Work, success, and meaning at every stage of your career
Honest feedback is a rare commodity; very few people will trust someone enough to open up and tell you exactly what they think. When you hear a piece of honest, thoughtful criticism, you should be grateful. Criticism is a gift; knowing where you stand is valuable intelligence, even when that knowledge stings. Here are some tips for dealing with criticism.
You should expect to be Googled and to Google people you’re going to meet. As Broughton mentions in his post, your conversation will be much better much faster if you can say, “I really liked the article you wrote on…” rather than simply commenting on the weather.
I love hearing from other bloggers – they offer great suggestions for reposts. Many people (including me) are taking time off this week, so I welcome the chance to offer a repost of a list of great reading for people in a job search. These 50 book suggestions come with short reviews and recaps, and all of them will be available at your local library. Enjoy!
Specialized careers such as attorney, information technology, or CPA, have their own language and culture. Usually, it takes an attorney to know whether the skills you have are in demand or hard to find. Only an attorney will know whether the firm you worked for has prestige or great leadership or a winning culture. That’s industry insider information that an outsider expert on resumes (like me) probably doesn’t have.
Everyone understands the concept: pitch yourself and your skills in less than a minute (the time to ride the elevator to the top floor.) Here is career coach Tim Tyrell-Smith’s template, designed to work for a networking meeting introduction.
Effective informational interviewing starts with a specific job target in mind. Once you’ve done your research and know something about your goal and the industry, you can start to seek out professionals that will be willing to meet with you. You can choose to meet with people doing the job or the hiring managers. You may benefit by speaking with both. From the professional in the field, you’ll get perspective on what the job involves on a daily basis, trends in the industry, and how the job matches up with your interests and abilities. From the hiring manager, you’ll learn what companies look for in candidates, how they evaluate skills and education, and what a typical career path might look like.
If you’re an introvert in business, you probably feel different every day. Not differently; just different. I’ve met many introverts who feel that they get less attention, less credit, even fewer promotions than their extraverted peers.
Introverts make up about 25 percent of the general population. If you’re an introvert in a job search, you may feel at times that your job skills are not being valued because your job search skills are holding you back. And you may be right.
There are four humors found in humans, according to this ancient theory. When the humors were in balance, people are healthy; when humors are out of balance, the person gets sick. Around 400 BC, Hippocrates took this theory a step further and developed personality models based on the humors: Melancholic, Choleric, Sanguine and Phlegmatic. Although the medical humor theory is long out of the mainstream, you’ll recognize these personality descriptions; we still use them today.
You put a lot of thought into your resume. What serious job applicant wouldn’t? All the information you want potential employers to see about you is in there – your job qualifications, your experience, your education, your skills, your interests, your references. It’s all there – tied up in one neat package. But your resume is more than just a collection of dates, places, and facts. It is the self-portrait that you put on display for the world to see. It is the face you show to people who have never met you before. It is you.
