Last month, Rosa Say asked people in her Ho’ohana community to step up this month and post on hospitality and customer service. Despite the fact my job, teaching, is primarily about customer service and making people feel comfortable, relaxed, and generally good, I stared at the request and thought, ‘But I have nothing to contribute to the conversation.’

Last week, Scott Ginsberg posted the following Qreativity note to his Facebook: Is your service philosophy so good … that other companies STEAL it?

I used to participate in a Renaissnce recreation LARP (live-action roleplaying game). Toward the end of my time in the game, I ran the gate for one of the larger events, one that brought people from all over the country. It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time. People found out I was running the gate and volunteered to help me out. Our job was fairly easy: we greeted people as they came in, collected the entrance fee and all the appropriate releases and medical forms, and sent them on their way.

There was no shelter, so I acquired a portable gazebo that we set up for the gate crew to hide out in (It was March in South Texas.) We put a bunch of chairs inside the pavillion around the two tables. I had brought some water and snacks for the gate crew, and then others brought us more as the weekend wore on. Performers came up to practice in the quiet around the gate, which meant we had entertainment. Others just came up to visit me, and often ended up helping out. It was a calm, relaxed, fun weekend at that gate.

After the event, one of the women who had worked on the gate posted a message to a list for an in-game group we were both part of. She was part of a small group that ran a much smaller event in her area of the country, and she was praising me for how I ran my gate. In fact, she was planning to steal what she saw and implement it at her own event.

I was flabbergasted. As far as I knew, we’d just sat there, processed people in to the event, snacked, chatted, and generally had fun while we worked. I asked her what specifically she would be stealing, and she said it was all about my organization and the spirit I cultivated around the gate by including food and encouraging people to come visit and entertain us. By doing so little, I’d made the gate crew, the first people seen at the event, a lively, efficient bunch.

Sometimes, providing good service is as simple as taking care of those who are supposed to be providing the service.

Posted by Rebecca as Creativity, inspiration, and motivation at 7:58 AM EDT

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Hobbies are great things. They help us figure out how to spend our free time. They help us unwind (hopefully).

They also allow us to find ourselves. When you find a hobby, it’s like finding part of yourself. It’s giving yourself the opportunity to do something you enjoy, and might not be able to do otherwise. It’s possibly finding a hidden talent or passion, and then working to grow it on your own terms. You can then decide whether to do it as a past time, or to incorporate it into your professional life by finding a way to weave it into your current job or change your job to make use of these newly uncovered skills and interests.

Hobbies are also great networking tools. These days, very few hobbies are completely self-contained, even if the activity itself is. Forums, message boards, and mailing lists have probably been set up for every single possible topic you can think of (and maybe some you wish no one had thought of), so it’s become easier to find others with similar hobbies and interests. These communities provide the members with several resources, plus the opportunity to be a local expert themselves. Meeting people with whom you have something in common leads to authentic conversations, a hallmark of good networking. (Naturally, there are people who still manage to come across as smarmy in these situations.)

While it’s still advisable not to put hobbies on your resume, you can incorporate them into your interview practice to help reflect who you are, to possibly build a bridge between yourself and the interviewer.

While hobbies are really for relaxation and self-expression, never forget they have other practical uses.

Posted by Rebecca as Changing careers, Creativity, inspiration, and motivation, Networking at 7:40 AM EDT

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One of the hardest things to get across in a resume or traditional interview is your soft skills. (If you’re smart, you hope for a behavioral interview or you approach your interview from a core competency standpoint.) These hard-to-present skills are part of what interviewers are looking for, even if they can’t exactly quantify them either.

There are probably as many ways to demonstrate that you possess a soft skill as there are soft skills. Even more fun, some of these skills are easier to show than others.  Some soft skills are also more sought than others, simply because they’ve been defined as present in successful employees.

If you’re feeling out of touch with your own soft skills, you might consider writing down a list of things you’ve done and work up a list of what you have from there. You might also consider reading up on core competencies (which I found very useful when I needed to take a look at my own soft skills). Look at your resume as a story that presents not only your achievements, but also examples of these skills. Extend that mindset into interviews to further support showcasing your soft skills.

Posted by Rebecca as Uncategorized, Changing careers at 7:39 AM EDT

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Regular readers of this blog know that I’m a bit obsessed with to-do lists. I like them. They keep me moving and make sure something gets done every day. Those readers can probably guess how many times I read this Lifehacker article on to-do lists.

While I think there’s some great information in here for those who are still thinking, “Gosh, I could move to a to-do list, but I’m just not ready,” there is good advice in here for those who live by their lists, too. Just ignore that any other to-do lists are renamed “project lists”, or you might get as annoyed as I did.

Maintaining one visible to-do list is a great idea because it keeps you focused. Personally, I define one visible to-do list for a day. I add those items I expect to be able to do, and then work my way down the list. (If I’m completely unmotivated, then my to-do list changes form slightly.) I keep a number of “project lists” (I call them to-do lists, though), and pull the next step or two off whatever projects I want to focus on that day. As I finish them, I file them into the appropriate category in Google Calendar. (This is great because i can then see how long it’s been since I’ve worked on a specific to-do list.)
There’s really nothing like the feeling you get when you clear a to-do list, or even better, delete an empty “project list”.

Posted by Rebecca as Organizing at 8:19 AM EDT

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