I’m starting to wonder if I might not be able to handle freelancing right now (I know, if not now, when?), but I’m realizing that it’s because I haven’t really factored any down time in my schedule. I’m bouncing from project to project with no real breaks. It’s been crazy.
In the midst of trying not to run myself into the ground the other day, I came across this list of tips for freelancers, and I had to laugh. I’ve got so much going for me, but I’m really mismanaging my down time, which means I’m not handling stress levels appropriately. Yep, I’m not following this list so well, am I?
No wonder I’m feeling like an inadequate freelancer lately!
Posted by Rebecca as Freelancing at 8:19 AM EDT
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I had a problem in my twenties where I would be hired for a position, and I would foolishly assume that the duties presented in both the job advertisement and the interview would actually be my duties. It was amazing how many times that assumption failed me. Thankfully, I started thinking to either ask clarifying questions about the job, or ask to see the exact duties of my position, and made it clear that i wasn’t okay with “and other duties as may arise” in any job description.
Starting a new job is stressful enough, but you can help mitigate the stress (or prepare yourself for the fact that the company has no idea what you will be doing) by asking some questions. If the company can’t answer the questions to your satisfaction, feel free to walk away from the job offer at that point. Nothing is scarier than coming into a position where the company hasn’t clearly thought out the purpose of that role. You come in thinking you’re going to be doing light administrative duties to support one team, and suddenly find yourself managing major projects for several team. It’s painful.
Protect yourself. Make sure the job you’re accepting is one that you honestly want. Take the opportunity to learn about the team you’ll be working with. In the long run, it will land you in a much happier position.
Posted by Rebecca as Uncategorized, Changing careers at 8:02 AM EDT
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Marketing is not my strong suit. Seriously, I fail when it comes to marketing. I keep trying to research ways to feel less slimy in my marketing attempts, and the answer really seems to lie in more authentic, honest marketing.
This works well for me. I have a strong preference for being myself, being honest, and not telling people what they want to hear. Those situations never work out well, anyway.
Lately, there have been many articles on marketing naturally, or not marketing at all, but approaching potential customers differently. There is a move underfoot to move more toward customer education, transparency, and making it possible for a customer to buy into a product.
After reading the fifth article on the concept of natural marketing, I couyldn’t help but think, “Wow, this sounds an awful lot like what I do as a teacher.”
It’s true. As a teacher, I have to be honest and transparent. I have to get my student to buy in, to want to learn, and I do it by providing little bits of knowledge to bring them in.
Now I can’t decide if I’m a smarmy teacher, or someone who needs to loan her natural teaching talents to her marketing efforts!
Posted by Rebecca as Marketing at 7:50 AM EDT
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I was taking a baseline test for a project management certification on Brainbench over the weekend. I very nearly certified on the results of my baseline alone, too. Not bad for having no formal training in project management. I guess there is something to be said for practical experience! The test identified my strengths as personal management and communication skills. (Apparently, when you go a few years without doing any serious curriculum development, your scope skills slip a bit. Oops!)
It’s actually unsurprising that my personnel and communication skills have stayed sharp. They’re critical to half my job. Actually, that’s not true. They’re critical to every aspect of my job. The whole point of my existence is communication: instructional concepts to students, policy changes and split-second decisions to teachers, tasks and clarifications to the assistants, questions to the directors.
I also spend part of my day chatting with the director in charge of personnel about various things, and she has actually asked me to convey some wisdom to you job-seekers. Because of my background coaching people through creating their resumes and cover letters, and because I maintain a career blog, she and I often talk about trends and practices showing up.
I can tell you that she is unamused by certain practices (and I often get a good giggle out of some of what has crossed her desk).
So….if you wish to land yourself on the good side of a personnel manager, please consider these two main points:
- Emails are fine, but don’t forget to include your resume! You aren’t contacting someone you have a relationship with. You’re often contacting a stranger who knows nothing about you. It’s great that you’re looking for a job, but the personnel manager can’t determine if you have a chance of landing a job at their company without the resume. (Similarly, an acceptable cover letter consists of more than “Hello. I just got my degree and would like to work with your company. Please contact my school for my information.”)
- Always arrive early for your interview. There are a few reasons for this. You may need to fill out an application for the company if you haven’t done so yet. The office might be hard to find, so you might need those extra minutes to find where you are going. Plus, it just looks good to your potential employer, because it looks like you are genuinely interested in the job. (Showing up late to the interview leaves the impression that the job doesn’t mean much to you, or that you would be too busy with other things to actually focus on your job. Not the impression you want to make right off the bat.)
You should always take your job searches very seriously if you wish to be regarded as a serious candidate.
Posted by Rebecca as Changing careers at 7:50 AM EDT
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As part of my personal branding project and developing my application materials for grad school, I’m reworking my resume for perhaps the third time this year. I’m trying to develop a complementary About page for my websites. I’m working, editing, and reworking each of my small blurbs to deliver the most useful information about some facet of myself in the fewest words possible.
I probably work on my resume and about pages and blurbs every three months or so to reflect any new job responsibilities, skills, and achievements I may have accrued. It helps keep my resume from getting too far out of date, and gives prospective employers and clients a mostly updated view of who I am.
Most of the people I know only update their resumes when they want to go looking for a new job (more often than not within a couple of weeks of losing their previous job). By then, skills and achievements earned a year ago are completely forgotten and don’t make their way into the updated resume. (Keeping an updated resume has the added benefit of helping remind a manager of your work during performance reviews!)
Dust off your resume every few months. Create and maintain a portfolio of your best work. Again, dust it off and update it every couple of months. Create and maintain an elevator speech, and revamp it when you update your resume and portfolio.
Need any other ideas for managing your own career? Check out this Third Age article!
Posted by Rebecca as Changing careers, Skill building, self-analysis at 8:23 AM EDT
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There is article after article advising interviewers to follow up on their interviews with a thank-you note. A thoughtful gesture on your part, and it allows you to bring some feeling of closure to that section of the interviewing process.
What about bringing closure to the entire interviewing process? That’s really in the hands of the company, and it’s where many companies these days seem to fall apart.
At the beginning of the interview process, companies are great about sending out form letters to let prospective candidates know whether or not they’ve made the cut. Somehow, they forget to tell last round candidates that they haven’t been selected. Since these are the people the company has been courting through the entire interview process, they are also the people who definitely deserve to be told formally that they are not being extended a job offer.
Even if the reason for not sending the letter is because the company really liked the candidate and is looking for a position to hire them into, it is still considerate to let the person off the hook for the position they interviewed for.
What’s really uncomfortable is the fact that seems to be happening more and more. Companies are letting interviewees learn their fate through discovery rather than direct disclosure. It makes the company look bad (and downright gutless), and it can serve the company as poorly as bad customer service. The interviewee can be left with a bad taste in their mouth, and is likely to recommend that colleagues not apply with that company in the future. They may even decide they don’t want to do business with the company if they applied for the job because they were a fan of the company.
The rejection letter is a formality, and a courtesy due to any interviewee. It should be handled politely and tactfully, but it absolutely must be done.
Posted by Rebecca as Changing careers, Freelancing, Entrepreneurship, Responsibility, Leadership and management at 8:15 AM EDT
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Somewhere over the years, I have become a knowledge activist. I think I even have a pretty certificate that says this. It’s probably down in the folder with all of my training certificates. I am all about recording knowledge and getting it out to people.
Knowledge withheld has a good chance of being lost. Companies who lose long-term employees who specialized in a specific progress find this out the hard way all the time. Knowledge shared is not only in danger of being preserved, but it’s in danger of being allowed to evolve as better methods, process, and practices are discovered.
Become a knowledge activist in your workplace. Share your knowledge with other people. Write up procedures for what you do, keep them in a notebook at your desk, and update them routinely. Offer to mentor a newer or junior staff member. Offer to run a brief training on something you specialize in during a staff meeting. Find a way to add to the collective knowledge of your company.
Not only are you helping to prevent a loss of knowledge, but you’re also showing that you are a team player.
Posted by Rebecca as Skill building, Work skills at 8:09 AM EDT
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Recently, more and more career-focused websites are recommending customizing your resume by saturating it with a specifically selected keyword and its various synonyms, making it eye-catching to keyword-sniffing programs.
I agree with tailoring your resume to a job, especially if you being to the table an unusual blend of talents and knowledge, but I think keyword saturation is as authentic in a resume as it is in a blog entry. Word your resume appropriately, state your qualifications well, and you’ll probably get much farther.
Even stranger is what is apparently a new trend in online resumes, which recommends including testimonials on your resume. Silly me, I thought that’s what those references available upon request were for. Limited to the online resume, it’s possible to set these on another page by linking them to the resume, thereby not cluttering what should be a clean, simple document, but there’s no way to make sure these testimonials are going to be specific enough to address the concerns of a potential employer. If anything, the idea of having these testimonials sounds more like you’re trying to market yourself as a commodity rather than as a person who can bring a lot of value to a company.
Maybe I’m just too old-fashioned for my own good (my keyword-less, testimonial-less resume is quite successful in generating calls when I apply for a job), but I think the resume should focus on what you, the living, breathing person behind the piece of paper, can do for the company.l It should be as authentic and original as you are, showing off your best side.
Posted by Rebecca as Changing careers at 7:47 AM EDT
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