Taking the Stress from Career and Job Networking–Help Others

The NY Times published an article with career ideas about how to deal with the “no reply” problem when job hunting–that is, when you apply for a job or have an interview and just never hear back. The author, Michael Melcher, recommended a few things to deal with the job hunt in these tough times. These tips included realizing others may be a lot busier than you are, lessening dependence on the internet and basically getting out and being with other people so you are not isolated on the internet all day.

Being with others can be crucial. One of his tips around this was to make connections for other people. Melcher writes, “Whatever barriers you are facing in the employment markets, you are probably in a position to others in their job searches, whether through advice, referrals or just being a friend. Helping others make progress is a good way to remind yourself that you do have an impact on the world.”

Good points. But what can you do? Should you wait until someone asks for help? Not at all. I generally find that my career coaching clients have greater success if they are active about making connections for others and not passively waiting to be asked to help.

For instance, at any networking event, instead of focusing primarily on telling others who you are and what you offer, a technique to really get remembered is to listen carefully to others and find out what career help they are seeking. Jot down that information and let the people you are talking with know that you will be looking out for good connections for them. Then, go ahead and look out for good connections for them as you meet and mix. Even doing this for a few people, you can become the hub of the event instead of another person needing something.

Of course, it’s great when you others return the favor, taking your lead. But that’s not your focus.

This also reduces anxiety and stress many people have about what to do and how to act at networking events.

November 16, 2008December 7, 2008

Can You Help Your Career Success with Affirmations? You Decide.

This is one of those career ideas I have been at times for and at times against (or at least not actively in favor of) over the years. But recent research seems to indicate that if done properly (as below with music and images), affirmations can be a positive aid, setting off a string of positive networks in your brain. It’s less about the meaning of the words and more about the emotional triggers–just like political or commercial ads, only for your benefit.

So here’s a YouTube video with some career success affirmations that may help you even if just a little to get in a state of mind to help you with anything from choosing a career more meaningfully to just feeling more confident. It’s only a minute and a half. So give it a try if this interests you or you love affirmations. BTW–I have no connection with laserdirect in case anyone is wondering.

Success Affirmations for Career Change by laserdirect

November 1, 2008November 25, 2008

Home Runs or Singles–Succeeding with Your Career Ideas

Yankee baseball legend Mickey Mantle stood third on the all time home run list when he retired, having hit 536 pre-steroid era home runs as the key player on a frequent World Series winning team. Unfortunately, he also had a prodigious number of strikeouts (15^th on the all time list now and first when he retired).

After he ended his baseball career, he claimed every time at bat he was looking to hit a home run. Although I’d take this with a grain of salt, his big hit “strategy” worked quite well overall, in spite of the big whiff failures.

Outside baseball, we also hear about the same big hit strategy all the time. In fact, it was in the news recently in the field of medicine and bioengineering.

Doris Taylor, Director of the Center for Cardiovascular Repair at the University of Minnesota and her team stripped cells from a rat heart and replaced them with baby rat stem cells, getting them to grow into a “bioartificial” heart. The potential for “growing” parts of damaged organs or even entire organs customized to the individual is enormous. Other researchers are hitting themselves in the head (or so they’ve reported) for not thinking of the relatively simple idea that was used.

In a radio interview, Taylor noted that from the start she was going for a home run. She said that she didn’t want to wait 20 years to accurately understand step by step all the science underlying the procedure to know if it would work and why it might work or not. She wanted bold ideas to try out and then see what happened.

So should we all be inspired in our lives by this home run approach? Should we try out bold ideas and watch the results? Does this idea apply to our careers and problems? Or is it just something to read about after the fact for the lucky few who succeed?

I’d suggest the question is not whether to have a home run strategy or not, but when to use one. If a single is all that’s needed, if in your career all you want is a raise in pay or respect from your boss, go for that—not for a new career or job. That may seem obvious, but it’s not. I’ve had people in my classes come in for new career ideas and new dreams when their old ones were just fine. They had already hit a home run in determining and educating themselves for their career. They only needed a single right now to make their particular job better or to land a better job, but their frustration had confused them about the best strategy—about which of the 4 foundation questions (see http://beardavenue.com/store.html) they needed to answer.

You can also be confused if you have been told or learned that trying for what you really want is naïve—if you’ve learned that all you should ever do is go for singles. That’s an even more common problem I see in coaching clients and class participants. One time to use the home run metaphor and strategy is when you are first determining your main career idea—going for the biggest and most satisfying career, one you really would love to have. Your authentic or true career. If you don’t, you will be putting a lot of energy into better-than-nothing (BTN) careers and jobs—careers that have some value but not enough to fully engage and challenge you or feel meaningful and satisfying enough.

If you are thinking about strategies for achieving that authentic career vision, you may want to at least include home run plans along with more careful ones. That means including options that involve more risk and more unknowns along with more cautious and known step-by-step processes. (Certainly the heart researchers were moving meticulously in their experiment once they decided on the big experimental concept). If you can do a mix of these single and home run approaches, you will truly be an all-around career “hitter.”

Let me leave the final words to home run hitter who was named greatest athlete of all time in 1999 by Sporting News and athlete of the century by the AP that same year.

“How to hit home runs: I swing as hard as I can . . . I swing big, with everything I’ve got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can.” Babe Ruth

October 25, 2008December 9, 2008

Career Confidence and Your Highlight Reel of Success

Whenever taking on a new major project, such as choosing a career, it is best to be optimistic and confident. Sure, there are times when confidence can become arrogance and blindness, but if you know your project or career ideas are valuable, then confidence counts.

It’s also common among successful people. A recent Business Week article by Marshall Goldsmith illustrated this: “I once asked three business partners to estimate their individual contribution to the partnership’s profits. Not surprisingly, the sum of their answers amounted to more than 150%”

The author indicated that this was a good thing, as it fits into the profile of successful people. Having surveyed more than 80,000 people in his business programs, he found that “80% to 85% rank themselves in the top 20% of their peer group, and about 70% rank themselves in the top 10%. The numbers get even more ridiculous among professionals with higher perceived social status, such as physicians, pilots, and investment bankers.”

What does this mean for choosing a career and career planning? I’d say that if you are already super- confident like this, you might want a reality check with people you trust. But for most of us who are likely to have doubts in anything big and new we might be trying–such as trying out new career ideas–we need to recall our past successes and realize we ARE building on them even if we are applying those lessons to a new field.

Goldsmith, for instance, recommends reviewing our “highlight reel” of successes and thinking how that applies to what we’re doing.

Now if you dislike your current career, you might think you have no highlight reel to use in deciding what new career you want. But have you succeeded in making other big decisions–what college you went to, what city or neighborhood you live in, who you married, whether or not to have kids? You may not always feel great about everything you’ve chosen, but you certainly have successes you can review.

From them, you may well realize how you made a great decision and apply some of those processes to new projects or new career ideas. You may realize that the key was simply to get information and then see how you felt about it, and then decided. Or you may say that there is no model to follow, but you can still say–I’ve succeeded in these tough times and decisions before so I simply recognize I can do it again.

So upload that highlight reel on your own inner YouTube channel and be ready to view it when you are feeling a bit uncertain about your ability to find that great career which will benefit you and those around you.

Leonard Lang