area, focus on

1. Networking–always the big daddy of job search and no different today except for the new ways to network.

I like to think of this as building and tapping into your community of support where you find ways you can help others at least as much as you seek help. Even during your time of need when out of work, helping others should remain important. If you are not contacting most everyone you know and asking for new leads from them, you are not doing your job.

2. Customize and complete your profiles

Profiles include your

Resume (standard and portfolio style as on visualcv.com)
Cover letter
Online presence in LinkedIn, FaceBook, Twitter, etc.

Don’t skimp on these, especially your resume and cover letters. Each resume and cover letter you send out to particular jobs should be customized with KEYWORDS from the job description so you can at least get past the computer/human screeners for the first round of screening.

3. Research job openings and company profiles at companies you might want to work for even if they don’t have openings now. Do what you can to get past the HR managers even if only to get an email, phone call or brief intro meeting with some decisionmakers in a company you like.

These are not the only things to do, but they have by far the biggest impact.

And Then Do…

If you are doing these 3 well, don’t spend hours at your computer searching for some new Twitter group or contact, some new job lead, some new way to tweak the resume again–just to put in your time.

Instead, make sure you spend the time in other activities, things that maybe you couldn’t when you were at work:

Exercising
Meditating or doing something to stay centered and focused
Taking your time with healthy vs. fast food rushed meals
Sleeping adequately, probably about 8 hrs a day
Catching up in the key skill or knowledge areas in your field of expertise.
Learning something new in another field. Very often, creativity and innovation come about from applying an idea from one field to a new field. Get creative–you’ll also be more employable.
HAVING FUN

When people are out of work and can’t afford some of the fun things they normally do, they often just shut down all fun or else beat themselves up for wasting time in front of the TV. Reconnect with hobbies and with family and friends in ways that don’t cost money but share good, upbeat energy.

These 7 non job search actions are necessary, not fluff. They will improve your mental, physical, and spiritual health. And there’s a bonus–they are also what will keep you energized, motivated, and positive and confident. If you can display these qualities when networking and on job interviews, you are MUCH MORE LIKELY TO MAKE THAT ALL IMPORTANT CONNECTION that makes people say, this is someone who I would like to work with, that can get things done, who stands out.

In other words, sure–do the due diligence tasks of jobhunting. These will take time. Don’t avoid them. But see the opportunities that are there to further your well being in other ways and to not waste time with busy work. After all, when you get that new job, you will probably find it a lot harder to get all that exercise, sleep, meditation, learning, and family and fun time back into your life.

–Career changers, jobseekers–Be sure to sign up for free career and creativity ezine and bonus

February 2, 2009February 2, 2009

Superbowl Career Ad–Emotional Truths, But Don’t Just React to the Negative

I confess I didn’t watch most of the Superbowl ads. I did see the end of the game and all of the Boss of course. But I did look later for the career ads just to keep up my career coaching cred in some weird way.

The careerbuilder ad made me laugh with its clever repetitions and images. But with my coaching hat on, I also saw that it was containing some basic emotional truths about career or job change. The ad showed a woman screaming in her car when she arrives at work, bosses showing no respect, people crying and punching toy koala bears. Actually, doesn’t sound too funny when you just write it down. But it’s through the humor that we can get to the tougher emotional truths sometime.

Most of us do wait until we feel incredibly angry, sad, frustrated, disgusted or dissed before doing anything about our jobs. Studies show we are more likely to act in response to getting rid of pain that going for pleasure, getting rid of unhappiness than going for happiness. That can keep us in so-so positions, which eventually will also drag us down emotionally. It just takes longer, like water dripping until it finally makes a hole in the stone.

I Twittered about this today, how the ad showed some basic situations and feelings that revealed underlying emotional truths we need to notice and deal with. A colleague, Shaun Jamison, replied that the problem is we often then jump from the frying pan to the fire. I agree. In trying to end our pain we might take rash action, having probably waited to

It’s not that the pain we’re feeling isn’t a good indicator about what to do. It’s just incomplete. What’s missing in part is our careful thinking about what else we can do, what jobs are better fits–but what’s also missing are the happy emotions.

The happy emotions of joy, peace, contentment, excitement can guide us to envisioning a job we’d really like. In my coaching, I always start out finding out what really gets people energized, passionate, excited. Doesn’t matter if it’s nonwork stuff. First get to that connection with your energy and passion and desire, and we can then use our thinking to figure out how to apply those passions into a better career and job.

And yeh, it doesn’t hurt to be able to laugh at our problems sometimes too, as with the ad.

January 25, 2009March 31, 2009

Career Ideas–Understand Failure

One of the most famous stories about seeing failure in a new light is about Edison. A reporter is said to have asked how he felt about having failed in thousands of experiments trying to make a lightbulb. Edison replied, I haven’t failed once. I found 9,999 ways to not make the lightbulb.

Einstein too had many failures, including a critique of Neils Bohr’s work which didn’t take into account Einstein’s own theory of relativity. As a career coach (with plenty of my own “failures” along the way, including how I chose my previous career), I often deal with clients who see their careers or their current career as a failure. Sometimes it’s because they just got fired. Sometimes it’s because they are stressed out in the wrong job. Sometimes it’s because they don’t know where they are going in their lives and already middle aged. To deal with such perceptions of failure with my clients, I need to do 2 things.

First, isolate what the failure really is, and see if the person is not overgeneralizing much about a mistake, blowing it all out of proportion, and leading to bad decisions such as suddenly leaving a job. For instance, when they say they never do job interviews right, I want to know what they mean by right and wrong. Maybe they just mean that they tend to answer one question out of dozens during the interview in a way that hurt their chances, something that can happen in the best of interviews. Maybe they mean they offended someone by their view on how things should be done. We can review these answers and see if they were excellent answers that just didn’t match with the particular interview.Â These answers do not mean the person is a failure at interviewing and needs to go hide his head. In fact, interviews are two way streets where you are evaluating the employer as they evaluate you. With a two way process, the answer that “failed” with the interviewer may be the one that helped you realize this wasn’t the place for you.

Second, even if the specific “failure” or mistake was real and significant, the next question is not–Are you ever going to get interviewing right, but What did you learn. It’s hard to learn new things if you don’t see something as needing improvement, and when we see failure it really focuses our attention. So failure is success, as Edison realized, in that it is a core component of succeeding and learning.Â In coaching yourself, look at your failures to see if you are overgeneralizing (for instance, I didn’t finish the project on time again so I’m never going to succeed in this job). Narrow down to what the problem actually was and then go ahead and see what you can learn and do differently from then on. With all that in mind, check out this video from Honda about failure and how innovation and change depend on pushing things until they fail in order to really learn something new.

If you haven’t already signed up for my free biweekly ezine on careers and creativity, go on over here and you’ll also get bonus materials including keys to lifework, the 4 foundation questions for career success, and a way to decide if a coach is the right one for you.

January 21, 2009January 21, 2009

Obama’s Online Portfolio–Visual Resume

Yesterday, I wrote about job search and related visual resumes or portfolios online, and today I see from Allison Doyle of about.com on Twitter that our new president, who’s team is always on the cutting edge of online things, has a visual resume. You wouldn’t compare yourself to him in terms of background for a job search (unless you want to be president maybe), so no need to compare yourself in terms of all the videos and the depeth of his resume site from a tech perspective either.

WIth that in mind go on over to his visual resume.

January 21, 2009February 13, 2009

Career Coaching–It’s All About the Questions (mostly)

This week I spoke with a few people about coaching and how problems get solved in career coaching. People asked how I work or what I would do as a coach if faced with this situation or that. One wanted to know in detail about my processes.

It’s always great when people have these questions because it forces me to get clear again for myself as well as them about the process of coaching. It’s also a great chance to overcome misconceptions people can so easily have about career coaching, if they’ve never experienced it.

The people I spoke with this week all got it that coaching isn’t therapy of any sort and knew that it was a tool to help people help themselves get out of ruts, get a vision, make a plan, do the plan. What I did find myself talking about was how a lot of coaching isn’t me answering questions (though some of it is) but asking them.

After all it’s only by questions that the coach can even know what’s going on for the person in terms of their passions and interests and challengs and difficulties. It’s also a way to help clients look at things from different perspectives. My favorite is when someone says something like,

“I like construction except not full time so I’m thinking about some carpentry work which is pretty good. Of course I’d love to have my own catering business, but that’s not going to happen so maybe what I need to do is…

And I just back them up and ask, “Why isn’t that going to happen?” In other words, I start uncovering the reasoning and feelings and assumptions that led to that resigned conclusion about something they’ve identified as a prime passion. Usually, they have obstacles, but what they really love to do turns out to be very practical and possible.

Or sometimes it’s not–they aren’t going to play quarterback for the Packers at age 49 (unless their name is Favre and they keep making comebacks maybe), but I can ask more questions about what they love about catering, for instance, and find out that it’s about being involved with creating delightful things for people. We can then go through questions and discussions to figure out what that might mean besides catering.

It’s really quite fun and engaging for the clients as well as for me of course.

Of course, there’s a lot more to coaching than questions. It may include examples and models, can include advice, and in my case certainly includes many kinds of creative problem solving processes and activities.

But it’s imposible to do coaching without the question, and the bottom line question people are really asking me when they ask about coaching is this:

Can this really help me truly solve my career challenge? Or is this likely to lead me to my ideal lifework or career?

To answer yes, the coach has to have a very pragmatic orientation, even when talking first about career dreams, as I like to do. But it’s not possible for the coach to answer yes unless the client also says yes–meaning they have to be willing to commit to solving their problems, and to take the time to do the homework (I give lots of homework so clients move quickly on their own as much as possible). and be open to new ideas for their careers or job searches.

Check out a related career coaching post–I’m Smart, Competent–Why Would I Need a Career Life Coach?

January 20, 2009February 13, 2009

The Emerging Social Media–Visual Resume/Portfolio Trend

As with everything else in the career and job search front, the expectations keep rising for what you can or should do online. That’s apparently becoming true of resumes. There are many sites to post your resume, usually with a variety of standard but helpful templates. You also can easily post your resume with a URL that at least includes your name.

Most sites still offer pretty standard looking examples and templates that seem helpful but not much different from resumes 20 years ago (except they are online). But there are also newer options to consider like more dynamic pages, with more photos, live links, examples of your work.

Graphics designers and artists have quite a number of sites for portfolios, but to extend this concept to the rest of us is what’s emerging now.

Some call it the social media resume, though this can mean anything from listing your Facebook URL to extensive use of YouTube video links, audio, links to blogs and other profiles, RSS feeds and even the chance to track visitors to your resume through Google Analytics.

They blur the line, if there is one, between a qualifications resume and your own website or blog or page on Squidoo or HubPages. In fact, people also use social media bios when not looking for work as such, but to have a presence for selling services, products, or just being ready for someone to notice. People use their blogs soley for this, rather than ongoing posts.

Check out a couple of the visual or social media resume services for yourself here and here, for example. Here’s a link to a brief blog post about what to be careful about when relying on social media for job searches.

What do you think? What’s your experience with online resumes, social media resumes? Feelings about this trend? Stories?

Remember to sign up for my free creative problem solving and career ideas ezine for more articles and special offers.

January 13, 2009

Keep Writing those Cover Letters

So with all the brevity online with Twitter and emails, maybe the wordy one page or multi-paragraph email cover letter is as archaic as the typewriter. An online resume is more than enough, right?

No so, according to study developed by OfficeTeam and conducted by an independent research firm. The firm interviewed 150 randomly chosen senior executives at top coporations. Executives said cover letters were very valuable (23%) or somewhat valuable (63%) and only 14% said not valuable at all.

In addition, your competitors are sending cover letters, as 80% of the execs said cover letters were either very or somewhat common.

You can check out the the full news release on the OfficeTeam site.

January 11, 2009February 14, 2009

Career Idea–Get Grateful, Get Happy, Get Effective

Eric was 16 and knew it all so had no reason to participate, apparently, in a journaling class I was teaching. We got along OK, and respected each other, but he wasn’t exactly a great contributor in attitude or ideas to the group. But after I gave one assignment to the group–he came back the next class and participated instead of just joking or hanging out in the back with his crew and interrupting. In fact, he wanted to tell everyone the incredibly good experiences he had because of the assignment. Probably half the class had good experiences they told, and the others just hadn’t done it.

I’ve taught journaling classes to 10 year olds and seniors and most everyone between. I’ve taught them to improve your health (yes there’s good evidence for that), to be a writer, and to explore your spirituality. But this exercise that Eric liked is some kind of universal that works with everyone who gives it a try no matter why they are journaling. I also use it sometimes with career coaching clients

The activity is simple, fast, and easy–what more can you want? In the version I give, I ask people to keep a gratitude journal for 5 minutes a day at least 3x a week for the length of the course, which varies.

It may sound obvious to some of you or corny to others, but it makes people happier, more relaxed and more energized in my experience.

In recent years, I’m finding support for this very old idea in very new research. Here’s a nice summary of some of it from PsyBlog. I was surprised to find that there were better results form doing this just once a week vs. daily or 3x as I had recommended.

The key I find when I’ve used the exercise (myself and with others) is to make sure to pick things that you actually feel grateful for and don’t get caught up in what others may say you SHOULD be grateful for. If everyone says you should be grateful you weren’t hurt badly when someone totalled your car and you’re just feeling angry–don’t list that in your gratitude journal. You might consider it, but don’t put down what you should feel. Do put down even small things that you are grateful for. You’ll know the difference.

Why is this a post in my career ideas blog?

Simple–if you’re getting stuck lately (or any time) on lousy economic news, lousy work or personal news and getting pessimistic and unhappy, you are not going to be effective in finding a new job, deciding a career or even being your best at work wherever you are now. On the other hand, if you can find things that are positive in your life that you actually feel grateful for, you will change your mindset Or rather, thinking gratefully has a cascade effect and automatically changes your mindset.

To put it simply–it makes you happier. But here’s the point even some of the researchers may not be noting–it makes you happier by CONNECTING YOU TO YOUR OWN LIFE. That kind of happiness will always get you more creative, more engaged, and more hopeful, too–which is what I saw in Eric.

Who knows? It might even make you happier with your current work when you thought you had to leave, and that might rub off on that annoying boss or colleague. Well, optimism is good too.

January 5, 2009January 5, 2009

Keeping Difficult New Year’s Career Resolutions

Here’s a common career question I get as a career coach and an answer I wrote a couple of years ago at that start of the new year that has helped my clients and ezine readers get clearer about what they need to do.

CAREER QUESTION: I tend to pick difficult New Year’s resolutions (begin a new career, double the size of my business, make lots more money, meet a romantic partner, lose a zillion pounds) and wind up just dreading them and feeling as if I have failed. Do you have a creative way to overcome this stuck point, other than just abandoning these kinds of goals?

ANSWER: What’s your deeper goal? If your resolution was to lose weight, is your deeper goal to be healthier? Then find many ways to meet that goal, not just the one way represented by your specific resolution. In other words, give yourself many paths for success in getting what you really want, and with the small successes you will feel encouraged to continue as well with the more difficult original resolution.

The idea here is to meet your deeper, underlying desires and needs and not get stuck with something you feel overwhelmed by, as if that’s the only path to fulfilling your desire. Get more ways to move forward. With even small successes, you’ll have motivational fuel to get beyond the stuck point of your original, difficult resolution as well.

Say you want to lose weight. Ask yourself why? Maybe it’s to become healthier. Then find other ways of becoming healthier that may have nothing to do with weight, such as by taking a vacation (reducing stress, improving health) or meditating. Or by eating healthier, even if you eat the same number of calories and aren’t on a reducing diet. Don’t drop the specific weight loss goal if you feel it’s important. Find ways to make that happen too, but add other small (and large) ways to succeed with your deeper desire.

Or say your resolution is to switch careers. Ask why you want to switch careers. Maybe to do something you are more passionate about. Then think of new ways to enjoy your favorite passions more hours of the week. If you can’t incorporate, for instance, your passion for the outdoors and hiking into your work, maybe you can take a walk in a park during lunch or before or after work. If one passion is making fabulous meals, then do that and maybe even get paid, such as catering your friend’s 40^th birthday party. Continue to look for a better career that you might feel passionate about that includes the outdoors and hiking or includes cooking, but with the idea that this is now just one way to meet your larger goal of feeling more passion in your daily life.