photo from howsed.com

We’ve had problems with our bathroom sink for almost five years, since we moved into this house.  It always drained slow.  We tried liquid plumber, liquid plumber gel, some plumber powder stuff, and my infamous homemade tool to fish stuff out of the drain.

Any solution worked for a day or so, but the problem never went away.  I guess now’s the time to admit I have like no man-skills as far as DIY goes, and spend more time frustrated than fixing the actual problem.

Enter Bob.  Bob came over to measure for a project and on his way past the sink we asked him what we could do to get to the root of the problem.  “Oh,” he says, “just unscrew the pee trap and I bet your problem is there. If not, work your way up to the drain in the sink.”  I asked “I don’t have to have that plumber putty stuff?” “No.” he says.  “I unscrew it by hand?”  “Yes.” he says.

I just fixed it.  4.5 years of problems with our sink are now washed away (pun intended ;)).  It took… oh, 30 minutes to get it fixed and cleaned up.

30 minutes, guided by an expert, and my slow-drain sink problems go away.

If I would have gone to a resume expert, like Peter at Career Resumes, I would have avoided a long, dreary, depressing, job search.  I try to DIY (do it yourself) all the time, because I’m cheap.  But in my cheapness I lost tens of thousands of dollars in salary that I would have captured if I only had a job.

And I didn’t get my job because I didn’t get interviews.

And I didn’t get interviews because I my resume wasn’t right.  It was shiny, and looked good, but it kept me out of interviews.

A professionally could have looked at that and said “hm, why isn’t this shiny resume getting you interviews?”  And after some discovery, they would have helped me get into interviews, and then into a job.

Is it worth paying the money?  If I could do it all over again, I definitely would have paid the money.  If you aren’t getting interviews, there’s likely something wrong with your resume.  Contact Career Resumes to see what they can do for you.  It may be a simple, easy, quick, painless fix, but you might need a professional resume writer to help you get there… just like I needed a professional builder/handyman to help me fix my simple drain problem.

I was at a networking/job-search event one evening learning about my job search, and hoping to meet some sharp professionals I could network with.  Before we got to chat with one another, the facilitator shared some thoughts with us.

He talked about how we have a strong identity when we are employed, but when we become unemployed we lose our identity.  I knew exactly what he was talking about, as I went from “Hi I’m Jason, General Manager of XYZ Company” to “Hi, I’m Jason …. …. … I’m looking for a job.”  I didn’t have it down very well and always tried to think of another way to say “looking for a job.”

It was hard, uncomfortable, humiliating, etc.  You may know what I’m talking about.

Anyway, he went on to talk about resumes and business cards, and what the purpose is of each.  Have you ever been to a networking event, probably with people in transition, and had someone give you their resume?  What’s the message when someone gives you a resume?

Please help me, I’m a job seeker and I need your help to land again.

Fast forward a few months to when you are no longer in transition.  What will you give people when you are at networking events?  Probably a … business card! Why?  Because that’s what professionals do… they give out business cards.

No matter where you are, you should have business cards to hand out.  Just because you are in transition doesn’t mean you aren’t a professional, right?  And professionals have business cards, right?  Here are some tips on putting together a business card (some I’ve heard and kind of agree with):

• Get anything but a glossy finish. People complain they can’t make notes on your card if you have a glossy finish.  I don’t totally agree on this one, as I don’t make notes on the card… but it’s a valid thought.
• Leave the back empty. This gives people room to right all their notes.  I also don’t agree totally on this one, as my back is quite different.  And that leads me to the next point…
• Make your card UNIQUE. Can you think of something to do to make your card just a little different?  A friend of mine cut his in a different shape (unique).  Another friend put “My Card” where the title would have been (humorous).  The back of my card is PINK with the words “PINK SLIP” in huge letters (on-brand for what I do).  If you can think of something unique that will help them remember your card, or want to not throw it away, you are doing good!
• Make your business card lasting. If you put some elevator pitch about being a “professional (job title) in transition,” what happens when you land your next gig?  All of your cards will be useless.  Of course it’s cheap to buy cards, so maybe that’s okay, but if you want to have a multi-purpose card, don’t put that kind of information on it.
• Make sure you have a good email address. LongLegs@aol.com is not a good email address.  To be safe, go with your name (like JohnSmith@gmail.com).  I favor gmail.com as a professional address, but that’s for another post!

Do you have business cards yet?  I hope you get some, as you are a professional, and that’s what professionals pass around!  But you better have a sharp, current resume ready, for the times when people say “can you send me your resume?”  If you don’t have a current resume, let Career Resumes know.  They do free resume reviews and have a bunch of resume samples you can learn from.

Oh yeah, here’s the back of my business card

The back of my business card

A couple of months ago Peter asked a question to his LinkedIn contacts: What is the worst career advice you’ve ever heard? Here are most of the awesome replies (there were 42 responses - see them all here):

• You’re set for life! (… when someone has just taken a job in the public service. Set - yeah, like a jelly is set!)
• get a degree in accounting
• “So, you want to be a lawyer?!! Get a real job first! Work in a factory for some years, to see the real life!” I didn’t follow the advice…
• “You have a good job at a utility: stay there.”  Safety equals dullness. (there’s more)
• The worst career advice is not to have any when you are first starting out, especially with the graduation door slamming shut on your rear -end on the way out!
• 1976, upper midwest, town of 7,000, 10th grade - you guys don’t need to learn to type…typing is for girls.  How’s that worked out for you guys?
• “Listen, I know you have a staff job but I think you should take that really great, totally secure freelance position!”
• “Seek advice from random strangers on the Internet.”  (lol - thanks Alex)
• In a counselling setting: Don’t worry if people don’t come back, they just didn’t like what you said to them. (of course I worried about why they didn’t come back.)
• In a government job: Don’t leave, there’s a lot of job security. (I left)
• In private practice: You don’t have enough experience to do that. (I have it now!)
• You have to not work so many hours. (But I love my job and am enjoying myself so much)
• “Your neurosis problems are making you fail in your job…”
• 26 years later, I still try to find out if I have neurosis problems and I have found nothing…
• “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” Yes, it is a question, but it implies that you should have a 5-year plan, Total BS this day and age.
• Always say you have extensive experience doing X when someone asks you if you’ve done X before.
• “You’re a Rhodes Scholar! You’re all set! What could go wrong?”
• You deserve better, they are just exploiting you. If you resign, we will immediately take you… Needless to say that words vanish like smoke….
• ” When you are a “fresher,” better stick to your company atleast for one year”
• To volunteer for low level tasks as an intership or job starter.
• “Dress for the job you want, not the job you have. Management will notice.” I was thinking ‘yeah I want to be known for my clothing and not my experience or education.’
• “Plastics.” (Anyone remember THE GRADUATE with Dustin Hoffman?)
• [my current job is] a total wrong fit and whenever I talk to people and ask for some advice the line I get is “at least you have a paycheck.” And I think to myself, great, what do I do with this?
• don’t push to have a managerial post, just settle to become a secretary a top noch one, though…..
• I approached [a speaker] and asked how I could move into that career (I was already a trainer for a company). his response…”Just do it guy.”
• “don’t take risks by thinking outside of the box so much”
• “In order to become a Genetic Engineer, you have to study Civil Engineering!”
• “You’ll be limited if you don’t have a degree”
• “You have to wait for your turn and grow your wings before you can be considered for leadership positions. It’s the same with other companies.”
• “Closing three small deals is better than going for that big ambitious project.”
• You have so much potential - hold out for 2 more years and you will go places!
• “around here, you are nothing more than a strong back; get about a good 8 years of experience in the lab, and then you can break into the 60k salary tier!”
• Stay at a job your unhappy with - you have too much tribal knowledge.
• I arrived for what a thought was a job interview and turned out to be a head hunting firm. Looked at my resume calculated I had been in the work force over 25 years and said you have one good job left in you.
• “Hey go check out Enron, they’re looking for talented auditors”
• “You are too smart to be a business major! You should do engineering.”
• “You have a special calling to do this.” I gave working in the church a try before becoming a recruiter.
• My Father: “No Daughter of mine is going into this business!!”
• “The IT job market is HOT!”… Uh… no… IT workers have about a 13% unemployment rate, and over the next few years I expect 1/3 to 1/2 more Americans in IT to permanently lose their jobs. Every day I ask myself… Why, oh why, did I not become a Dentist? Now there is a stable career.
• “Do ANYTHING you can to get into __________ firm.”
• “Girls can’t be engineers - only teachers or nurses.” - Midwest, late 1960s. HA!
• “A Bachelors is all you need”

What’s the worst career advice YOU’VE ever heard?

The fun is coming to an end.

My tenure on the Career Resumes blog ends in mid-September, just shy of the two-year mark. Don’t worry, I’m not gonna get all sappy on here – instead, we’re going to make these last eight posts as useful as possible, and then gracefully step aside for the next great Career Resumes blogger.

How, you ask? By covering one of eight categories in the blog, and putting down the top 3-5 best pieces of advice, tips, direction, insights, and answers I have to offer, have discovered and shared these past 22 months, and desperately want to leave you with before I go.

Since I mentioned fun at the outset, let’s start with our “Fun With a Purpose” category. My whole philosophy about this in relation to our executive, management, and professional audience is this: If you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, is it worth doing?

Of course, that’s just the personal side of things. There’s a business side, too, and here’s my take on that. Rather than promoting goofiness for the sake of wasting time, the point was also to show that laughter and fun is just as important to the success of an employee and a business as the metrics.

With this in mind, here are three previous posts I’d like to flag for you, to remind you that fun makes you better as an employee and as a manager, and makes your company better as well.

1. Work and Humor Do Mix, “Ninety-seven percent of professionals polled feel it is important for managers to have a sense of humor.”

2. Kathleen Passanisi, a humorist and speaker who’s entertained audiences at Boeing and Blue Cross/Blue Shield, believes you need to have a laugh now more than ever.

3. How Fun is Productive: “Imagine a work world where people love their work environment, and they are calm, stress-free and happy all day long. People who are in good spirits are more likely to be productive. Their mental attitude produces increased oxygen, endorphins, and blood flow to the brain, which enables them to think more clearly and creatively…” (our post is here)

Okay, I had to try to do something themed for the 4th of July. Besides, since there’s a “Fun With a Purpose” category on the blog, I should take some of my own advice and have fun with what I’m putting out here for you, right?

That being said, here’s a step-by-step guide for asserting your job independence. (And what do I mean by “job independence”? Simply that you have the power to decide what you want, need, and desire out of your job – and if you can’t get it where you are now, that you have the power to find the job of your dreams.)

1. Declare what you want. No, you don’t have to go riding around announcing it like Paul Revere. But you do have to get it down – on a legal pad, in a journal, a whiteboard, whatever – and for a lot of people, this is harder than it seems.

2. Map the gap. If you’re unhappy in your current position, it’s because of the gap – real or perceived – between what you want and what you actually have. Get specific on what’s lacking in your work.

3. Refresh your resume. Even if you don’t end up leaving your company, it’ll help you with the next step, and with any upcoming performance reviews.

4. Right of first refusal. Just because you don’t have what you want at your current company, doesn’t mean you can’t get it there. Give your company a chance – see if they can accommodate your requests.

5. Don’t quit your day job. Unless something is terribly wrong, there’s no reason to go into your boss’ office to slam down a resignation right now. Instead, step it up a little bit – if you’re going to leave down the road, do it on a high note.

6. Network. Depending on what you want, you may need to build new contacts (or refresh old ones). Get on the stick with that.

7. Get the word out - discreetly. No sense announcing to the world that you’re in the market for a new position. These days, news travels faster than ever – and you don’t want your current job yanked out from under you.

Got it? Now get out there and enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!

With Mother’s Day coming up, I thought I’d re-purpose a couple common things mothers tell their kids, since they all happen to be great advice for career changers.

If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. Diplomacy about your former employer – regardless of how bad the experience was – is always your best bet. Find the high road, and take it every time. You don’t want your interviewer thinking you’ll badmouth his or her company, too.

I’m not just talking to hear myself talk. Unfortunately, we’ve all encountered people at networking events who completely tune us out when we start talking about our own company, position, situation, et cetera. Don’t be the person who only asks about someone only to find out if that someone can be of use to you.

I’m going to give you until the count of three. Moms want action, not lollygagging. Hiring managers, recruiters, headhunters, and HR folks like action, too – they just call it “initiative.” Show it on your resume, take it in your job search.

You can’t always get what you want. At this point, the Rolling Stones may be more famous for this line, and personally, I kind of rebel against it. I believe the more focused and action-oriented you are about getting what you want, the better chance you have of success.

And last, but not least…

If Timmy jumped off a cliff, would you do it, too? It’s easy to abandon your own critical thinking sometimes, and when it comes to resumes, it’s easy to just follow along in someone else’s footsteps and create a cookie-cutter resume.

Instead of trying to fill out the various resumes sections as though it were one more form to complete, take the time to decide what you really want out of your next position, and re-write your resume with that goal in mind.

I suppose you could say the job search function hit reality television with the advent of The Apprentice. Hundreds of thousands of resumes have been submitted, the screening process whittled that down to a fractional amount of interviews, and then a last dozen candidates or so were submitted for an extended trail period, which also served as a behavioral and performance interview. And finally, multiple Apprentices were chosen across the seasons.

But what happened to all those hundreds of thousands of other people who applied to be “The Apprentice”? Did none of them get jobs anywhere in Donald Trump’s various organizations?

It seems like such a waste, when you compare that to what the global staffing firm Adecco is doing these days. They created their own job search reality show, FutureMe, now showing in select European countries on MTV.

Why, you ask, is a staffing company producing a reality show? Because their database of temps was stagnating, and it sounds like they were being seen as too stiff for their young target audience, according to this AdWeek article.

And what do you think happened as a result? Well, it seems to be working out pretty well for them, if this quote is any indicator:

It’s too early to measure the show’s results (its namesake Web site also launched last week). But a casting call in the fourth quarter produced a fivefold increase in the number of resumes that Adecco collected in the same period of 2006, said [Ted] D’Cruz-Young, [founder of Ideocracy, Adecco's lead creative agency in the region]. And by using the call instead of a twice- a-year job fair, as Adecco had in the past, the company cut its acquisition cost by about a third, he added.

It may not be in the US yet, and it may not be targeted for the management track, but it sure is fun to see something like this and reflect on how or whether this will affect trends in the job search market in the coming years…

If for nothing other than the Flash intro (probably one of the first I haven’t skipped in years), a visit to CubeFigures.com is worth your time. There’s actually very little to the intro, but it tickled me nonetheless.

I’ve known about The Cubes through the Archie McPhee catalog, but didn’t know they had their own website, which I’d put right up there under Dilbert and Despair.com for their ability to mock the standards and practices of cubicle life.

For example, similar to Despair’s “Demotivators,” The Cubes offer “Morale Boosters,” so-called motivational posters for their fictional GigantaMegaCorp. While they don’t play off the “Successories” type of products like Despair does, their themes are delivered in a tongue-in-cheek, commandment like tone, completely undermined by the accompanying images.

One such Morale Booster poster, entitled “Respect Company Property,” shows a Lego-like figure photocopying his bare bottom – including, in case you ever wondered what it looked like, the actual photocopy of said bottom.

But for the ultimate in low-tech humor, check out the “Surveillance Tapes.” Despite the impression that you’ll be served up a video (my one gripe with the site), you actually get a series of time-stamped images that let you follow a wordless story.

And finally, proving what you may have already suspected was happening in your own company, The Cubes are adding “Zombie” employees to their line, and including personnel files on them and the other employees. A sample:

PERSONNEL FILEHUMAN RESOURCE EYES ONLYTOP SECRET ZOMBIE INTEGRATION PROJECTSpecimen #: Z-00001Name: Ung (pronounced “Uuuunnnngggg”)Title: Level B Customer Service ProcessorStatus: UndeadHire Date: 03/31/2006Infractions:04/08/2006 – Level 2 Behavioral Violation (Bit arm of project supervisor)04/09/2006 – Level 2 Behavioral Violation (Bit leg of project supervisor)04/10/2006 – Level 3 Behavioral Violation (Ate project supervisor’s brain)

It’s Tuesday – go have a laugh, will you? How often do you laugh on Tuesdays?

It’s that time of year again, when Fortune magazine releases its annual and grammatically-incorrectly-titled list of the “Top 100 Companies to Work For.” (It should be “Top 100 Companies for Which to Work.” It only sounds awkward the first 20 times you say it, but you get used to it really fast.)

I love diving into the content they generate for this feature, because they always have new and fun little sidebars to entertain and send the reader into total “wishful thinking” mode. Like the “Best places to work … and play” (how come Microsoft got two entries in there?!). Or the “Best cafeterias – and gyms to work off that lunch” (eBay got the double-dip on this one).

More practical (and more directly related to some of the categories on this blog) are the list of the 25 top-paying companies, and the 15 companies they flagged that offer “unusual perks.”

Now, as I’m filing this under “Fun With a Purpose,” and since I’ve given you links to what I consider the fun part of things, now it’s time to tie in the purpose. Whether you subscribe to the practical Covey school of “Begin with the end in mind” or the more intangible “thoughts are things” Law of Attraction school, the result is the same:

If you don’t know what you want, you don’t know for what you should go. (Yes, yes, I had to write it that way since I took the Fortune folks to task above. Say it 20 times and you’ll never need to say “Know what to go for” again.)

Reading that Fortune feature is an exercise in telling your brain what’s possible. Sometimes we get so mired in the way things are, right this minute, that we can’t imagine how things could be different. So take this opportunity to expand your mind, and consider how you could improve your job situation in 2008.

The name was familiar, but I thought I’d just been seeing it over and over again on Yahoo! HotJobs. Caroline Levchuck. Frequent contributor of some very insightful, thematically timely articles such as the New Year’s-focused Four Ways to Make Job Resolutions Work (one of the most recent examples).

It so happened that I was checking out her Movies to Inspire Your Career Goals article with my wife and business partner Lani sitting next to me, and she suddenly blurted out, “Caroline! That’s Caroline!”

And then it came back. Maybe seven years or so ago, while working for a company called Next Press, Caroline gave Lani one of her first big freelancing jobs. Six dozen or so biographies for the Contemporary Authors series, 1200 words each, turned over to the Gale Publishing Group.

That assignment passed, and Lani moved on to Content Strategy for the girls websites at Mattel. But they were destined to keep crossing paths, most recently in New York earlier this year.

And somehow, this whole HotJobs gig never came up! Maybe because she’s got a ton of other things going on, too, including a stint at a culinary school where Caroline had been a student. I’ve never spoken to her, but from what Lani tells me, she’s a dynamic woman with tons of talent and drive.

In other words, I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was when Lani made me suddenly realize whose byline I’d been coming across over and over again this year.

You should definitely check out more of her work, and to make it easier for you, I’m including links to a few more of them here for you:

Five Factors That Will Affect Your Career This Year (link)

Are You Ready to Be Your Own Boss? (link)

Gift-Giving Guidelines for Colleagues, Clients (link)

Top 10 Ways to Use the Web to Get a Job (link)

Remedies for Boredom on the Job (link)

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