I had originally thought to review Brazen Careerist and Career Intensity separately, but I’ve realized they really go together. Both focus on taking charge or your career.
Penelope Trunk, writer of Brazen Careerist, really has a bright casual tone that will likely resonate more with younger readers. Her rules are organized step by step from starting the job search clear through to management, all in 200 pages. She focuses on showing off your best side without running yourself into the ground, and making connections while being authentic. It’s good, relevant advice at a time when I think a lot of people are trying to figure out how to move in their professional paths. I came away with a ton of notes to help me deal with my own lost career.
David Lorenzo, author of Career Intensity and the blog by the same name, focuses more on how to move a stuck career you’re already in. He classifies workers as being on of four types: Workplace Warrior, Management Maverick, Intrepreneur (which is where I fit in the grid), and Entrepreneur. Lorenzo then spends the rest of the book speaking mainly to those who fall into the Workplace Warrior and Management Maverick categories, providing thoughtful advice on how to get unstuck and enjoy the career enjoyed by Intrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs. He encourages more strategic risk-taking and managing your image, two very important components of a successful career.
The two read incredibly well together as a continuous flow through career stages, both providing their own voice and ideas on a variety of topics. I’d actually recommend that if you choose to read them, you do read them together and start with Brazen Careerist. You can also read them separately and come away with great advice to help you jolt your own career.
Posted by Rebecca as Changing careers, Skill building, Networking, Leadership and management, Work skills, self-analysis at 8:13 AM EDT
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As we continue to have more and more demands placed on our time, we have to figure out how to balance everything out. Leave time to get the most important things done. Take time to relax.
It just feels like there are never enough hours in the day.
Lifehacker recently shared a link to an article on surviving school, filled with great suggestions for students, but I think there is a lot there that those of us not in school could take to heart and benefit from.
Much of it is broken into student-relevant areas, but in the end, every single bit of it is really talking about how to use your time to your advantage. It’s the same for those of us beyond school. Subsitute employee/freelancer for student, and projects, evaluations, and meetings for homework, examinations, and class, and you’re looking at the same level of useful information.
Posted by Rebecca as Work skills, Organizing at 7:33 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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Thanks to the way universities now consider prospective students, high school students are figuring out some of the benefits of volunteering. College students sort of have a handle on it, but it’s the adults who honestly might consider how useful volunteering is.
Volunteering your time to a cause you care about is always a good idea. It lets you do something relaxing that makes you feel good. It’s a great opportunity to meet other like-minded people. It’s also a great way to learn and hone skills. Teenagers have even realized it’s a great way to try out a career path they think they might like to have as an adult, so it’s a great decision-making tool for them as well.
Right after I started college, I started volunteering with the planetarium on campus. I spent two days a week presenting shows, giving star talks, buidling new shows, and doing light office work. I loved it, and I think it was the start of my path toward Career #1. From there, I volunteered with different museums and planetariums, developing teaching and curriculum development skills. It opened my eyes to a new career. Prior to that, I didn’t realize that one could teach somewhere other than a classroom. My teacher prep professors were beside themselves when I told them I was going to become a museum educator. Most of them tried to talk me out of it, tried to talk me into the classroom.
They failed because I was so much happier at my volunteer job than I was in my field experience and my student teaching.
I’m no longer a museum educator, but I still look for opportunities to teach and to develop learning material. Without volunteering, I never would have known about this opportunity, and I wouldn’t have had as many opportunities to develop skills that I enjoy using.
Look for volunteering opprtunities. Encourage those around you to take time out for volunteering. It benefits the organization, and it benefits you in so many ways.
Posted by Rebecca as Skill building, Work skills at 7:38 AM EDT
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It is becoming increasingly important to have excellent writing skills in the business world. So much of our communication takes place through electronic media that good writing skills have become necessary to survival. Monster recently offered some tips to help navigate business writing effectively.
Highlights include:
- Simpler sentence structure
- Don’t rely on your computer’s spell-checker
- Highlight
- Make your point as concisely as possible
Posted by Rebecca as Work skills at 8:00 AM EDT
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I’ve been sitting on this for a couple of weeks now, but I think there’s something to this! Research has uncovered six natural patterns of work. No one fits into just one of these natural roles. Personally, I think I spend a lot of my time bouncing betwen Concierge and Broker in my current job, and I know I’ve had to fill most of the other roles at some point in my professional life!
Think about your own work situation. Which roles do you often fill? Which ones do you sometimes fill? Are there any that don’t appeal to you, or that you never do but would like to try?
Posted by Rebecca as Work skills, Organizing at 8:24 AM EDT
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There were a couple of interesting links gracing my Bloglines account last week regarding recruiting. It’s a tough job. I used to be a recruiting coordinator, and after dealing with a candidate, I often felt sorry for the recruiter and interviewers who would be meeting with the person.
Somehow, we’ve all been conditioned to believe that the process of finding a job and then staying there relies solely on us, the person who is looking for and then working in a job. That’s simply not true. The hiring company shares that burden with us, because if we aren’t happy, we have the right to walk away from the interview process and the job. Therefore, it’s really up to the recruiter and hiring manager to make their best effort to hire the right person and incite them to stay.
I think some of the points are interesting in the list, but I found this post highlighting one more point to consider that I think would nicely round out the list. I’ve met exceptions to this rule, but I think generally speaking there is some truth to it.
Recruiting…it’s all about the right fit for both the hiring company and the candidate.
Posted by Rebecca as Leadership and management, Work skills at 8:03 AM EST
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Last week, it snowed very heavily on the northern region of the Seattle metroplex. So heavily in fact, that many business, including the one I work for, closed for the day to try to keep employees safe. Not all businesses were quite so forward thinking, thankfully, and my roommate and I went down to the bank at the bottom of our hill so I could make some deposits.
Apparently, there were others who decided not to let themselves be deterred by the inclement weather, and the entire time I was in the bank there was a line of five to seven people waiting in line. There were three tellers on duty, not counting the drive-through teller, when I walked in. By the time I had completed my slip and joined the line, the manager was sending one teller home and then trying to leave herself.
So there we were, probably a grand total of twelve or thirteen people by the time the whole thing was said and done, and two tellers. One was the merchant teller, and therefore held up by a merchant with high needs. The other was doing the best she could, even in the face of overwhelming odds. The drive-through teller came over to help out every chance she got. The manager just stood there or walked around and filled baskets with miniature candy canes (when she wasn’t walking the line handing them out to people). She made no attempt to alleviate the bad situation she had created.
Finally, one of the account managers had to come over and help because the manager wouldn’t, and the manager left smiling and waving.
If it weren’t for the years of good servie I’ve experienced with this bank, I might consider leaving. As it is, I really wish I had taken that manger’s name and complained. I’m sure her coworkers aren’t saying anything nice about her.
Posted by Rebecca as Work skills at 7:56 AM EST
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A skill often considered useful in leadership and networking roles, yet applies to so many others, is active listening. In active listening, you not only listen to what the other person is saying, but you listen to what they are saying.
No, I didn’t mistype that. It really does repeat itself.
Oftentimes when we are listening to people, we are engaged in the process of creating banter instead of being actively immersed in the parts of the conversation where we are not speaking. However, if we stop for a moment, actually listen to what the other person is saying, and then take a moment at that point to formulate our own response, the conversation can take on a whole new life. It even has the potential for clearing up misconceptions before they become arguments that leave us wondering how we got there.
Found via Random Thoughts From a CTO
Posted by Rebecca as Freelancing, Networking, Leadership and management, Work skills at 8:17 AM EST
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Arming customer service representatives with as many tools as could possibly aid them in assisting customers find what they need is never a watse of resources. As this post demonstrates, the technology exists to allow a blended solution for customer service representatives and customers to interact and build together. I’m thinking that this type of development would allow more authentic, usable forms of things like FAQs to develop from the relationship, plus you can get various points of view on a topic in one place.
And now I’m off to enjoy my first non-sick-day day off in five months. The square on my Outlook calendar is white! No text, no nothing! I plan to be as useless today as possible! Wish me luck!
Posted by Rebecca as Work skills at 8:58 AM EDT
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