Archive for October, 2008
Preparing for Opportunities
October 31st, 2008. Published under Career Hunting. No Comments.
Layoffs and firings rarely come as surprises. If there are warning signs that you will soon be out of a job, follow the Boy Scout motto and be prepared:
- Decide if your career is something you really want. Do you find your work fulfilling or are you just another paper pusher? It might be time for a career change.
- Understand your transferrable skills. Are you good with people? Do you have strong communication skills? Make a list, so you know your strengths and weaknesses.
- Dust off your resume. You will have to decide whether to include your most recent job in your work history. If you can prove to a future employer that you have learned from your actions, you can avoid leaving a sizable gap in your job history.
- Reconsider your references. In the case of a layoff or firing, your most recent employer may not be someone you want to talk to a future interviewer. Make contact with previous references to reinforce the strength of your relationships
- Start networking. Make it known that you may need a job. Take the initiative to meet new people and create opportunities for yourself.
By being prepared for the worst scenarios, you can shorten the time you spend between jobs.
Tactful Interviewing
October 29th, 2008. Published under Career Hunting. No Comments.
If you were fired, don’t let this event mar your search for new opportunities. At your next interview, you will be asked why you left your previous job. Be honest. If you try to sugar-coat your experience, your potential employers will pick up on your lies. Instead, be prepared to tell your interviewer what you have learned from the experience.
If you had problems with your coworkers, emphasize the idea that the group could not work together any more. Talk about how your approach to group work has changed. If you were slacking off in your old job because the work was not challenging enough, tell the interviewer how you plan to be more proactive in asking for assignments. You must understand how to fix the problems of your past.
The key to this situation is to become a better person as a result of your last job. A firing is a sign that you need to change some aspect of your behavior. Once you have made the necessary corrections, you will be able to convince another company to give you a change to prove yourself. Mistakes can make us into better people and better employees if we are willing to learn from them.
Fired? Don’t Despair.
October 27th, 2008. Published under Career Hunting. No Comments.
Toby Young is not a household name, at least not yet, but his story can serve as an inspiration for the rest of us. Young landed his dream job early in his career, working at a major American magazine, but after only about six months his editors showed him the door. After repeated incidents of unprofessional behavior, including sending a stripper-gram to one of his coworkers on Bring-Your-Daughter-to-Work day, Young lost it all.
While many would think that this guy missed his greatest opportunity, he instead started thinking about what he could gain from the incident. His experiences as a magazine writer bloomed into the international bestseller How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, which was later adapted into a movie.
When you’re down on your luck, take the time to reflect on your work history. While you may not want to write a book, you may have learned about work environments you need to avoid. Your temperament may be best suited to an entrepreneurial or freelance setting. Alternatively, you may find that you were let go because you weren’t using your skills to their greatest potential. Although shrouded in failure and disappointment, a firing can serve as a call to self-discovery.
It’s All About The Timing
October 24th, 2008. Published under Uncategorized. No Comments.
Success often requires the confluence of the right person with the right place and time. In 1988, Dan Jansen was the favored contender in Olympic speed skating, but a few hours before the race, he received a call from his family back in the United States informing him that his sister Jane was dying of leukemia. Dan tried to speak to her on the phone, but she did not respond. That night, during the competition, Dan fell twice, dashing his hopes for victory. Eight years later, in his final attempt at the gold medal, Dan broke the world record in the 1,000 meters and winning the gold, achieving the goal he had set long ago. In 2004, he was inducted into the United States Olympic Hall of Fame, and he now has a successful career as a sports commentator and coach.
Sometimes our successes are overshadowed by the negative events happening in the rest of our lives. It can seem impossible, almost as if the universe is conspiring against you, but if you preserve, you can go on to great things. Maintain your focus and deal with each moment as best you can. Patience and hard-work can take you to your goal as long as you keep at it.
Turn Your Shortcomings Around
October 22nd, 2008. Published under The Ultimate You. No Comments.
When something goes wrong in our lives, it can be hard to see the forest for the trees. We try to find the source of the errors in the world around us. It seems obvious that there must be someone or something “out there” conspiring against us. How could we ever succeed with the deck stacked against us like it is?
This is the wrong approach. Defeatist thinking patterns place the locus of control outside of your power, making the obstacles worse than they seem. You must realize that the only thing you have the ability to change is your attitudes toward your situation, so you must be brutally honest with yourself. If you were outside of the situation, where would you place the blame? What could you have done to make the situation better? How can you move forward, minimizing the effects of any mistakes you have made?
By bringing the locus of control back under your power, you seize the ability to improve your situation. You gain the resilience and strength that you need to ask not what made this situation go badly, but what can you do to prevent mistakes in the future.
Knowing If Your Job is Not Right for You
October 20th, 2008. Published under Career Hunting. No Comments.
Picture this: You’ve been called into your boss’ office for what seems like the thousandth time. Your work isn’t up to the standard. You can’t get the procedure for filing reports down. Even though you try, your spirit is not in your efforts. The chasm created by your failures seems so steep that you can’t climb out. This scenario reflects many indications that you are not using your strengths in the right area.
In the movie Stranger than Fiction, the character Ana tells the story of how she became a baker. While attending Harvard Law School, she started going to study sessions that lasted all night long, but her grade point average didn’t improve. Ana began baking cookies to share with her study buddies, and she loved it. She failed law school but found her true passion in the kitchen.
If we are not in the right environment, we will never succeed. Failure in this case is an indicator that you are not following the correct career path. If you have exhausted all your options for improving your situation, it is time to change paths. Listen to what your experiences tell you and see the signs that you need to explore another field of employment.
Be Daring: Try Something New
October 17th, 2008. Published under Career Satisfaction. No Comments.
While we love our comfort zones, career development stagnates with routine. Once we settle in to a position and know exactly what we can do, that’s all we do. While this strategy keeps us from failing, we don’t really succeed either.
Risking failure forces us to stretch our skills. Mary Ann was a successful college student in her last year at school. She could have coasted through her classes, graduated, and headed to law school at the end of the year. At the prompting of one of her professors, Mary Ann applied for a prestigious scholarship, something she had dreamed of but didn’t think she could get on her own. She put all of her effort into the application process and learned much about herself.
In essence, she failed and did not win the scholarship, but the process opened many doors for her; she won the school’s highest honors and accepted a job directing economic development in a small community. Mary Ann’s life would have been smoother had she not taken the risk, however she is grateful for the diversity it brought to her life.
Pick one of your daydreams. What can you do to make that dream a reality? If you go for it, you never know what opportunities await you.
Being Brave at Work: Asking for Help
October 15th, 2008. Published under Career Satisfaction. No Comments.
You’ve made a mess of things with an important project. The orders you placed for one client are mixed up with those for another. The accounting is all tangled up, you clients are getting angry, and you can’t fulfill your promises. The situation seems hopeless, and you are certain you are going to be fired.
We make mistakes all the time but the key to limiting their effects is asking for help. While it is difficult to admit that we are wrong, a larger problem is that we do not know who to turn to.
Before you encounter problems, try to find a mentor at your company. A mentor does not have to be your immediate superior; all you need is another employee who has seniority and knows the company intimately. By networking with your co-workers, you can determine who has the most to teach you.
The next step is to work up the courage to speak with your mentor-to-be, but make sure you have a clear idea of what you need from the partnership. Most likely, the person you ask will be honored by the idea and will agree to help you out. Once you have established a relationship with your mentor, you will have someone to run to when you no longer know what to do.
What do you Need in your Next President?
October 14th, 2008. Published under Personal Energy and Kolbe. No Comments.
Do Your Conative Duty! - Help Kolbe make history by taking our innaugural survey on Presidential instincts! Answer a brief set of questions at http://www.presidentialinstincts.com and we’ll use your responses to create instinctive profiles of John McCain and Barack Obama. You can also sound off on what MO you would like to see in the OO (Oval Office). View results by age, gender, voting preference and more. It’s fun, fast and a great way to get friends, colleagues and clients interested in Kolbe and aware of conation. We’ll announce final results on October 28. We’ll compare them to the actual Kolbe A™ Index results for McCain and Obama, assuming the candidates complete the complimentary Kolbe A™ Indexes we’ve offered each of them.
Fight Your Fears — Find a Friend
October 13th, 2008. Published under Career Satisfaction. No Comments.
Sometimes, when work problems have you completely stumped, in the words of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, you need to use a lifeline and phone a friend. While we often think that the road to success is travelled alone, our friends can give us the strength we need to take the chances that will lead to larger goals.
If you work alone, you can only rely on the skills you possess. You have no one to buoy your spirits when you are discouraged or to share your successes. Our friends often know our abilities better than we do. Where we see ourselves through a lens of self-criticism and doubt, our friends see a strong, smart, able-bodied compatriot. Don’t keep your work life a secret when you are having trouble; talk out your troubles with a friend and brainstorm solutions. You never know when creativity will strike.
You can also develop working friendships once you understand the politics of your workplace. Work on projects with a variety of people. Despite some awkward pairings, you will learn which of your coworkers have approaches that complement your own. Every workplace has its power teams, and with some experimentation, you and your group will find your way to the top.