Every week I check dozens of “career” blogs and other online publications, looking for things that will help you find a job, get promoted, develop your skills, and keep everything in perspective and balance. Here’s the pick of the lot for this week. I’m pointing you to items about options for older job seekers, hiring a resume writer, learning from the temp experience, your life story, and picking your battles.

From US News and World Report: Older Workers May Find Open Arms at Nonprofits

“A recent survey from MetLife and Civic Ventures suggests the nonprofit world offers some hope for older workers with corporate experience.”

Wally’s Comment: There are precious few blog posts designed to help older workers. Here is one.

From Jobacle: 6 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Resume Writer

“Here are some essential questions to ask prospective writers - and yourself - before you hire someone to conduct a re-write.”

Wally’s Comment: At some point, you’ll probably be tempted to hire a resume writer. That’s when you’ll find that you don’t even need a business card to call yourself a “professional” resume writer these days. And that’s when this post will come in handy. Clip and save.

From Brazen Careerist: You Can Learn From Me, the Temp

“As a former administrative assistant and on-again-off-again temp worker, I’ve been exposed to an array of things that have mellowed my views about the general workplace. I used to think, ‘If I find that one job that I love, I won’t have to worry about looking for a career ever again.’ Gosh, how naive was I?”

Wally’s Comment: A great post about lessons someone else learned so you don’t have to.

From Jon Gordon’s Blog: Change Your Story

“Every one of us is playing a part in a story. What role are you playing? Victim? Hero? Fighter? Lover? Soap Opera Star? Underdog? Over-comer? Do you want to change your life? Change your story. Just as a director of a movie utilizes different perspectives and camera angles and colors to create a look and feel of a movie, you can redefine your life with a new perspective, new thoughts, new beliefs, and new actions that will change everything.”

Wally’s Comment: Jon presents a simple idea that can help you transform your career and your life.

From Execupundit: Picking Battles

“A sign of an experienced operator in any organization is that the person knows which battles are worth fighting.”

Wally’s Comment: When you’re young, it’s tempting to jump into every battle. Michael Wade reminds us that it’s smarter to pick your spots.

The economic idea of work is that you put in effort and time and your employer gives you money. But compensation is not that simple.

There are many things, both economic and otherwise, that can compensate you meaningfully for your labor and contribution.  

Here’s a Thought List of compensation options. It’s not a checklist. The idea is that different items will get you thinking about what’s best for you and that will help you make good decisions.

Let’s start with economic compensation. Direct compensation includes pay and bonus. There’s also deferred compensation like options, contributions to a retirement plan, etc.

Then there are the in-lieu-of-cash items. The biggest of these is health care. The difference between what you pay for employer-sponsored health insurance and what you’d pay for the same coverage as an individual can be several hundred dollars a month.

I believe that you should make “enough” money doing something you love. You have to define what’s “enough” for you.

My life experience tells me that making a ton of money doing something you hate is a bad choice. So is doing something you love while you constantly worry about paying the bills.

When people talk about their great jobs with me in coaching sessions or in class, money is hardly ever mentioned. Here are some of the other things that come up a lot. It’s only a partial list.

Look for work that’s exciting for you. Professional challenge might do the trick. Or maybe you want to spend a lot of time in contact with people. Perhaps you like projects. Whatever it is, seek out work you like.

Look for place where you can work with people you like. Working on a good, productive team is great for most people. But if you’re a person who loves to work alone, find a job that lets you do that.

Flexibility is great compensation for most people. This can be a flexible schedule or flexible assignments.

You may be a person who craves opportunity. If that’s you, seek out places that give you the opportunity to rise to the top of the tree or take on exciting challenges. If you love learning, look for work where you can learn new things.

What else is there? Think back over the best jobs you’ve had. Consider the jobs your friends and family members have done. What was great about them?

The best job for you is one that offers you enough money to do work you love. When that happens, it’s hardly work anymore.

Every week I check dozens of “career” blogs and other online publications, looking for things that will help you find a job, get promoted, develop your skills, and keep everything in perspective and balance. Here’s the pick of the lot for this week. I’m pointing you to items about getting feedback when you’re turned down for a job, career paths to leadership, personal branding tips, keeping your job, and risk taking at work.

From Alison Green at US News & World Report: How to Get Feedback When You’re Rejected

“So you thought the position was a perfect fit and your interview seemed to go well, but in the end, you didn’t get the job. You could speculate about why you weren’t hired, but if you’re really curious, why not try to actually find out by asking for some feedback from the hiring manager? Here’s how to do it.”

Wally’s Comment: This is another one of those topics you wish was covered in every “how to find a job” class.

From Dan McCarthy at Great Leadership: Career Paths to Leadership & Leadership Development

“I think it’s great that you’ve recognized that “leadership” is a calling, and that you already refer to yourself as a leader. Leadership is not a position, it’s the ability to enable others, and organizations, to achieve extraordinary results (That’s just my definition, by the way, there are hundreds of others).”

Wally’s Comment: If leadership is the kind of work you want to do, Dan’s response to a reader’s question gives you good advice on how to get there.

From Personal Branding: 7 Personal Branding Tips for College Graduates

“After changing majors a few times, I settled on public relations at the start of my junior year. Once I made that choice, I realized that I needed to establish an area of expertise, something that would set my personal brand apart from the thousands of other freshly minted public relations grads. For me, this was pretty easy; I wanted to focus on food and restaurants. The focus of your personal brand must be something you are going to enthusiastically look forward to learning and talking about every day.”

Wally’s Comment: This post takes the position that it’s never too early to begin thinking about your personal brand, and then gives you some tips on effective strategies.

From Forbes: Keeping Your Job

“That scenario, or variations of it, will be repeated in the coming months as more troubled companies get gobbled up by bigger ones. But it’s not a foregone conclusion you’ll be let go. That’s where you come in.”

Wally’s Comment: Say, here’s something that’s on a lot of minds these days.

From 45 Things: Do You Have a Spineless Career?

“When was the last time you did something courageous at work? I’m not talking about cleaning out the office fridge (although that does take gumption) or trying a new font on your report. I’m talking about stepping out of your comfort zone, doing something that made your palms sweat or your knees quake.”

Wally’s Comment: Growth comes from stretching, from rising to new challenges. Here’s a post that shares some pointers about how to do that on the job.

Workforce Management just ran an article titled “Why Business Can’t Write—and What to Do about It.” Here’s the teaser copy.

“In today’s business environment, writing savvy helps to drive deals and cement relationships, perhaps more than ever before, corporate training and human resource leaders say. But U.S. employees appear to be falling short when it comes to writing skills.”

There’s good news and bad news in this article for you. The bad news is that if you don’t write well, you’re lowering your own odds for success. The good news is that you can learn to write well. Here are some tips.

Master standard business English. Write to your friends however you choose, but make your business documents businesslike. In addition to improving your image, you’ll also make it easier for more people (especially those for whom English is a second language) to understand you.

Learn to write simple prose. Simple words, simple sentences, and short paragraphs are usually best. Stop and think before you use abbreviations or acronyms to make sure everyone who reads your writing will understand them.

Check everything you write with software that gives you a readability score. There’s one built in to Microsoft Word. Make the effort to improve your score.

Read your writing out loud. Your mouth and ear will catch things that your eye will miss.

Make re-writing a habit. The best writers re-write. If you can, put some time between one draft and the next.

Learn to write captivating subject lines. In the world of email, subject lines that telegraph the content of your message will get it read.

Good, clear writing is a key success skill. Invest time and energy in improving your writing and then reap the benefits.

Every week I check dozens of “career” blogs and other online publications, looking for things that will help you find a job, get promoted, develop your skills, and keep everything in perspective and balance. Here’s the pick of the lot for this week. I’m pointing you to items about handling interview questions, second-guessing career choices, surviving an acquisition, job hopping, and ways the downturn could be good.

From Rowan Manahan at Fortify Your Oasis: Back to basics - Interview 101

“Job interviews have long been compared to a first date. It is important to be ready to answer anything that is thrown at you - and that means anticipating the questions and doing your homework. Here are a few of those ‘chestnut’ questions that interviewers always seem to ask. The key to success is understanding why they are asking the question. If you know what is in the interviewers’ heads as they probe you on something, you can build an answer that will highlight your strong points, allay their concerns and hopefully, clinch the job for you”

Wally’s Comment: Great preparation for your next interview, especially for those questions for which you haven’t prepared a specific answer.

From the Career Key Blog: Second-guessing your career path

“Having doubts about your career decisions is normal – at least for people I talk with about choosing a career and in my own experience. Like buyer’s remorse, you may feel a twinge of uncertainty as the financial aid office cashier takes your check and your decision to enroll in that master’s degree becomes final. Or when you attend your first staff meeting at a new job and you feel out of place – and out of your depth. Or opening your business doors and for the first few hours you don’t make a single sale.”

Wally’s Comment: We all do it. Here’s some advice on how you can make the process of second guessing actually helpful.

From Careers at MSNBC: How to survive and thrive after an acquisition

“if you are lucky enough to survive immediate layoffs, it’s a good time to come up with a strategy to survive and thrive once the new bosses descend upon your department.”

Wally’s Comment: We’ve seen a bunch and there’s more to come.

From Silvana Avinami at Brazen Careerist: Job-Hopping 101

“Because I’m still reading through the hate mail that I received after posting Are You Getting the Itch to Switch (Jobs)? on Brazen Careerist’s blog I thought it would be a good idea to set the record straight about my philosophy about job-hopping. Let’s start by defining what it isn’t.”

Wally’s Comment: Is job hopping a good thing? Well …

From Newly Corporate: 5 Ways the Economic Downturn Could Help You

“As much over-hyped doom and gloom as there is in the blogosphere and the mainstream media right now, I would like to highlight a few examples of a silver lining in the dark storm cloud that is our current bear market. Generation Y needs to stay positive, as we always do, and focus on these areas.”

Wally’s Comment: If you have a choice between good economic times and bad, choose good. But if you don’t get to choose, this post will help.

Elaine was one of my first career coaching clients. It was early in our relationship that she gave me a big insight.

Elaine wasn’t happy in her first job out of college. She wanted a change. I suggested to her that she imagine an ideal day five years in the future.

Her shoulders slumped. “That’s what all the books say,” she said, dejected, “but I just can’t do that. I don’t know how.”

That stunned me. Imagining that ideal day was an exercise that lots of career coaches used. It was my starting point for thinking about my own career. So I thought it would work with anyone.

And I knew that Elaine wasn’t kidding me. I was sure she had tried the technique, probably two or three times.

She was bright and committed to changing her life. The technique I thought would help her do that didn’t work. It was up to me come up with an exercise that would help.

I got lucky. That evening I got together with my friend, Terry, for one of our regular, what-are-you-up-to sessions.

Terry was a research scientist and not someone I’d normally ask about things like this, but the situation was fresh and I was frustrated. I was stunned when he said, “I think I’ve got something for you.”

Terry had discovered some research on innovation styles. It told him that there are four common questions that people ask when they want to change. One of those was “What’s my goal?” which is the academic version of “Imaging an ideal day …”

There were three other questions: “Who’s important to me?”; “What should I do right now?” and “What would be fun to try?”  It turned out that the right question/exercise for Elaine to start with was “Who’s important to me?”

Terry also told me that most people only ask one or two of the questions. That’s important because the people and organizations that are good at change ask three or four.

Elaine couldn’t start by defining her goal, but once she started thinking about who was important to her, some goals just seemed to bubble up from her soul. Asking the other questions on the list helped sharpen the answers to all the questions.

Which brings me to why I’m writing about this. If it’s time to make a change in your life, ask all the questions. It will improve your odds of a good outcome. Here they are again.

What’s the goal?
Who’s important to me?
What should I do right now?
What would be fun to try?

Every week I check dozens of “career” blogs and other online publications, looking for things that will help you find a job, get promoted, develop your skills, and keep everything in perspective and balance. Here’s the pick of the lot for this week. I’m pointing you to items about finding a mentor, your office walls, stealing your boss’s job, shooting straight, and taking the long and the short view.

From JT and Dale Talk Jobs: Do I Really Need a Mentor? Yes, Yes and Yes

“If you’re looking to rationalize away the work of finding mentors, you’ve come to the wrong place. It’s absolutely worth your time; the issue is how to also make it worthwhile for the people you seek out.”

Wally’s Comment: Yes you need a mentor. And, no, it won’t happen without work.

From Jobacle.com: What Your Office Walls REALLY Reveal About You

“When we think about going from the very apex of office couture to the more utilitarian stuff that we’re all used to, the way we decorate our spaces does say a helluva lot about us. And, while our wall space does indeed send a message, this, of course, isn’t necessarily good, either for our images or for our future career.”

Wally’s Comment: If these walls could talk … Well, they can. Sort of. Think of what’s on your walls as part of what creates your personal brand.

From Tara Weiss at Forbes: How To Steal Your Boss’s Job

“Anyone who’s ever held a job knows what it feels like to resent management. Sometimes it seems like your boss couldn’t screw in a light bulb without help. Thankfully, there are ways to get ahead in business and leave your troubles behind. A few devious tricks can help steal your boss’ job–particularly if you’re willing to engage in cutthroat behavior.”

Wally’s Comment: I suppose that this is “Greed is good” transmuted to the workplace. So here’s a thought. Once you steal your boss’s job, then you’re the one with the target on the back and, almost magically, you’ll be the one who can’t screw in a light bulb without help.

From Marshall Goldsmith: Why Shoot Straight in a Crooked World?

“With the crazy economy, the up-and-down stock market, the layoffs, buyouts, and takeovers, I’d like to know: What’s the good in being good?”

Wally’s Comment: This post makes an interesting contrast to the post above. I think honesty is what you should do because it makes for better relations. But I’m skeptical of “proof” that it creates profitability.

From Jon Gordon’s Blog: Zoom Focus

“I believe every one of us has a desire to accomplish great things, to do something meaningful, to have an impact. Yet, so many of us don’t take the actions necessary to create the success we desire. Then there are others who are very busy taking actions but the actions have nothing to do with their vision and goals. They’ve become lost in the busyness of life.”

Wally’s Comment: Focus on the big goal, then zoom focus on the details you need today. This is a great post about a kind of thinking that’s used for success in a variety of situations.

I spent some time this weekend at a party where there were lots of young people. They were mostly aged 25 to 30. This is their first serious downturn.

One of the good things about being 62 is that I’ve been up and down through the cycle more than once. So several of them came over to me and asked what I thought was going to happen and what they should do.

Question: How bad will it get?  Answer: Beats me. My guess is that things are going to get worse than they are right now, but nobody knows how much worse.

Question: How long will it last? Answer: Beats me. Nobody knows the answer to that one, either. Anyone who says he or she does is delusional or has something to sell you.

The one thing we do know is that it will end. Every other economic downturn has ended. It’s like the seasons. Now we’re starting winter, but spring will come.

So stop worrying about what you can’t control. Stop trying to predict what you can’t understand.

Don’t stand still. Keep moving. You’ve got two goals.

Protect yourself as much as you can during the downturn. Cut spending where you can. Keep doing good work. Help people in your network.

And set yourself up so that when the upturn comes you’re ready and stronger. Take on some developmental assignments that boost your capability and visibility.

Economic downturns are tough. And they’re not fair. But you’ll do best if you control what you can, protect yourself, and keep moving.

Every week I check dozens of “career” blogs and other online publications, looking for things that will help you find a job, get promoted, develop your skills, and keep everything in perspective and balance. Here’s the pick of the lot for this week. I’m pointing you to items about managing you professional image, avoiding career advice from pop culture magazines, how to tell if they’re just not into you, getting off on the right foot with a new boss, and taking the long view of your career.

From HBS Working Knowledge: Creating a Positive Professional Image

“There are plenty of books telling you how to “dress for success” and control your body language. But keeping on top of your personal traits is only part of the story of managing your professional image.”

Wally’s Comment: What I liked about this post was the broad definition of “professional image.”

From Kris Dunn at HR Capitalist: Rat Out the Boss (Or Why You Don’t Get Career Advice from Pop Culture Magazines)

“Here are a couple of reasons why doing a skip level session with your boss’s boss may not be a good idea.”

Wally’s Comment: Kris Dunn comments on advice from one of those advice columnists. My money’s on Kris.

From Beth Lisogorsky at Fast Company: Face Facts. They’re Just Not That into You

“But there are common sense signals in the way of indicators that are pretty universal when it comes to both the job market and dating world. I short, I get it when my friend says, “Hmmm…maybe that means they’re just not interested?” in reference to an unfortuitous sign from a prospective employer I’ve interviewed with. So here are a few themes I’ve picked up on in my job hunt that usually indicate they’re just [really] not that into you:”

Wally’s Comment: Yes, it’s true, no matter what a star you are, sometimes they’re just not that into you. Read this post for the telltale signs.

From Dan McCarthy at Great Leadership: 10 Ways to Get Off on the Right Foot with Your New Manager

“I’m going to assume that the new manager is a good, competent leader, and not a “boss” (double SOB spelled backwards). If not, than I’d have to come up with an entirely different “How to work for a jerk” list, and there’s already plenty of those around.”

Wally’s Comment: They say you never get a second chance to make a first impression. They say there’s only one “honeymoon period” with a new boss. Dan McCarthy tells you how to make the best of both.

From Escape from Cubicle Nation: Stop searching for the perfect job and start finding your life’s work

“Jobs are temporary things, often enticing on paper until you realize that as soon as you get comfortable in your position, it will change, your boss will change, your team will change or your organization will change. That is just the nature of business. Therefore if you go into a job excited by the position or the person you will be working for and not the work itself, you often set yourself up to be disappointed.”

Wally’s Comment: In the midst of the hurley-burley of job search it’s a good thing sometimes to step back, take a deep breath, and take the long view.