The Glass Hammer: Don’t Get Dooced! Staying Employable Online

By Elizabeth Harrin (London)

Heard the one about the girl sacked via Facebook? Or the woman fired for blogging about her sex life? The internet is a dangerous place. “While fewer than 2% of employers have terminated employees for violations committed on business or personal blogs, that number is certain to grow as workplace blogging becomes more prevalent,” says Nancy Flynn, in her book The e-Policy Handbook. There are millions of blogs online, and if you write one you could be at risk of being marched out of your office with your stuff in a cardboard box. There’s even a word for it: dooced.

In 2002, Heather Armstrong, a web designer from Los Angeles, lost her job after her employers decided they didn’t appreciate what she had written on her website, Dooce. And a new word passed into the lexicon. Armstrong now makes a living from blogging and her website supports her family. However, she’s pragmatic about how she ended up writing as a career. “In February 2001, I launched dooce.com as a place to write about pop culture, music, and my life as a single woman,” she writes on her blog. “I never expected more than a couple of dozen people to read it. A year later I was fired from my job for this website because I had written stories that included people in my workplace. My advice to you is BE YE NOT SO STUPID.”

Here are our six tips to keep yourself employable online, and avoid the stupid stuff.

1. Read your company’s social media policy

   Trawl through the intranet and find that social media policy. If it says you must tell your manager that you blog, tell her. In fact, do whatever it says. Breaching the policy will certainly be a contributing factor if your blogging antics ever become public knowledge, and ignorance of the policy is not likely to be a good enough excuse. No policy? Talk to your manager about what you are doing online, the topics you blog about and so on, and agree some ground rules – see below. And get your internal communications team to write a policy for everyone’s benefit.

2. Follow the code of ethics

   Forrester analyst Charlene Li has come up with a blogger code of ethics, which is worth a look at if you need some guidance on what is suitable for the public domain and what should be kept offline.

   As a rule of thumb, think before you post! What are the risks – to you and the company – of you saying what you’re about to say? Don’t blog about share prices, sensitive information, security processes and so on. And it should go without saying that you should never comment on your colleagues. If in doubt, don’t. Even if your current employer doesn’t mind (or doesn’t notice) you don’t want to be labeled the employee who gave away company secrets when you’re looking for your next job.

3. Use photos with care

   No one can see your Facebook profile, what with all the security settings you’ve set, right? Unfortunately, nothing on the internet is truly private, so be careful about what information you post, even if you think only your friends can see it. That means no suspect photos: being seen in a wet T-shirt contest or partaking in dubious substances is only going to harm your credibility in the workplace, and is the sort of information potential employers might stumble upon when they are filtering information on job candidates.

4. Keep work separate

   Social media tools give us the ability to friend, follow and link all our colleagues on multiple sites. You might have your friends and family connected through the same network as the people in your office. However good you are at keeping your work and personal lives separate online, the easiest and safest way is to use separate networks for different groups. LinkedIn is a popular tool for business people – choose that or something similar for work. Use Facebook for friends and family. Don’t let anyone slip past this net.

5. Understand that it’s more than a water cooler conversation

   You’re not saying anything online that you wouldn’t say down the pub, or at the water cooler, so what’s the difference? There’s a huge difference. The audience is much larger, and things can and do get picked up and spread around by other people. Many corporations, including Wal-Mart, have been caught out by what’s been written about them online, and you really don’t want to be the centre of a big PR scandal.

6. Google yourself

   You need to write online with tact to keep yourself in your employer’s good books, but that will only help you stay on top of what you are saying. To find out what other people are saying about you (or your company), set up a Google Alert to inform you when something about you turns up online. It’s not vanity, it’s a useful way of monitoring the online space and following what other bloggers are saying about you and the topics you discuss. This way you can head off anything that could be potentially career damaging, or at least warn your employer that something’s coming.

It should be easy to stay employable online. The mantra ‘don’t be stupid’ is a good one to follow. Unfortunately, it’s very easy to type and click ‘Submit’ when you’re tired, or not thinking straight, or furious with someone at work. The internet has a very long memory – it’s not like sending an email to just one person and then having to grovel an apology in the morning. However, follow a few sensible ground rules and you’ll avoid many of the pitfalls of having a presence online, and maintain your credibility and employability.

via theglasshammer.com

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Bud Bilanich: Failure, Criticism and Rejection are the Price You Pay for Success

Self confidence is one of the keys to career success in my Career Success GPS System.  If you want to become self confident you need to do three things.  1) Become an optimist.  2) Face your fears and act.  3) Surround yourself with positive people.

Fear is the enemy of self confidence – and success.  Most people fear failure, criticism and rejection.  It’s only normal.  We all want to feel good about ourselves.  Failure, criticism and rejection are not pleasant experiences.  They lower our self esteem and make us feel bad about ourselves, so we often avoid doing things that we think might lead to failure, criticism or rejection.  As a career success coach, I advise my clients to have to have the courage to do things that might result in failure, criticism or rejection.

Failure, criticism and rejection provide you with the opportunity to grow and develop – to become a career success.   You can’t take failure, criticism and rejection personally.  Failure, criticism and rejection are outcomes.  They are a result of things you have done.   They are not who you are.  Remember that.  We all make mistakes and fail on occasion.  We all do things that cause others to criticize or reject us.  This doesn’t mean that we are failures.  It means that we have made some poor choices and done some dumb things.

Failure, criticism and rejection provide the opportunity to start over – hopefully a little smarter.  Buckminster Fuller once said, “Whatever humans have learned had to be learned as a consequence of trial and error experience.  Humans have learned only through mistakes.”  As a career success coach I agree with him.

That’s why fear is the enemy of self confidence and career success.  If your fear of failure, criticism, and rejection paralyzes you to the point where you aren’t willing to take calculated risks, you’ll never learn anything or accomplish any of your goals.

Don’t be too hard on yourself when you fail, or when others criticize or reject you.  Instead, put your energy into figuring out why you failed and then do something different.  Here are my four career success coach questions to ask yourself the next time you fail, or get criticized or rejected.

1. Why did I fail?  Why did I get criticized or rejected?  What did I do to cause the failure, criticism or rejection?
2. What could I have done to prevent the failure, criticism or rejection?
3. What have I learned from this situation? 
4. What will I do differently the next time?

If you do this, you’ll be using failure, criticism and rejection to your advantage.  In Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill says, “Every adversity, every failure and every heartache carries with it the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit.”  I know it’s hard to see the benefit or opportunity in failure, criticism and rejection.  But it’s there – you just have to look hard enough.  But it all begins by facing your fear and acting.

A year ago, my niece Brett and her move from Florida to San Diego.  She left a good job in Florida.  She had no job lined up in San Diego when she moved.  Several people criticized her for making such an audacious move.  I thought that she demonstrated amazing optimism in making such a long move in such a difficult economy.  I’m happy to report that 17 days after she arrived in San Diego Brett landed a job as an account manager for an athletic apparel manufacturer.  She has received two promotions since.  I’m proud of her.  She didn’t let her fear of failure, criticism or rejection stop her from pursuing her dreams.

The common sense point here is simple.  Successful people are self confident.  Self confident people face their fears and act.  Our most common fears are failure, criticism and rejection.  However, if you choose to find and use the learning opportunity in failure, criticism and rejection you will not only become more self confident, you will become more successful.   It’s sad but true – failure, criticism and rejection are the price you pay for becoming a personal and professional success.  Facing your fear of failure, criticism and rejection and acting will pay big dividends in your life and career.

That’s my take on the importance of facing your fears and acting.  What’s yours?  What have you learned from facing your fears?  How has it helped you become more self confident?  Please leave a comment sharing your story with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

via budbilanich.com

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Green Business Jobs: Top 10 Job Search Resources

“Green jobs” is the hot topic of the day, and now more than ever, companies are embracing the sentiment, if not the practice, of sustainability. But, when it comes to career options, green business can mean many different things—sustainability, corporate social responsibility (CSR), cleantech, socially responsible investing, green building, carbon markets and finance, renewable energy industry jobs, green marketing, or corporate-NGO partnership engagements, to name a few.

Are there really any jobs out there? Absolutely. But the catch is: these openings can be hard to find. Few job search boards aggregate socially and environmentally responsible business jobs in all of these different areas of sustainability, and often sustainability is not easily searchable in a job’s title or descriptive keywords.

Here are my ten favorite green business job search resources:

1. Net Impact (www.netimpact.org). Any professional interested in sustainable business should join the global Net Impact organization as a full member. Members have access to a job board focused exclusively on social and environmental impact careers, as well as access to the global member directory (great for networking), the “Issues in Depth” educational series, and regular career newsletters. If your city has a local professional chapter of Net Impact, join that, too.

2. Sustainability Recruiting Blog (www.sustainabilityrecruiting.com/blog/). Recruiter Ellen Weinreb sifts through many different sources for the best new CSR and sustainable business job openings, and posts one to her blog each day.

3. GreenBiz (www.greenbiz.com). GreenBiz is the preeminent source of green business news and commentary, along with its affiliated sites ClimateBiz.com, GreenerBuildings.com, GreenerComputing.com and GreenerDesign.com. GreenBiz’s annual “State of Green Business Report” is an excellent resource, as is its job board.

4. Green Dream Jobs (www.greendreamjobs.com). This job board is easy to search by skill level (eg, “Senior Level”) or by keyword (eg, “MBA”).

5. Justmeans (www.justmeans.com) . This social networking site includes an active job board for social impact job openings, many with environmental and cleantech organizations.

6. Green Drinks (www.greendrinks.org). Many cities have regular happy hours events called “Green Drinks”—a great way to network with environmentally-oriented professionals in your area.

7. LinkedIn Groups. The “Green Jobs & Career Network Group,” “Acre Sustainability Recruitment Network,” “Sustainability Career Group,” and “Renewables Job Market” groups on LinkedIn are just a few of the groups posting green business job openings, and anyone can join for free.

8. BSR’s CSR Jobs Board (www.bsr.org/resources/jobs/). BSR (Business for Social Responsibility) posts mid- and senior-level CSR and sustainability positions on its site.

9. CSR Chicks (groups.yahoo.com/group/csr-chicks/) and CSR Jobs (groups.yahoo.com/group/csr-jobs/). These two Yahoo! groups are good sources for CSR jobs in the UK and other parts of Europe (despite the name, men and women alike are invited to join).

10. Simply Hired Job Search Agent (www.simplyhired.com). Simply Hired is a meta-search engine which will crawl other job boards and send you daily email summaries with any matches. A carefully crafted search agent (ie, “sustainability and MBA” or “renewable energy California”) can yield great results from places you might not otherwise look.

Guest Expert:

Katie Kross is the author of the book, Profession and Purpose: A Resource Guide for MBA Careers in Sustainability (Greenleaf Publishing, 2009), available at Amazon.com and BetterWorldBooks.com.

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My Global Career: Engage Workers By Letting Them Think

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“If you see a fork in the road, take it,” and “You can observe a lot by watching” are some of the many one-line quips of baseball Hall of Famer Yogi Berra.  Yogi’s comments are both fun and a blinding flash of the obvious that often draw us back to simple truths.  My favorite is “The future ain’t what it used to be.”

One blinding flash of the obvious that is often missed, and that could be extremely pertinent in the age of employee engagement, is “Engagement requires thinking.”  In my experience, many employee engagement approaches are still one-way communication efforts on steroids that fail to tap into the ability of employees to think and act differently.  At a time when study after study confirms that only about 20% of employees are engaged in their current work, it’s hard not to conclude that something’s not working!  Maybe “having a best friend at work” isn’t the determining factor.  Why are so many employees simply checked out at the place where they spend 40% of their waking lives…at work?

Let’s start with a key premise that’s often missed in engagement efforts – that we want to solve problems ourselves.  From Sudoku to mystery novels to crosswords, we all love the challenge of solving a puzzle.  Obviously, we could just turn to the back of the book and get the answer or read the final page.  But what’s engaging about that?  We want the intellectual and emotional experience of finding a sense of achievement in our own thinking.  When people get a chance to solve their own puzzles, they own the result.  And owners think, act, and engage differently from non-owners.  They’re vested, they’re passionate, they won’t take no for an answer, and they’re willing to put in more effort than is required.I once talked to an employee at a large Canadian bank just after she was given her first opportunity in 15 years to actively think about her business.  In an “official” group discussion, she was asked to compare and contrast major marketplace trends and consider competitive threats, industry consolidation, and consumer expectations.  The experience was a real eye-opener for her – and for her leaders.

She told me, “You know, learning and engagement require thinking.  In the past, people have tried to persuade me to do things differently in order to improve the business.  But they never asked me to think about the business.  This is the first time I’ve ever learned anything here – the first time I have really been engaged in solving our problems.  Now that I’ve had a chance to actually think about our business, I’m beginning to change my ideas about how it works and my role in it.”

And it’s not just intellectual – engagement is emotional.  You can’t possibly be engaged if someone else is trying to draw your conclusions for you.  You need the “emotional aha.”  You need to feel like you’re totally in the game by really feeling what the business needs, figuring out how you can help, and realizing why you make a difference.  The woman at the bank felt valued because her company offered her a challenge instead of spoon-feeding her a solution.  That showed her that her leaders believed that she had the ability to think.  And this energized her and created a sense of belonging, pride, ownership, and desire to go the extra mile.

Most organizations attempt to execute their strategies by doing all the thinking for their people – and then trying to persuade them to dedicate their heads, hearts, and hands to bring the strategies to life.  Our 20% engagement statistic should loudly tell us that this doesn’t work!

So to be engaged means that you know what you need to do as well as why you’re doing it.  But if you’re a leader at any level in your organization, how do you get people there?  Abraham Maslow said, “The great tragedy of the human race is the history of people selling themselves short.”

To apply this to business engagement, I’d say, “The great tragedy of the engagement movement is the history of leaders selling their people short.”  By telling employees what the answers are – solving the business puzzles – we are giving them only the answer key and depriving people of the chance to think about truly engaging in the business differently.

Jim Haudan is the CEO and founder of Root Learning.  His new book, The Art of Engagement (McGraw Hill, August 2008), explains how organizations can close the gap between their aspirations and actual, tangible results.

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Don’t Be A Stealth Job Hunter!!!

Are you trying to find a new job without letting anyone know you’re unemployed? Many people try, very few succeed. Especially in today’s job market, it is extremely difficult to get a new position without extensive networking!

That word seems to scare many people. In their minds it conjures up images of glad-handing Multi-Level-Marketing salespeople who wants to show their “plan” with the “perfect” opportunity for you without knowing anything about you. Or it draws memories of the brother in-law who became a life insurance agent and has been haranguing every distant family member for months to buy a new policy from him.

Those bad memories are caricatures of networking or sales, and not the image you would create by effective networking for a new job.

Don’t hide from the people that can help you! Here are some thoughts and some practical help to do it right…

Especially now, there is no shame in losing your job! Often, I hear people say they don’t tell others they are looking for a job because they are embarrassed over being unemployed. Too often they blame themselves somehow when in fact market conditions can make anyone a casualty of a lay-off. When companies are forced to make drastic cuts in their expenses, they often have to cut broadly and deeply. Often they will cut a whole department, or a straight percentage from every department. The decisions of who stays and who goes are often made very arbitrarily with the bottom-line the primary concern. Survival of the company is more important than cutting carefully with a scalpel.

Over the past 2 years, virtually everyone recognizes that no one is immune. There is no stigma to a lay-off as there may have been years ago. There is no need for embarrassment, or shame. It is what it is and generally people don’t view your unemployment as a reflection on you, but rather a sign of the times. I was told of someone recently that didn’t tell his wife that he had been laid-off for 3 weeks. He rose, dressed and left for ‘work’ each morning just as he always had so his wife wouldn’t suspect, but spent his day at a coffee shop. Now that’s stealth, and not at all a good idea.

Who do you tell? Everyone! You never know where your best leads will come from, and usually they come from the most unlikely sources. Make a list of everyone you know. Studies show that most people, on average, know more than 350 people. Create lists in groups to help jog your memory. List ALL your family members, close and extended. List friends. List ALL your previous co-workers from everywhere you’ve worked. List service providers like your doctor, accountant, lawyer, real estate agent, dry cleaner, mail carrier, etc. List other parents on your kids’ sports teams. List other parents you know from your kids’ school. List people you know at church, temple, or mosque. List people you know from former vendors, customers, trade associations, user groups, or professional associations. List alumni from your schools. Hopefully, you get the idea… make lists of everyone you know! Then gather contact information… find where they work on LinkedIn, call the main number of the company and call them. Gather email addresses if you have them. Google their name to find something of theirs with contact information. Use resources like Jigsaw.com, ZoomInfo, or the phone book!

What do you say? That will vary with how you know them, how well you know them, and what position they hold. However, as a general rule, one thing you don’t want to say is: “Do you know of a job opening?” The vast majority of people you talk to will not know of something off-hand and then the conversation becomes awkward and cut short.

As a suggestion:

“I’m connecting with everyone I know in order to network effectively to find a new position. I realize you may not know of a specific open position in my field. However, I figure my job while I’m looking is to keep adding links to my chain of people, connecting one to another until I find the right opportunity.

I’m hoping you may be able to give me names of a couple of people that you know that would be worthwhile for me to talk to… either anyone else you know in my field, someone that you might reach out to if you were in my situation, someone that just seems to know a lot of people, or anyone you know at companies that seem to be doing well.

I’d be grateful for any specific job leads if you know of one, however, I’m really only hoping for the next couple of links in my chain.”

 

People can’t help you if they don’t know you are looking! Don’t keep your job hunt under wraps. Let everyone you know you are looking, touch base with them regularly (every 4 to 6 weeks), and keep adding to the links in your chain until you reach someone with the right opportunity for you!

via thewisejobsearch.com

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Mirror, mirror on the wall, am I the best candidate of all? - RecruitingBlogs.com

• Posted by Kevin Womack on April 12, 2010 at 10:30am
• View Kevin Womack's blog

Most recruiters know when they have found the perfect candidate for a position. We typically have a checklist or there are requirements that the candidate meets in helping us determine their quality. While it may be clear to the recruiter or employer that a candidate is a fit, sometimes it’s not clear to the job seeker themselves. Here is a checklist for determining if you are in fact a fit for a position.

Your resume “reflects” the job description – You know you’re a fit for the position when your resume reflects the job and skills required with minimum modification to your resume. You recent position is the same and you have recently utilized the skills necessary and used them often. You will know if you are a fit for the position if your resume sounds like a repeat of the job description and, if you want the position, it should do just that.

Your compensation is in line with the position – This holds true for either contract or direct hire. Now I know that there are some candidates that have all of the requirements that are needed in the position but are more expensive than the client is willing to pay. I will admit there are exceptions to the rule; however, most hiring managers have a budget to follow and, if you are within the compensation range and have the skills, you are going to get the position more than not.

Your availability is in line with the hiring managers start date – You could fit both of the criteria above but if the need is mission critical to start and you have to give a 3 to 4 week notice, it’s probably not going to work out. Make sure that the timing is in line before pursuing the opportunity.

Location, Location, Location – This is not just important in Real Estate. It is VERY important to hiring managers. Now I understand that some candidates are open to relocation or that driving 45 minutes one way may not be a big deal, but most hiring mangers that I deal with are interested in the location of a candidate and the closer, the better.

Career or skill progression – Let’s say that you are trying to get a position as a Developer and you have been a developer for 9 years but you have been a manager for the last 2 to 3 years. Most hiring managers are going to pass on you because you have not been a developer recently or your career progression appears to be going away from development. It is important to remember that your work history tells a story to the client and can give them an impression, wrong or right, of your background and capabilities.

I hope that the information above helps some of you Job Seekers. I know that it is basic and there may not be a magic bullet but….remember to review your resume, put together a checklist, look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself if you meet all of the criteria above.

via recruitingblogs.com

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Rules for People of the Random Resume

I am a member of a very special club. It’s a club that I’ve sometimes been embarrassed to be a part of, but at the moment, I’m quite proud to belong to.

I’ve been looking for a proper name for this club. Cast your vote or add an idea below:

* People of the Random Resume
* Knights of Les Resumes Incoherent
* Proud Owners of Resumes With Invisible Logic (otherwise and aptly known as POOR WILL).

I could go on with the names and in case you haven't guessed my issue, I've accomplished a lot during my career but my resume leaves people with a furrowed brow, if not a headache. There is no flow, there is no evidence of promotion. There is simply, well, a lot of random stuff and frankly, it's tough to show my value.

I've never made career decisions strategically. I never took a job because of how it would look on my resume, or because of the next job it would prepare me for. Instead, I allowed myself to be led by my creative and intellectual appetite. I’ve moved from studying Shakespeare to writing books, from helping organizations navigate change to going to business school, from helping people giving their money away to coaching and writing. You see it right - no flow. None at all.

I know lots of people like me, people who aren’t tying their careers to a company, an industry or even a function anymore. Instead, they are weaving careers with some combination of:

• The passions and interests they have at the time
  
• Their particular strengths and skills
  
• What life brings to their doorsteps
  
• Holistic priorities (money, location, work hours, colleagues, positive impact on the world)

Is this wrong? I don't think so. Although, I know that a lot of these people feel bad of about the lack of order in their resumes the alternative is to stay stuck in unfulfilling, boring careers because they are afraid to take a creative leap out of their industry or function—afraid to end up with a work history that sounds incoherent or odd.

Those are the people that this message is for and here’s what I want them to know:

• It’s Just Tradeoffs
  This approach of designing a career out of current passions and interests rather than a long-term strategy is not without some tradeoffs:
  • Starting from square one learning about new industries can feel overwhelming and frustrating.
  
  
• It might take you longer to find that next job, or make up your next pursuit (although I know plenty of stories to the contrary).

For some people, this approach means pay cuts and financial losses at some points. It certainly precludes you from participating in very linear, hierarchical career tracks. You probably won’t end up as head surgeon or Supreme Court Justice doing your career this way.

But, none of these things are the end-of-the-world outcomes that the little voice of fear in your head is chattering about. These are simply tradeoffs and you get to decide if the tradeoffs are worth it for you.

Learn to Define Your Value
All of our professional paths have consistency and order. It’s just that sometimes that consistency and order is not obvious at the surface level. It’s happening one level below the surface, in what I call “the work underneath your work.”

This is the work you actually do underneath your title, job, role, or project. That work comes out of who you really are – your particular strengths and gifts.

For example, my friend Kalli has moved from HR to Marketing to teaching roles across a few different industries, but consistently, she has been solving tough, time-pressured operational problems with a very collaborative, consensus driven approach. That’s one of her particular gifts, and it shows up in every job she’s been in.

What have you really been doing in your work—in across your various past roles? Creating new ideas, building teams, negotiating relationships, problem solving, mediating, synthesizing, organizing, fire-extinguishing? Look at your work history through this lens and see what you discover.

Find a way to talk about the work underneath your work, and look for opportunities to do it.
Find some succinct language to describe what you really do – the work underneath your work – so that you can share it with prospective employers, current employers, and colleagues. Talk about it so that the people around you know the kinds of opportunities you are looking for and that you thrive in.

Look for opportunities to do the work underneath your work. Look for problems that need the particular kind of solutions you bring, gaps that your particular gifts can fill.

Industry expertise is decreasing in value. As information becomes democratized, what used to be hard to gain “industry expertise” is becoming much more accessible--through online sources, books, and live and virtual education.

In fact, industry expertise is just one more form of technical knowledge. As Daniel Pink argues in A Whole New Mind, technical knowledge is declining in value because jobs based on it are becoming outsourced or automated. Certain fundamental, cross industry, cross-functional skills such as design, meaning-making, and synthesis now create the greatest economic value.

Plus, as the pace of change accelerates, everyone is constantly learning their industry anew, whether they just entered it or have been working within it for a long time.

For those of us with seemingly incoherent resumes, and for those longing to go do some thing that won’t make obvious sense on their resume, this is all very, very good news.

Written on 4/13/2010 by Tara Sophia Mohr . Tara s a writer and coach who blogs at Wise Living. You can receive her free unconventional goals guide, “Turning Goals Upside Down and Inside Out to Get What You Really Want” by clicking here.

Photo Credit: dougsymington

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