3/25/10: Top Career Posts this Week
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 communicating with your boss, a Free Agent Nation update, storytelling in interviews, work-at-home jobs, and the ultimate guru.
From CubeRules: Are you making these communications mistakes with your manager?
“Manager – employee communication is tricky. The process should be straightforward, but then, business is social and social situations are never that simple. Throw in the fact that your manager is writing your performance review and has influence on your pay and career and you get a communications nightmare. If you want to be an effective communicator with your supervisor, don’t make these killer mistakes.”
Wally’s Comment: Communicating with your boss is important. Communicating with your boss is tricky. This post describes five things you can do wrong.
From HR Observations: “Free Agent Nation” A Thing of The Past? Not In My World.
“I was somewhat surprised to come across the Towers Watson report Jobless Recovery in the U.S. Leaving Trail of Recession-Weary Employees in Its Wake, According to New Study. Sure you would expect to read that people are tired of being laid off or losing their jobs by job elimination. But surprisingly this has lead to a CULTURAL ATTITUDE SHIFT and people are now looking for more permanency in their relationships with their employers. The report states that “A startling eight out of 10 respondents want to settle into a job, with roughly half saying they want to work for a single company their entire career and the rest wanting to work for no more than two to three companies.” Whoa! Are these people wanting to return to their fathers’ world of work?”
Wally’s Comment: Towers Watson released the results of a survey that seems to imply that workers really want to return to a kind of 1950s workplace. Mike Haberman doesn’t think that will happen.
From Jackie Cameron: Why you need to tell stories in interviews
“Good interviewers will tease information from candidates but the candidate has to play their part. This is their moment in the spotlight! So providing evidence of experience by telling relevant stories with details and examples (blending more than one to make the point if necessary) is crucial.”
Wally’s Comment: Interviews are high stakes conversations. Stories are the most powerful communication medium human beings have. It only makes sense that they should go together.
From Alison Doyle at About.com: Real Work at Home Jobs
“I was helping a friend look for a work at home job this week and it was really hard to find anything that was a real job opportunity with a paycheck.”
Wally’s Comment: Sure, those “make gazillions working from home” ads are bogus. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t legitimate jobs where you can earn a paycheck working from home. Alison Doyle surveys the landscape and highlights some real opportunities.
From Awake at the Wheel: Be Your Own Guru
“I spent the better part of the first 40-years of my life looking for a guru, that person who would just blow me away with her or his prescience, kindness, compassion, vision and guidance. The one who would give me the answers. Who would tell me what to do to get to that place where I finally felt like I had “made it.” So many others I knew had found one and their lives seemed so much better, more directed and purposeful for it, but that never happened to me. I would attend lectures, teachings, seminars, trainings and retreats and, inevitably, end up leaving early because some combination of information, integrity, pace or delivery did not resonate. Why couldn’t I find that person?”
Wally’s Comment: Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Jonathan Fields suggests something slightly different. “We have met the ultimate guru, and he is us.”
