OPEN POSITION: HAPPY PERSON AT WORK

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Meet Jane. Jane manages to wake up in the morning to the sound of an annoying alarm clock, sludge out of bed, get ready for work and drive to the office while just barely managing to stay awake on the way there. Jane spends 9 hours at work because she usually does not take a solid lunch hour, nor does she take any other breaks throughout the day.  After her workday Jane gets back in to the car and navigates her way home through rush hour traffic.  At this point Jane has effectively spent at least 10 hours including drive time outside of the home.  But wait, it gets better. In the winter the days are shorter so Jane drives to work in the dark and she drives home in the dark. All of her daylight hours are spent in the office which she goes to because she needs to pay the bills.

 

Sound familiar?

 

Are you going to work because you have found something that you enjoy doing for 8 hours a day or are you going to work to pay the bills? It’s time to find out. Don’t worry, you don’t have to quit in a huff and puff to find your ‘dream job.’ Most of us can’t afford to do this anyway. If you don’t want to leave your job, or if it is really not practical to leave right this very moment, find something that you enjoy about your work and build on it.

 

• What part of your day makes you smile?
• What part of your day makes you laugh?
• What part of your job makes you proud?
• Do you have a professional mentor inside or outside of work?
• Do you have goals at work that you are actively working towards?
• Is there another job that you have your eye on within the company? What do you need to do to be eligible for that position?

If you are currently not employed, were you happy at your last job? If not, are you looking for the same type of job? Why? The nice part about being unemployed is that, if only for a moment, you can take a deep breath and strategically plan your next happy career step.

Related articles:

FINDING HAPPINESS AT WORK

I LOVE MY CAREER – JOSEPH PURKEY, ARCHITECTURE

I LOVE MY CAREER – LEA POISSON, DANCE INSTRUCTOR

I LOVE MY CAREER – STEWART MCGEHEE, EMERGENCY MEDICAL SERVICES

 

Linked In Networking

Creating and using your network on Linked In is a snap! With over 200 million members on LinkedIn (as of January 2013), Linked In is an essential part of your job search process.

Job hunting is like fishing. What is on YOUR hook?

Last year I went on a sport fishing trip in Mazatlan. Although I was sure I had developed a case of Ichthyophobia (fear of fish) from my last very unsuccessful fishing ‘incident,’ I was hoping for a successful experience provided by professional fishermen. I was amazed by the number of parallels I saw between job searching and fishing.

The early bird gets the worm.

Since fish wake up pretty early in the morning, we staggered onboard with coffee in hand at dawn. If the with were up early, we had to be up early.

1. Follow a schedule which matches that of the industry you want to enter. Your current job is to diligently promote yourself during ‘working’ hours to a paying job!

Carlos the deckhand took some time to understand our expectations and what a successful trip looked like for us so that he could deliver the best experience unique to our needs. What kind of fish did we want to catch and what did we want to do with said fish once it was caught.

1. Know what success looks like when you start your search.

Previously I had thought fishing consisted of throwing a line or two in the water and seeing what happened. Sometimes you were lucky and sometimes you weren’t. Regardless, a lot of cheap beer was consumed.

Wrong. Sport fishing is like hunting. You have to research where the fish are running. Talk to other boat captains. See where they had luck yesterday. What types of fish were out there? What type of bait were they biting?

1. Do your research. Understand the market needs associated with your desired position or industry. Reach out to your contacts. Do they know of an open position? What companies are hiring? What skills and type of experience are they looking for? Develop a trusted network and build your knowledge base.

We stood on the fly bridge perpetually scanning the horizon for marlin fins. There’s one! There’s one! Carlos excitedly announced. Captain Mimo moved the boat in to position as Carlos grabbed one of the poles and violently jerked the line in hopes of attracting the marlin.

Opportunity on the horizon.

1. Put yourself in a position for success and go for every opportunity.

FISH ON!

The marlin was hooked and jumped clear out of the water in an attempt to break free from the hook. And he succeeded. Carlos pulled in the line and replaced it with another lure with fresh bait.

1. Have you ever reached the last stage of interviews for the ‘perfect job’ only to find out that they went for someone else? That’s OK. Reassess. Analyze what went wrong, what you could do better next time and try, try again.

How many poles do you have in the water?

We continued to troll along at 7 knots. We had 10 bites and did hear FISH ON! again, resulting in a beautiful 125lb marlin jumping clear out of the water behind us with beautiful blue streaks along its side. Carlos quickly instructed everyone to help pull in the other 4 lines and after a long fight we brought it on board. Finally. Success!

1. It might take a while, but if you keep trolling along at a high speed, put yourself in the right position and stand at the ready to hook it when it does come along, you will find an opportunity to meet success.

Simple steps to conduct an effective job search.

Will the New Year bring you a New Job?

2013

Another chance to start anew. What are your professional goals this year?

 

Get a promotion? Earn a raise or bonus? Start working on your Masters? Finish writing a book? Start a new job?

 

Whatever the goal, it is important to meet the head on and commit to making it happen!

 

Step 1: Write the goal down. Be specific.

Step 2: Determine what resources you need to accomplish the goal.

Step 3: Determine what roadblocks you may have along the way and how to address them.

Step 4: Divide your goal up in to a series of benchmarks.

Step 5: Determine a reasonable timeline to complete each benchmark and reach your final goal.

 

Have a great year!

Can you Dazzle?

What can you offer a future employer? How can you help them increase productivity, save money, increase market presence, identify profit leaks?

Regardless of whether you are applying for a job as office manager, automotive mechanic, or CFO, you want the interviewer to say,

“Wow, we can’t afford NOT to hire this person!” 

Taking the time to be prepared at a very high level will allow you to offer a lot more to the position, industry, and company.

Position

1. What value does this position bring to the company?
2. Does your position have the opportunity to increase company revenue? How?
3. Does your position have the opportunity to reduce costs without impacting productivity? How?
4. What would happen to the productivity of the company if they did not have your position filled? Can you quantify these losses?
5. What are the most desirable characteristics for the right applicant in this position?
6. How would the company, other employees, or customers benefit if someone went above and beyond in this position? What does ‘above and beyond’ look like?

Industry

1.  What are the market challenges in your desired industry?
2. Is the industry booming or struggling?
3. How have the fluctuations in the economy affected the industry?
4. What are the strongest companies in the industry? Why are they doing well?

Company

1. Is the company you are applying to work at financially stable?
2. Has the executive team remained a stable team or have there been a lot of changes over the past five years?
3.  Check to see if the company has written any press releases recently.
4. If the company is public- how much has the stock fluctuated in the past year and why?
5. Is the company expected to grow/downsize/stay the same size?
6. How does the company deal with the industry market challenges?
7. What is the company mission statement?

Use your resources: LinkedIn, Industry Newsletters, and Business Journals

Back in Action

It has been about a year since I last updated this site.  For the purposes of this blog, I wish I could say that I have been working so much that I have not had time to update posts for you to read.

The alternative and correct reality is much better. My husband and I worked really hard, made some smart decisions, bought a sailboat, and sailed to Mexico. We have been sailing in Mexico for a year. You can read the sailing blog at www.svmoondance.wordpress.com.

I promise that I have not been completely lazy and out of touch. During this past year I have taken on a handful clients (by referral only) and assisted with interview skills and resume writing. I also published 3 sailing articles and won a sailboat race in the Puerto Vallarta area. And although living on a sailboat is indeed luxurious, at the same time it is the hardest ‘job’ I have ever had!

I am now back in California for a while. I took my own advice and was offered two jobs after my first two days of job searching! As my past clients, as well as my personal experience can verify, sales techniques DO work to get a job! I will start to update this blog again. Email me at laneariley@gmail.com if you would like 1:1 job search, resume, and interview help.

Furthermore I will have new exciting news to reveal in the next couple of months. So stay tuned and share this blog with anyone you know who needs to get a (better) job!

IF YOU ARE ABOUT TO QUIT. OR GET FIRED. KNOW THIS BEFORE YOU LEAVE YOUR JOB.

 Are you taking the right career steps towards your next job?

Whether you are leaving your job on your terms or not, you will feel better doing so with a resume that is ready to go. Updating your resume frequently allows you to keep an accurate accounting of your accomplishments. The benefits of the self assessment that a resume forces you to complete not only helps you get a new job, you become aware of your professional development pace. What have you accomplished in the past 6 months? Is it resume worthy? If not, you better make sure your next six months are stellar or start looking for a new job.

“If you’re not practicing, somebody else is, somewhere, and he’ll be ready to take your job.”

-Brooks Robinson, American professional baseball player, b. 1937

Gather your I ROCK proof.

A resume listing your job description in bullet point form will put a hiring manager to sleep. What DOES impress interviewers is a description of how much you rocked in your last position(s). Start compiling a BRAG BOOK. It is so much easier to gather this information BEFORE you leave your job!

1. Pull up as many Congratulatory and Good Job emails/notes you can find. Who recognized you? Were they C-level? What did they recognize you for? Take note of all of the small and large accomplishments that warranted recognition.
2. Performance Reviews. If your company believes in this practice take the all the positives you can find out of your reviews. If there were any negatives that you have since addressed, note your areas of improvement and how much you improved in these areas.
3. Collect stats on your accomplishments. And lots of them. Stats help you prove your success in your resume.

If you feel your enthusiasm for your current job starting to waiver, work hard to find a way to be happy at your job (new position, new responsibility, etc) or find a way to get another job! Waiting too long (months quickly turn in to years) as an unhappy employee will hurt your ability to a) stay employed and b) remain a marketable employee to a new company. Your quality of work starts to suffer making it harder to add to your Brag Book if you are not enjoying your current position.

And if you like your job, use this process to ask for a raise!

Will your Story get you a job?

 

You are sitting in the interview chair. The interviewer is sitting on the other side of the desk and their chair seems to be five inches higher than yours. He has both your cover letter and resume on the desk in front of him and he still asks the unavoidable question, “So tell me about yourself.”

Well, um, I graduated from college in 2002 with a major in liberal arts and I, um, couldn’t find a job right away and then I started to work for Z company because I needed a job….

Sound familiar? Let’s change that. It is time to create your Story.

What is your Story?

This is an important piece and not to be confused with your Pitch. Your story colors your background and explains how your past experiences have molded you in to the stellar competent and accomplished person you are today!

Your story should take 3- 5 minutes to tell. Include the following:

1. College or professional education/certifications
2. Background. Share your career related experiences that are most relevant to your prospective employer. This is not a time to be shy- share your stellar accomplishments that you have gained along the way.
3. Future goals. What is your career objective or your future goals and what can you offer the company.

If you can, offer something (career related or personal if it relates to achieving a goal) to make yourself memorable.

Consider the following scenario.

Joe works in logistics. In his first logistics job, a small part of his responsibilities was vendor management. In time Joe started to develop a relationship with his vendors. He became interested in his vendor’s motivators and used it to his benefit. So much so that he was able to negotiate lower pricing on a couple of products that would save the company money. For a variety of reasons Joe then decided to pursue a degree in Psychology. After graduation he went back to logistics for another company. Some time passed and now he is ready to find a new employer.

Joe now worries that he will not be able to explain his reasoning for getting a degree in Psychology when he was in logistics before and after he went back to school. He worries that his timeline did not have any consistency.

But let’s look closer. Joe’s interest in his vendor’s motivators was also an interest in human psychology. He was able to tell if a vendor was trying to offload a product (he then could bargain for a lower price) and he could tell if the vendor was trying to sell a product for the highest price. Furthermore, after calculating the annual amount that he saved the company, Joe realized that he had saved the company several hundred thousand dollars (know your numbers!!!)! Now we’ve got something! If Joe can tell a story about his initial self-taught success in Psychology, which saved his company 500k, and inspired him to get a degree in Psychology, then of course it makes sense that he would go back in to logistics after college. Joe now has an interesting story and his psychology background is proof that he has a unique talent that is better than any other applicant walking through the door to get the same job.

What is your Story? What challenges or barriers are you having in developing your Story?

I LOVE MY CAREER – STEWART MCGEHEE, EMERGENCY MEDICAL SERVICES

 

 

Stewart McGehee

Owner/ Consultant

SM Consulting

Former Battalion Chief at SJFD

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. What do you do for a living and how long have you been working for your company?

I just retired from the San Jose Fire Department as a Battalion Chief and my last two years were spent managing my department’s Emergency Medical Services Division and paramedic operations. Prior to that, I worked as a paramedic for a private ambulance service. I am now consulting with the country’s largest emergency ambulance provider, helping them to integrate more with the fire service on a national level.

2. How did you choose your profession?

I always had an interest in medicine. I started out working for an ambulance company to see if I had the stamina to consider medical school. One thing lead to another and I ended up becoming one of the first 20 paramedics in my county in a pilot program that was taught by Stanford University. In California, being a paramedic is a dead-end in terms of a career path so I started looking at the fire service because of the variety of choices in career direction – Training, Suppression, Arson, Hazardous Materials, Fire Prevention. I ended up at San Jose – second fire test I took (I was VERY lucky because it’s extremely competitive).

3. What is it about your job that you love and how did you know it would be the right fit for you?

I loved the variety of work, the unpredictability of what a shift held in store and the ability to make a difference. I cannot tell you how it makes you feel when you encounter a patient in a cardiac arrest and, because of my training and ability to think on the fly, if that patient responds and gains back a pulse and actually wakes up (from being clinically dead), it really stands out and is a tremendous feeling. As a Chief, even though I wasn’t able to directly provide patient care any longer, I was able to change the direction and focus of a major Metro fire department. I was one of three individuals tasked with the assignment of bringing a paramedic program into SJFD. It took 3 1/2 years to do but we were indeed successful and created a model that has been duplicated across California.

4. Did you come across any challenges or barriers to reaching your career goals along the way? How did you overcome these?

There are always challenges and barriers in civil service. The fire service is very bureaucratic and slow to change. My career goal was to attain the rank of Battalion Chief, something I was successful at accomplishing. The entire testing process for a Chief is very draining and drawn out. It takes stamina and perseverance. To overcome the barriers and hurdles, I just kept my eye on the goal I’d set for myself.

5. What do you do to work through frustrations of the daily grind?

I had a wonderful group of Captains and civilians working for me. I’ve learned to solicit opinions and perspectives from those I trust. I knew who I could go to and bounce something off of and took advantage it. Sometimes I would just take a walk around our training center when I had an issue that seemed overwhelming. Sometimes I would just let an issue percolate in my head. I found that if I did that, the correct response usually bubbled to the surface.

6. How do you ‘keep it fresh’ and stay interested from year to year?

By pushing the envelope. My industry is in line for a paradigm shift if it is to survive in a manner similar to what exists now. We need to be able to convey more objective information (data) to the policy makers that are currently amenable to making significant fiscal and operational reductions in public safety. I attend conferences, network with those in other departments and other parts of the country, join associations such as the International Association of Fire Chiefs. I like to learn from the experiences of others.

7. What advice would you give someone else searching for their passion job in life?

Once you find it, you’ll know it, because it won’t seem like work anymore. I would suggest that you simply don’t settle and that money isn’t the only reason to stay in a position you’re in. While compensation is important, so is personal reward for doing something you feel is important and gives you a genuine feeling of good.

8. Is there anything else you would like to add?

This is a tumultuous time, but it’s also a time for creativity and those that are daring enough to dream and think outside the box will likely be the ones that find their passion.

I LOVE MY CAREER – LEA POISSON, DANCE INSTRUCTOR

 

 

 

Lea Poisson

Dance Instructor

Santa Rosa Junior College Faculty

Department of P.E.,

Dance & Athletics

 

 

 

 

 1. What do you do for a living and how long have you been working for your company?

I teach dance (Hip Hop, Jazz, and Modern) at Santa Rosa Junior College. This is my sixth year. I have worked at several other venues (Sonoma State University, Mendocino College, Santa Rosa High School, and several studios), but SRJC has been my main work staple for the last six years.

2. Are you happy you chose your profession?

Yes, and I love it! I am so glad that I followed my heart, even though dance is a hard profession to be successful in at times.

3. What is it about your job that you love and how did you know it would be the right fit for you?

As an artist and someone who wants to help others, my job is very fulfilling and one of my passions in life. I love to dance and perform, myself, but I love to help people as well. I am able to choreograph and teach dance to people who not only want a good workout, but want to enjoy the process of learning or improving their dance skills.

4. Did you come across any challenges or barriers to reaching your career goals along the way? How did you overcome these?

A big challenge was simply making the decision to follow a career in dance, and commit to the dream. That meant being a Dance Major and going to auditions, fearing that I would be a “starving artist” or that I would not work enough. It also meant working and training hard with dedication and discipline, even on college breaks. I spent my summer and winter breaks finding studios or other ways of dancing, and finding the money to do so…

There were jobs that I auditioned for and did not get. Any performing artist is in a place of rejection, which you need to have thick skin for. You must pick yourself up and dust yourself off, and keep striving for your goal to perform.

As a teacher, I found that each type of institution has different requirements. If you want to teach dance at a school with grades K-12, you need to get a specific teaching credential. A community college prefers a MA, and that resulted in my decision to pursue a Master’s degree. Although I have loved my experiences teaching both children and adults, I wanted to work at a community college with a reputation of educating and training dancers in a nurturing environment.

5. What do you do to work through frustrations of the daily grind?

I stay on top of doing my job the best that I can, keeping current and remembering older/classic movement and music. I also try to make sure that I have good communication with my students, co-workers, and my employers.

6. How do you ‘keep it fresh’ and stay interested from year to year?

Remember what made you love your career in the first place. From time to time, or as much as possible, I do several things to remind myself how wonderful dance is. I watch live performances of as many styles of dance as possible. I view dance shows, films, and online performances. I find music that is currently played on stations, as well as other music. This all inspires me to choreograph, and to teach more. I truly enjoy sharing my love for dance, in hopes to spread the love for it with others.

7. What advice would you give someone else searching for their passion job in life?

Try a few things out that are of interest to you and don’t just do what you may be good at. I majored in Mathematics for the first year in college, because I was good at it and liked it growing up. I thought that it was the “smarter” career option. But I also loved to dance. I decided that even though it was strenuous, unyielding, physically demanding, and monetarily challenging, I would rather try hard and follow my passion of Dance.

Often, I find that if people pay attention, they can realize what they truly enjoy, and find their passion. Once you become aware of your passion, hold on to it. You may have several passions in life, but you may choose one to focus on as a career. Just because something is your passion, though, it doesn’t mean that it will be an easy path to make it become your career. My advice is to practice patience, focus, and keep reminding yourself why you love your passion! It is all worth it in the end!

“Dancing in our heads… We dance for laughter, we dance for Tears, we dance for Madness, we dance for Fears, we dance for Hopes, we dance for Screams, we ARE the dancers, we Create the Dreams.” –Albert Einstein