Heard at Career Transition Workshop-Dallas, 02/01/10
Session 4 COMMUNICATION CONNECTION-How to Write Right
Learn how to communicate more effectively. Improve your written skills to get in the door and stay in the game.
- “If words are to enter men's minds and bear fruit, they must be the right words shaped cunningly to pass men's defenses and explode silently and effectually within their minds.”-J. B. Phillips
- Networking is not a job search tool, but a life management tool
- Use bullets to highlight specific measurable value-added propositions
- Every great resume is dynamically written
- "If I had more time I would have written a shorter letter." Unknown
- Don't express to impress, strive for clarity of communication
- Cover letter is to sell you for the interview, not to get the job
- When asked for references ask which ones and how many
Heard at Career Transition Workshop-Dallas, 01/25/10
Session 3 Two-Minute/Two-Page Resume: How to Package Yourself
- The most qualified candidate rarely gets the job, it's the best packaged and promoted.
- Packing—>Advertising—>Resumes
- Promote—>Marketing—->Networking
- Pitch——>Selling——->Interview
- Hiring authorities don't want to know how you are like everyone else, but how you are different.
- Value the product of the product, you don't want the drill bit, just the hole that it makes.
- Purpose of resume is to get the interview, purpose of interview is to get the job
- Include dollars, numbers or percentages ($,#,%) in your achievements on the resume
- Tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, just not the god-awful truth
- Don't confuse activity with productivity
- Don't believe the myth of transferable skills. You need a loyal link, employment platform or avocation leading to vocation. Better yet have all three working for you.
Seth Godin on résumés
Seth Godin
In his most recent book, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? published by Portfolio/The Penguin Group, Seth Godin shares his thoughts about résumés. In fact, he thinks they offer little (if any) value.
“If you don’t have a résumé, what do you have?
How about three extraordinary letters of recommendation from people the employer knows or respects?
Or a sophisticated project an employer can see or touch?
Or a reputation that precedes you?
Or a blog that is so compelling and insightful that they have no choice but to follow up?
Some say, ‘Well, that’s fine, but I don’t have those.’
Yeah, that’s my point. If you don’t have these things, what leads you to believe that you are remarkable, amazing, or just plain spectacular? It sounds to me like if you don’t have more than a résumé, you’ve been brainwashed into compliance.
Great jobs, world-class jobs, jobs people kill for – those jobs don’t get filled by people e-mailing in résumés.”
The death of the ’sage on the stage’
As a leading edge baby boomer [and seriously unemployed...serious about finding best next opportunity] my analog experiences of life needed to be upgraded to match the digital lifestyle of younger generations. These two videos provided a wake-up call:
http://bit.ly/6neQkD
http://bit.ly/6Wul6X The days of the 'sage on the stage', the classroom trainer will become fewer. Predictions are that by 2015 50% of US workforce will be the Millennial [Net] Generation, born since 1980. They have grown up digital. With the oldest in their late 20s, these digital natives are going to want/demand workplace learning in digital means. In 2009 I started to learn more about this digital learning beginning with 3-D virtual world of Second Life with a presentation there. http://bit.ly/4pXQyX . And trying old technology-TV, but on the Internet with my weekly show: http://www.livestream.com/dougcaldwell
Career Transition Workshop opens new location in Carrollton, TX
Career Transition Workshop has launched in Carrollton, TX to assist the unemployed, under employed and just plain looking. This is the same 12 week program now offered in Dallas and Southlake, TX. Click here for website of program.
Weekly meeting on Thursday evenings at 6:30pm.
- Location: First Baptist Church, 2400 N. Josey Lane (across the street from Newman Smith High School) Carrollton The Taylor Building, Room 105.
- Park on the south side of the building and enter through the doors located to the welcome table.
- Click [Map & Directions] for driving directions and information about 1st Baptist Church.
Contact person: BETH.Crooms@coniferhealth.com
p.s. Get Hired!!! Become a car pool rider from Plano, TX to/from the Dallas CTW location. Meeting in west Plano at 5:51pm Monday nights. Call 214-641-4084 to get hired and a seat.
Heard at Career Transition Workshop-Dallas 1/11/10
Session 2 Career Choices & Consequences: How to Find Your Future Focus
- Find work for your identity, not identity from work
- If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there-Lewis Carroll
- "If you chase two rabbits, you will lose them both." Native American proverb
- In life we make choices, our choices make our life
- Make your life a statement, not an apology
- “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Michael Jordan
- Hiring authorities are not interested in how you are like everyone else, but how are you unique/distinct.
- Fine line between being distinct and weird
- Uncover and sell the uniqueness of you
- Do you endure the certainty of despair for the happiness of uncertainty
- The thrill of soaring is preceded by the fear of falling
- Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear. ~Ambrose Redmoon
- Core choices of life
- Mate
- Mission
- Master
- Self-acceptance is beginning of self-leadership
- Lone Rangers in life and job search tend to be dead rangers.
Session 3 Two-Minute/Two-Page Resumes: How to package yourself will be Monday, 1/25/10 at 5:59pm central time.
What is Social Media?
From Wikipedia and discussions on the Internet makes me think that social media creates the digital campfires for tribes world-wide.
Using a social medium [Wikipedia] to answer the question:“Social media is media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media uses Internet and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many).
It supports the democratization of knowledge and information, transforming people from content consumers into content producers. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content”.
Our need to communicate and socialize among and between tribes hasn’t changed except the campfire for the computer screen.
Heard at Career Transition Workshop-The 12 Week Program, 1/4/10
- My past is behind me and my future is ahead of me
- Accept the deflection in my direction
- Reflect/renew/refocus for 2010
- Work the CTW program, the program works
- The only thing we learn often from history is that we don't learn anything.
- Begin with end in mind-Stephen R. Covey
- The most qualified candidate rarely gets the job, it's the best package and promoted.
- Hiring authorities usually hire the least risky/costly/controversial candidates
- If you don't know where you are going any destination will do.
- If you want the rainbow you have to put up with the rain-Dolly Parton
- Who are you and what are you doing here?
- The way in which you endure that which you must endure is more important than the crises itself-President Truman
- The reveling of feeling is the beginning of healing
- Fear is like a rocking chair, act like you're busy, doesn't go anywhere
- F*E*A*R* by Zig Ziglar. False Expectations Appearing Real
- Cultivate an attitude of gratitude
- Failure is not falling down, but staying down
- More mature candidates should consider less mature companies-less mature candidates should consider mature companies
- LOS=f(LOS). Length of search = function of length search
- When it's dark enough you can see the stars-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our homework before the next session will be to:
- Estimate my length of search
- Figure my family finances for LOS period
- Share above with family
- Write letters for my Rites of Reconciliation
- Write journal/blog of my job search efforts
- Answer question what would give me job satisfaction
Next session of CTW is Monday, 1/11/10. Session 2 Career Choices & Consequences: How to Find Your Future Focus
Social Media 4 Job Search & Career Success, Friday-1/8/10
Topic: Search Management: How to make the most of your time. Learn to include both pro-active and re-active job search techniques to attack the public and hidden job markets. And social media available to help in search efforts.
Presented from The Bavarian Grill in Plano, TX this weekly Internet TV show resumes the 12 week series on career transition at 12:47pm central time, Friday, 1/08/10. Join the studio audience for bratwurst and conversations before the show. The show can also be watched live on the Internet at http://www.livestream.com/dougcaldwell. You can IM chat with me during the show with your questions and comments. Watch previous shows 24/7 on demand at http://www.livestream.com/dougcaldwell/folder. For a preview of this week's show click here .