All right, I think all of us who were targeted by Time’s lack of attempt to take their own Person of the Year award seriously are all having a fairly good laugh right now.
In fact, my good laugh came as I was telling my best friend, just home from Japan, about the award. We were already giggling when I suggested adding it to my resume as a joke. That had both of us laughing so hard we could barely breathe.
I’m grateful to know I’m not the only one who is concerned about the potential for this actually showing up on people’s resume, or who find the thought completely laughable. What concerns me more than anything, though, is when a reputable site (who has been on my radar for less-than-brilliant moves before) actually supports doing it.
Honestly, if your resume is so weak that you feel adding this “accomplishment” to it will put you over the top, then perhaps you seriously need to review your resume and stop selling you and your hard-earned skills short.
Yep, I am Time’s Person of the Year this year because I’m unafraid to share my life through blogging and various bits of social software, but in the end, that means nothing next to my long list of well-honed skills and talents.
Posted by Rebecca as Changing careers at 8:05 AM EST
No Comments »
I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve been managing projects, whether for groups or myself, for several years now. I’m not formally trained in project management, but very few people have ever had any complaints with how I run things. I have friends with similar experieces.
We’re being led to believe that project management is this elusive skill that one can only acquire under certain circumstances, that you are only capable of being a competent project manager if you’ve been through a certain training and have a specific certification. I’ve long understood the nonsense of that.
In all reality, project management boils down to some fairly sensible concepts. It’s just a matter of understanding that, and then embracing those concepts when you work on a project.
Posted by Rebecca as Leadership and management at 7:57 AM EST
No Comments »
With my crazy schedule and my desire to have income coming in from other places, I’ve often wondered whether or not I’m in a place where some small-time entrepreneurship (insert giggle here) is something I can even realistically consider right now. Honestly, I’ve been playing at building this place up for a year now, and haven’t had the time to devote to it, even in small, late-night spurts because of all the other demands on my time.
It doesn’t change the fact that I have to augment my income beyond what I’m earning at my part-time job, especially this month, when so many days have been lost unexpectedly to the snow and wind. I read somewhere that this makes me an entrepreneur of necessity. It’s not so much that I’m doing it because I want to (except I really do want to be my own boss), I have to do it because my life won’t quite work otherwise.
With all of this in mind, I read this great list of tips to help you decide whether or not entrepreneurship should be on your radar right before the wind knocked the power out of Seattle. I’m contemplating on it long and hard right now as I work to wrap up 2006 and look toward 2007. Maybe I’ll figure out the right balance to make it all start coming together seriously because the vast majority of that list sounds exactly like me. I just have to be willing to step up and take charge.
All that aside, I’m still really, really hoping to find a business manager under my Christmas tree…
Posted by Rebecca as Entrepreneurship at 8:26 AM EST
No Comments »
In education, we often worry about what our students know versus what we know they should, know, but can’t pull out of them. We call any knowledge we can assess “explicit knowledge” and anything the student knows, but we can’t assess “tacit knowledge”.
In business, we face the same thing, within ourselves and our employees. When we create a resume to showcase our skills, we have this wide range of skills that are harder to demonstrate. These are our “tacit skills”. These are the skills that we may not be aware we have, or they may be soft skills that we don’t know how to present. These are the skills that often end up coming out during a behavioral interview, training, or the adjustment period after starting the job.
The skills that we can demonstrate are our “explicit skills”. Our schooling, our training, our accomplishments in previous jobs. These are the skills interviewers and recruiters look for because they can quantify them, but in the back of their mind, they also have some tacit skills in place that they are looking for.
What does this mean for you, the job seeker? It means that while you should present your explicit skills to best showcase what you’re capable of, you should also think about those skills you can’t show off so easily and then practice your interview in that light. Become comfortable with those aspects of yourself to help present you in your entirety to a prospective employer.
Posted by Rebecca as Changing careers, Skill building, self-analysis at 7:48 AM EST
No Comments »
Most people who have worked under me probably don’t realize this, but I actually have a very difficult time giving up control over anything. It’s even worse when it’s something I perceive as big and important.
Somehow or other in the last year, though, I have learned to let go just a little bit. Maybe it comes from trying to three people at the same time at work and then coming home and trying to be three people on my “business”.
I’ve even learned not to hover over people who happen to be in the way when I decide it’s time to hand something off. Actually, I never make the conscious decision to hand something off. The thought process looks remarkably like, “Holy cow, I have to do A, B, and C. Well, C is fairly minor and This Person knows how to do it. (Send This Person off to do C.) B is the one that really needs me, and That Person could easily do A if I just show her. (Call over That Person, train her quickly on A, let her know she can ask if she gets confused, and go chasing after B.)
I don’t why, but delegating gets a lot less scary and feels less like I’m giving up control if there’s some sort of training involved.
Posted by Rebecca as Leadership and management at 8:15 AM EST
No Comments »
At any interview where I know I’m not exactly what the hiring manager is looking for but also know I could easily do the tasks required of the job, I always try to impress on the interviewer that I am able to pick things up fairly quickly
It’s true. When I don’t know something I need to know in order to get work done, both in my professional and my personal life, I seek it out and learn it, immediately applying it to whatever I’m working on. That’s how I got started in teaching, in web and graphic design, and it seems an awful lot of my management skills are self-learned because I needed a skills boost to survive a situation.
Right now, as I’m trying to break into a new field, I’m trying to demonstrate what I’ve learned on the fly and trying to make it clear to potential employers that I can learn what I need to in order to complete their projects.
If you can pick skills up quickly and are willing to learn, that’s a valuable skill and you should make it part of marketing yourself. It’s amazing how many people will defer to someone who knows how to do something, just so they can get out of having to learn something new.
Posted by Rebecca as Skill building at 7:45 AM EST
No Comments »
The New York Times ran this great article on email sign-offs, and I think people generally need to take heed of it. I find that when I’m negotiating freelance work, I’m more likely to get no salutation or conclusion from my contact. When I’m interacting with fellow bloggers or entrepreneurs, I get warm, professional salutations and conclusions.
The article is right. Children are taught how to correctly write a letter in elementary school, but somehow between elementary school and post-college life we seem to lose that training to the ways of AOLese. Perhaps we ought to consider teaching the art of writing a business letter in both high school and college, in the hopes it will produce more savvy letter writers!
Posted by Rebecca as Networking at 7:39 AM EST
No Comments »
