Reflections From Craig, The Careerguyd

In any job market—particularly when there is high unemployment—networking is critical, if not essential for getting a job.  But I think relying on networking strictly for the utility of getting a job is missing the point.  After all, isn’t it cynical to establish and or maintain relationships if honestly the only purpose in doing so is to get some use out of the people we network with?  Who wants to feel like they are being used anyway?

So the way I sometimes like to frame networking to others is I encourage them to expand their community (or tribe, if you prefer).   In framing it this way, I share that the words community and common have the same roots—so a true community is based on a group (or groups) of people who you can consider your kindred, those you consider to be most similar to you, particularly in interests or values.  For instance, when I work with someone who demonstrates creative interest or ability, I ask them how much time they spend with others who are also creative / artistic.  The idea is that a community can nurture who you are (or who you were meant to be).  As far as career development goes, a person should be seeking opportunities to actualize their unique selves—nurture and surround yourself with all that encourages you and allows you to be YOU.  And a true community plays a significant part in that.  A community can inspire you.  A community can embolden you.  And, perhaps most significantly, a community can help you hone in on what your unique gifts and strengths are, because being surrounded by others who share your color can help you discover the distinctive hue that only you have.  The color red surrounded by different colors simply looks red, but when different variations of red are juxtaposed, one is able to see more clearly what the difference is.  This is perhaps the greatest irony of community this way, since common also means average or ordinary, yet a community can help you discover how you are extraordinary.  And once you are awake to what is remarkable about you, you are empowered to bring this unique value into all you do, including your work.  And what is the essence of a job interview:  “how can you add value?”  This is only the tip of the iceberg.

So when networking is done correctly, it is much more than finding leads to jobs. It is growth. It is discovery.  It is inspiration. It is motivation.  It is affirmation.   Indeed, connecting with others connects you to yourself.

Though my role as a blogger has not had much salience lately, I continue to read as much as possible.  When I first started work as a career counselor, one of my favorite library resources to help people with resumes and other essential job search information was the Knock ‘em Dead books by Martin Yate.  I continue to rely on his information, and look forward to whenever there is an update to his series.   I was therefore excited to learn that Mr. Yate had recently published a new installment to the series: Knock ‘em Dead – Secrets and Strategies for Success in an Uncertain World. 

For those who are facing this challenging job market, this is a fantastic book to quickly grasp the latest techniques for getting noticed in a crowded job market and on the pathway to success.

Here’s what I particularly like about it:

• Yate’s voice is very personal, like he is talking to you or coaching you.  The job search can be an alienating experience, so I think Yate’s conversational approach is particularly nice.
• He demonstrates what he preaches: that success can be found through networking.  He does this by interspersing his own advice with the advice of a panel of top-notch career professionals.  No one is an island, and while Yate’s experience in career and job search advice is encyclopedic, it is also enhanced by his engagement with a community of others that share his passions.  Using one’s network is important for all who are striving for success, and Yate aptly models this.
• While it covers the greater essentials of what it takes to be career-savvy in the context of the contemporary job market, it is also a quick and easy read.  This is why I might recommend this book for someone who has not had to conduct a job search in a while,  since there is typically an urgency behind it.  Quick-reference and comprehensive—this book has a nice balance of the two.

Three years ago, I discovered an exciting submission for the ChangeThis website, a manifesto encouraging readers to reconsider their framework for weaknesses.  It was called the Freak Factor:  Discovering Uniqueness by Flaunting Weakness, and I was so impressed by it that I shared it with many of clients and colleagues alike, and I even referenced it in this blog.  The manifesto promised to someday become a book, and so until last month, I had been anticipating the publication of the full copy–and now (to my glee) it has come to fruition.

When I discovered The Freak Factor, I was already a big fan of the work of Buckingham and Clifton, as demonstrated in the  Now, Discover Your Strengths book or the work of Tom Rath in the Strengths Finder 2.0 book.  These books effectively asserted that career development should revolve around opportunities that allow the individual to apply their strengths in greatest concentration and to not be concerned so much with improving one’s weakness.  The Freak Factor builds on this idea by turning it upside down.  What I like particularly about The Freak Factor, is it suggests that maybe we shouldn’t be so fast in focusing entirely on our strengths, as often there is another facet to our weaknesses, which when appropriately applied in career, can be a strength.  The starting point is that we can of reframe our weaknesses into strengths, and conversely, when our strengths are put in the wrong context (i.e. the wrong job), they might be seen as weaknesses.  So if a person is criticized for being too stubborn in one context (weakness) in another context, this stubborn quality might be rewarded when perceived as the strength of persistence.

The Freak Factor is an exciting celebration of one’s uniqueness.  It encourages us all to accept ourselves, as is, and challenges us to forge career opportunity by daring to be different and applying our unique qualities to our greatest advantage.  If a person is feeling like a square peg at work, or if their self-estimation has been challenged by rejection or failure, this book is an excellent pick-me-up. It gives one the fortitude to truly be themselves and launch themselves accordingly toward their bliss and passion.   Loaded with inspirational quotes, biographical clips of individuals that were bold enough to break from the mold of conformity and flaunt their uniqueness, and small exercises for their reader to carry out their own self-reflection, this book has been everything that I have been anticipating over the last three years.

People often ask me:   Which jobs will have the greatest opportunity in the future?  What occupations will provide the greatest security in the future?  Or, I will see them make career decisions primarily based on what they hear about the job market. For instance, individuals who admittedly do not like working with people or science and math and are seeking training to become Registered Nurses.

What do I tell these people?  Well, I ask them what they are passionate about and I ask them what they think they have the potential to be the BEST at.  Because regardless of the job market, I earnestly believe that when a person initiates their career development within (intrinsically) and set their goals accordingly, they will ultimately find the opportunity they are looking for and their achievement in personal excellence will become their job security.  No matter how limited the job market is, if a person develops the reputation of being the BEST at what they do, therein lies their security and opportunity.  I see people avoiding occupations because the pay is low or there are not enough jobs.  These initially are valid concerns, but what if a person BOLDLY moves in a direction that allows them to channel their passion and God-given talents?

To effectively apply this strategy requires self-knowledge.  A folly of many is they have a passionate interest in something that is not commensurately matched by talent.  I love to use the example of American Idol in this instance.  There are thousands of auditions each year, each person passionate enough to stand in line for hours and possible sing before an audience of millions.  Yet ultimately, only ONE idol is selected.  Mediocrity is not sufficient to make it to the top, and thousands of aspiring idols remain in obscurity. (Though some benefit from notoriety!)

Passion can open up opportunities, but ultimately talent is what provides security.  The essence of career development is helping others discover their passions and talents, and then to encourage them to move forward in that direction. There you will most likely find security, and more importantly, satisfaction.

Guy Kawasaki’s   Holy Kaw!  segment on Alltop.com led me to an interesting article in WSJ titled, No Glass Ceiling for the Best Job in the World by David Kesmodel.  In this article he reflects how even though men account for nearly 73% of the beer-drinking market, women apparently are better tasters when it comes to testing new product.

Though I could reflect on how stereotypes have prevented employers from identifying top talent, what struck me most in this article is how often it is that people can go through their entire lives without ever noticing or identifying what their talents or gifts are.

The article mentions how Miller Brewing recruited women in-house from marketers and secretaries to see if any of them had any talent as professional tasters.  I imagine that in that quest, they identified some true talent–talent that would be more valuable applied in tasting than whatever else they were doing for the company.

It makes me wonder What if these individuals worked in some other manufacturing outfit, say auto parts?  What if they limited their search to individuals that had already established themselves as tasters (must have experience!)?

Apparently, there was an element of randomness or happenstance that allowed these opportunities to occur.  But in regards to identifying what your talent is, there is another gem in the article, where a Polish beer taster reflects how she is not quite sure why she is an adept beer-taster. Her best guess is that she loved to smell perfumes as a child.

Here are two things that can be learned from this woman in regards to career:

1.  One way to identify your career calling is to identify something that brings (or brought) you pleasure.  The woman who enjoyed playing and experimenting with aromas now gets paid to identify minute tastes and aromas in beer. What did you love to do/spend hours doing when you were a child?  Might this thing have any context in what you do now for a living?
2. Try not to disregard anything that is (or was) unique about you.  Enjoying perfumes might seem so trivial in most any context, but look what it led to for this woman?

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to get my Swine Flu immunization. Quite a few people in my circle have been getting sick, and the media’s pervasive coverage of this illness would make it seem that the pending pandemic is potentially pernicious enough to rival the Black Plague or something so dramatic. So, with that, I determined, “Why not?”

While waiting in the doctor’s office, I grabbed the news magazine on the top and began reading. I cannot tell you the date or name of the publication, nor the name of the article, but what I read was quite fascinating indeed.

Most of us are familiar with the placebo effect, where an inert pill (commonly sugar) is given to a patient who is then told that the said pill will have therapeutic effect. Lo and behold, the condition of some patients improves, because the patient merely believes that the placebo will help them.

The article I read spoke that the opposite effect or nocebo sometimes occurs with patients who are told that a treatment might have undesirable side effects. We have seen how pharmaceutical companies (almost laughably) toss in their “undesirable side effects” disclaimers in the television ads for new medications. It turns out that when people are under the impression that a medication “may hurt” or bring about these undesirable side effects when given an inert treatment, they often feel the negative effects.

This got me thinking of the negativity that surrounds recession times. How does the media coverage of mass layoffs and unemployment rates impact your perception? I often find myself acknowledging that accomplishing various career or job search goals is difficult because of the times we are facing. Am I doing my clients (or myself) a favor by “pragmatically” observing that there are less jobs out there right now, therefore making their job search more difficult–or am I rather feeding a nocebo negativity, deterring them from an optimism that would feed their motivation and allow them to remain persistent in the hopes that they will soon find success?

After reading this article, I am determined to stick with the latter perception, and dwell on the positive as Pollyannaish as this may be. Perception is key. Those that are able to ignore the naysayers and who persistently pursue their goals and dreams are the ones who can change the world, innovate, and achieve the most. How does your perception of yourself, your situation, and of the greater world around you impact your achievement? Do you allow failures to derail you, or do you see them rather as opportunities to learn so that you will ultimately be successful toward whatever it is you are questing for?

Your attitude or perception can either be a placebo or nocebo regardless of what situation you face. If the distance between hard and impossible is a thousand miles wide, imagine then what can be done, no matter what barriers you currently face. Pablo Picasso said, “Everything you can imagine is real.” Can you imagine a better economy? A better job? A better life? A better world? Take the positive pill and you can find whatever remedy you are seeking.

I don’t suspect that I will ever look at nature with the ego-dissolving spiritual intensity of Eckhart Tolle or his Transcendentalist predecessors, but I do enjoy the meditative solitude of being out in nature and am often inspired by it. And so yesterday, I decided to fully enjoy an hour-long hike. In that brief outing, I did have some remarkable revelations. First, I realized that though I have now been exercising regularly (thanks, Craig), I have a long way to go if I want to tackle steep inclines at a brisk pace. But more significantly, I was inspired by the mostly dry and dead vegetation. Brown and tan weeds abound throughout the hills of Southern California in the summertime, a side-effect of the sunny and cloud-free climate that otherwise makes the area so popular. Though these dead and brittle weeds are more likely to spark up in flames than to spark inspiration, yesterday I noticed something remarkable. While most of the plants looked dead, some plants somehow remained green in the midst of a drought-arid season. How can it be that these plants thrive while their immediate neighbors are dying from an unfavorable season? What made these plants better adapted to handle the harsh environment that they were planted in? Were they merely fortunate to have had their seeds land in a shadier area or somewhere closer to the water table, or was it more that they had the proper genetic make-up to flourish?
These same questions can be applied to people in a recession economy. With less wealth, many jobs have dried up. And many who still have jobs are feeling the stress of pending layoffs and carrying the slack of a lean workforce. Having access to a rainmaker might be nice right about now in this economy, but let us remember: we are not plants. Unlike plants, we do not need to be rooted in an environment that does not allow us to thrive. And not only can we move, but we also have potential to adapt quickly to our changing environment to get more favorable results. You may feel ties to your unfulfilling job/occupation just because you have been planted there for so long. Perhaps you are afraid to move because for the most part, nothing looks better around you (there really was not much green on my hike yesterday.) Maybe you are feeling resentful at your peers who are experiencing success right now, while for you, every day is a struggle. Perhaps you have not discovered changes you might make in yourself that might bring you greater success with the cards that you have been dealt. So you grew up in a dysfunctional home, think you are too shy to network and market yourself, or you have always wanted to do something but are too afraid or just don’t know how to start. How far can the apple travel from the tree? How much can you grow, adapt, and learn? And what changes/adaptations might you strive for so that you can flourish?
And maybe it is most important to appreciate things already in you that can make life favorable. What is unique and special about you? What things have you done already that have rewarded you with achievement or success? Perhaps there is nothing wrong with you or what you are doing (or are trying to do) and now is just a test of perseverance and endurance. I assure you that soon after the temperatures cool and a few rains kick in, some of these same plants that looked dead yesterday will spring back to life, and begin to even flourish more than their neighbors who now seemingly have an advantage in the dry season.
Move, change, or stay rooted in persistence and determination: you have options. Though it is not always clear what option is best, whatever option you choose for yourself, carry with it a seed of hope and optimism—for that is the one thing that allows life to abound in any environment.

A few weeks ago I was watching a television airing of The Incredibles. Don’t ask why I sometimes do this when I own the DVD of a film, but that would be another topic. What I wanted to dwell on is more like what Pamela Slim does with Cinderella and appreciate how accurately career development is portrayed in a story marketed for children.
At the beginning of the movie, Mr. Incredible loves his job as a super hero so much, that he nearly misses his own wedding in order to do his job. Though I would hope that this is not the extreme it would take to prove that your job is ideally fitting, it is certainly a sign that you have found your element. This is then contrasted with when he is compelled to give up his job as superhero and try to fit in the banal and dubious role of insurance clerk. Are his weight gain and general dissatisfaction at home all due to this change in career? We would have to at least suspect such.
Again, we see how he is still drawn to what is most authentic, surreptitiously sneaking out with Frozone to fight crime. What do you find yourself voluntarily doing with your free time? What do your leisure pursuits possibly communicate about what you might be doing for your work life?
Lastly, we get the immediate transformation once Mr. Incredible is summoned to the mysterious island to fight the evil robot. The results are dramatic: he is empowered and invigorated, he is inspired to take better care of his health, passion has returned to his marriage, and he is better connected with his family in general. This is perhaps the most significant picture message that can be derived from the film. The insurance job is so exaggeratedly unfitting as Mr. Incredible can barely fit in his confining cubicle/office chair.
miserableatoffice
Are you “stuck” in a job because you are afraid to leave it because of the “security” it provides for your family? If the job makes you miserable, what are you really providing for your family anyway, when your energy and presence is perhaps the most significant gift you can provide? And is it any wonder that when the entire family is allowed to be their true selves, the bond between them is the greatest?
The truth is, when you have found the most fitting work, it makes you feel incredible. How would you like to feel like a rock star or superhero every day? And then imagine what that would do for every aspect of your life.

The other evening, I watched a fascinating lecture on UCTV, the television channel that broadcasts lectures from the University of California. The particular lecture I was watching was one given by Laura A. Schmidt, titled Health in America: Whats Health Reform Got to Do with It? In it, Dr. Schmidt discusses the sociological dynamics of healthcare, and identifies something that has long been asserted by career development professionals. She suggests that the less autonomy people have at work, the more stress they tend to experience in life. And the more stress one experiences, the more likely they are to also experience the most damaging health care problems experienced by Americans. Her point was effectively made by graphs showing the incidence of major health problems correlated with social status. Those who are marginalized or who have lower status were more susceptible to health ailments, while those who have the greatest amount of control in their work had the least health problem incidence.
Though her points were made to influence how the United States approaches health care policy, they make an equally compelling statement about the workforce of the country. Is it really worth it to stay in a job that has you so stressed out that you are miserable? If you consider how EXPENSIVE health care is in its present state, and how a job where you do not feel empowered with autonomy or competent enough to feel like you are effective can be harmful to your health or even kill you, is it worth it?
How much control and autonomy do you have at your work? Are your daily tasks the kinds of tasks that you are good at, that you enjoy doing? If you are lacking in your work in either regard, take a moment to consider how your job is impacting your health. Does your job leave you feeling so drained that you are not motivated to exercise? Is it so stressful that you resort to not-so-healthy practices like binge eating, eating high-fat or high-sugary foods, drinking to excess, or using other harmful drugs? If so, strive for something better and work towards it. Work that makes you feel good about yourself will probably motivate you to also take better care of your health. So when you do this, I imagine, you are taking a step toward healthy living, and you might be more naturally inclined to be healthy in more areas in your life. Imagine if everyone loved their jobs. If that were the case, perhaps there would be no need for health care reform, because there would be no crisis in health costs to begin with.