Keywords and Resumes Podcast

Creative Ways to Get an Interview Podcast

When we were in high school, we never really thought of what college would be like and how much it would change our personalities in the following four years. When we got to college, it just seemed like high school in the beginning at a much larger scale. Little did we know, that four years later we are here doing something that just seems so much not like us! We are looking for jobs! It seemed silly to think about jobs when we first arrived on campus but things go by so fast that here we are in our last year as seniors in college competing against all the fellow classmates trying to land a job offer.

You might want to argue that we all had jobs at some point and that’s true we all did. But those were small part-time things we did to get by and pay for those Jordan’s that mom won’t buy for me in high school. But this is totally different. Imagine yourself dressing up every morning and spending 40 hours a week in front of a computer following orders and what not. This is something we are still unable to accept as reality when we are still used to just wearing our cool North Face fleeces to class every morning. Are we really ready to jump on that corporate lifestyle?

The answer must be “Yes” or else there would not be this many students of our age group doing the same thing as us. Some might want to bring in the concept of internships in this topic and that is definitely a valid argument. As a junior last year, hunting for a prestigious internship was very difficult for me but I managed to land one. As a word of advice I would like to add that acquiring an internship full-time anywhere is a huge step towards landing the full-time job a year later. As we thrust upon the excitement of the last year in college, we start to wonder what am I gonna do after I graduate?

I guess that’s when it hits us and we all get serious about this “career” scene and start hunting for job opportunities wherever possible given the state of our current economy.  One of the first big steps of landing a job in our senior year is to have that job resume ready to go. The best way to make sure it is in good condition is to get it evaluated by the staff at the career services and make all the recommended corrections on it to make it look presentable at the Business Career Fair. Once the resume is polished up, we need to research the companies we would like to work for. Companies love it when candidates express interest in their firms with specific details about what they do. Once we have the research done, the rest is just show business! Get that lucky suit on, the resumes in a portfolio and you are good to go!

So going back to my introduction to this post about how immature we were in high school, I would like to add that I still like buying Jordan’s but it is just a different feeling when you buy it from your hard-earned money that is backed up by a solid 4 year degree at a prestigious university in the US. Landing a job might be harder this year than previous ones due to the economic climate but after doing this for the last 5-6 months I have realized that if you are looking for jobs in the fields that are still prosperous, you will have a job lined up soon. The main thing is to be able to sell yourself in front of the employers very well and make them aware that they should want to hire you or else they will miss out  :)

I obtained this photo through a photo pass  in exchange for the photos with the bands manager Jeff. We were only allowed to shoot the first three songs from the photo pit. This was at Club Nokia in Los Angeles on Dec. 10. The lighting was really poor during the first three songs. This is a photo of Skinny Puppy’s front-man and vocalist Nivek Ogre who remained in this attire most of the show. Thank’s Jeff.

My attempts at finding a job and losing weight made me feel like William Shatner in the Twilight Zone episode called “Nick of Time” in which he and his wife (played by Patricia Breslin) have their car break down in Ridgeview, Ohio and they decide to have lunch at the Busy Bee Cafe. The booth they sit in has a fortune telling machine on the table. Don asks the “mystic seer” if he is going to get a promotion at work. The card says that it has been decided in his favor. When Don calls the office, he discovers that the mystic seer was right.

Because of this initial success, Don asks the mystic seer even more questions. Pat realizes that Don is taking the mystic seer too seriously, but Don keeps asking it questions. Because of the seer’s answers, Don doesn’t feel it is safe to leave the diner until after 3:00 p.m. Pat gets him to leave before then, but just after 3:00 p.m. they are almost struck by a car while crossing the street. After they both calm down, Don leads Pat back to the cafe. However, another couple is sitting at their booth, so Don and Pat must wait at the front counter.

Pat wants proof that the mystic seer is legitimate, because she points out that it was Don who had brought up the time of 3:00 p.m. After reclaiming their booth, Don immediately asks the mystic seer more questions. One of the things he wants to know is whether their car will be fixed by the end of the day. The mystic seer says the car has been repaired, and a few moments later the mechanic arrives with that very news.

Pat is disgusted to see Don rely upon the mystic seer so heavily. The breaking point happens when Don asks the mystic seer where they’re going to live in the future. Pat tries to break the spell the mystic seer has over Don by pointing out that he is letting the seer run his life. After a persuasive speech from Pat, Don realizes how foolish he has been acting. He apologizes to Pat and then announces directly to the mystic seer that they’re leaving to go do what they please.

Right after they leave, another couple with several pennies sits down at the booth and starts asking questions. Don and Pat did what this couple could not: choose their own path regardless of outcome. These two are apparently “stuck” in Ridgeview, all because the machine has not told them they can leave. [Thanks to Wikipeda for the show syopsis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_of_Time_(The_Twilight_Zone)]

It’s the closing narration of the show that drives home my own Twilight Zone that I was in: Counterbalance in the little town of Ridgeview, Ohio. Two people permanently enslaved by the tyranny of fear and superstition, facing the future with a kind of helpless dread. Two others facing the future with confidence, having escaped one of the darker places of the Twilight Zone.

Much like Don’s addictive belief in the mystic seer’s ability to produce a desirable outcome, I was habitually sending out the same unappealing resume hoping for a positive response.  And, even with no responses coming back, I was repeating the same unproductive job search routine day after day, fearing that to miss a job ad posting could be disastrous. I was truly trapped in my own repetitive behavior in a state of helpless dread. And, the anxiety I felt on the inside was mirrored by my escalating self-disgust as to how I looked on the outside. The more coffee I drank and the less I ate the worse I felt. I was letting my self-damaging behaviors run and ruin my life while at the same time hoping that these very behaviors would magically transform my situation from hopeless to ideal.

But, unlike the couple who were stuck in Ridgeview because the “magic seer” didn’t tell them they could leave, I realized as Don and Pat did that I could not let my self-defeating behaviors take over my life. If I was to climb out of my desparation and despair, I had to take hold of my life right then and there. I had to change the way I was looking for work and losing weight and come up with a plan that would enable me to do both. And, that meant letting go of the false security of repeating the same behaviors and creating new ones that would lead to better outcomes. It also meant setting goals for my job search and my weight loss that were achievable and realistic. It meant believing as Don said leaving the Busy Bee Diner and the clutches of the mystic seer: “(We can) go where we want to go anytime we please.” Each of us has that ability if we’re willing to take hold of it.

My initial reaction to being overweight and out of work was exactly that: reactionary. Numbed mentally and emotionally by being out of work and tipping the scale at 284, my gampe plan and no elements of a plan to it at all.

My initial reaction to being overweight and out of work was exactly that: reactionary. Numbed mentally and emotionally by being unemployed and tipping the scale at 284, my gameplan had no elements of a plan to it at all.

I added my most recent employer to my existing resume and started applying for jobs on the most popular websites like Monster and Career Builder. I took a  shooting ducks at the carnival approach in terms of finding work. Anything that entered my sights was a target, even positions below my abilities and prior income. I was desperate to get  job, any job, and the cost to my ego was my own undoing.I wasn’t getting replies to my resumes and I just kept sending more of them out. I was convinced that it was just a numbers game. I added the classifieds in the local papers to my prospects which had even less desirable jobs and fewer of them but I was of the mindset that more was better, no matter what the job.

My approach to losing weight was equally reactionary. I convinced myself that if I wanted to drop the pounds I just had to stop eating. So, I went from stuffing my face to eliminating meals entirely. Extra cups of coffee took the place of breakfast which only fueled my irritability and anxiety. I cold turkey’d all the junk food and was living on rice cakes and cold cuts. I manged to go from 284 to 279 in a couple of weeks. But, I was creating more cravings than ever before as my body reacted to what was tantamount to starvation.

I was a nervous wreck and a physical timebomb and my ego was descending even deeper into depression. I walked the fence between manic activity and deadend despair. I was at a point where life just seemed hopeless.

Before I could fully face the realization of my weight gain I had to find out exactly how bad things were. That meant two things:

1. Getting on the scale and putting a number to the actual pounds I weighed.

2. Finding out what my waist size really was.

The first was a short walk down the hall to the bathroom scale which had morphed into part of the deco since it made its way into the house years ago. After all, every bathroom has a scale, right? It doesn’t mean you have to use it. But, today there was no avoiding it. I took a deep breath and summoned the courage to mount the beast. 284 pounds!!! No wonder none of my pants fit. There’s no way to put a gallon of milk into a measuring cup. I moved the scale to different areas of the bathrook floor hoping a warp in the tiles was causing an exaggeration in the weight displayed. But, every attempt repeated the same result: 284. There was denying it.

The second task was to find out what 284 pounds translated into in terms of waist size. Since none of my 42’s were even close to accomodating me, I knew the number had to be bad. And, not knowing what it was struck terror in me. I feared having a tape measure put around my waist by a complete stranger so I decided to go to one of those large discount clothing chain stores  downtown and try on different pants from the racks until I zeroed in on my size. I ignored the 42’s since that was a repeat of the experience I had just been through at home and there was no point repeating it. The 44 and 46 plastic separators were on the chrome rack but there were no pants there. Store management must have decided that there would not be enough sales by people this large to warrant stocking pants in these sizes. I was too big. I didn’t belong in a store racked for people of “normal” size. I was a true misfit.

No job. No pants that fit. More pounds than I knew I had or knew what to do with. And, worse, my self-esteem was close to hitting the absolute bottom. I felt worthless as a human being. I wanted to crawl out of the store unseen and find a a cave to dwell in where I could be alone and where no one could see me. Not only was I fat and disgusting to myself (and I assumed to everyone else) I was now 60 and society has its own opinion of my value in the job market.

But, whether I was on auto-pilot or some inner drive was pushing me to quantitatively confirm my obesity, I drove to a store I thought I would never find myself in: Big & Tall. As I drove into the parking lot I wished my problem was being tall. Walking up to the front door it felt that the sign bearing the store’s name was growing in size as I passed under it signaling everyone driving by to catch a glimpse of the fat guy. I expected to see salespeople in sizes I could relate to but it was obvious they were employees not customers. A woman approached and asked if she could be of assistance. I wanted to say, “Yes, wave a magic wand, make me 150 pounds and transport me out of this place.” But, I made the mistake of saying, “I’m not sure of my size” and she produced the dreaded yellow tape measure from her pocket. I was trapped. She wrapped it around my waist and pronounced, “48.” It hit me like a lightning bolt and I went numb. She then pointed me towards the different racks of casual and dress slacks and said, “Feel free to look around and let me know if I can be of assistance” and then pointed to where the dressing rooms were located. No one could assist me at this point. I had to go through the very private process of taking size 48 slacks off the rack and trying them on.

As I approached the rack of dress slacks I instantly bypassed the ones with the elastic waist expanders which I was convinced came with orthopedic shoes and a retirement home in Florida. I was already depressed and anxious and far from ready to think about that. I took a few slacks out of the size 48 section. I had never seen plastic size tags go as high as these did. At that moment I promised myself I would never let my waist size go to the big “50″ or beyond. I took my 42 jeans off in the dressing room and hung them up gingerly on the hook. I took one of the 48’s and held them, amazed at the sheer amount of fabric I was holding. Alone in my underwear in a dressing room of a store I never thought I’d be in, I put on the pants hoping beyond hope that  they would be too big and that my trip to Big & Tall had been a mistake. Unfortunately, they fit perfectly. I put my jeans back on, didn’t try on the other 48’s and left the dressing room with the pair of slacks that fit. As I cashed out and walked back to the car I felt lower than I could ever remember feeling. I was fat and jobless and afraid of anyone even looking at me. This was truly the bottom of my life.

Andrew O’Hehir, usually Salon.com’s film/art critic, hit upon an interesting social phenomenon–having your home-schooled kids out during the day when all the other kids are in school : Confessions of a home-schooler | Salon Life.

I am in full teacher mode at home, moving to the halfway point in my second year on the job.  We do multiplication drills, sentence identification, parts of speech, and cooking.  We also have gone to a pottery studio and spun some bowls and cups (or depending on use, both).

Like O’Hehir, people approach all the time wondering why our child is not in school.  Going on nine, she is obviously of school age.  She has gotten to the point she just rolls her eyes and says “homeschool.”  As if that is enough.

Most of the time, it is.

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• Swallowed Up By Edumacating My Childrens (califmom.com)

Confrontation. Nobody likes it.  That’s understandable. Confrontation is coming to terms with a part of ourself that has either been pushed under the rug so we’re not actvely conscious of it. Or, we’ve avoided thinking about it because to acknowledge something negative about ourself would be threatening to our ego and sense of self-worth. It’s the manager at work telling us we’ve screwed up or that we’re not performing like we should which can make us feel inadequate and that our ability to earn a living and take care of our family is in jeopardy. It’s the professor at school who gives us a test grade far below what we thought we deserve, given how long we studied and prepared. It’s the significant other who has given us an ultimatum to change a certain behavior. Or, it’s looking at ourselves for the first time and not liking what we see that can be the toughest confrontation of all.

Most confrontation is a wakeup call. It’s an opportunity to learn something about ourselves that might not otherwise occur. And, as tough as it may be to take the confrontation, the key is being able to get past the emotion of our response to it, learn from it and take action. Sometimes life delivers the confrontation in ways that can either make us break us…literally.

I was in need of a pair of dress slacks. The company I had worked for was dress down. Clean, neat jeans were acceptable so I could continue wearing the ones I had been accustomed to since they were in good condition and fit. Well, sort of. I could close the button since they had become looser over time and the jeans seemed to have developed a sense of empathy for my exaggerated girth. Besides,   a nice sweater helped cover the part of me that was reaching for freedom over the belt loops.  But, I had lost my position with the company through downsizing and now had to start looking for new work, which meant no jeans for interviews.

A trip to the closet and a few try-ons led to the sudden awareness that on top of my feeling of worthlessness as a newly unemployed, not a single pair of slacks fit me. The distance between the button and the button hole was unbridgeable. I felt not only inadequate as a provider for my family but my body seemed to be the external manifestation of my worthlessness as a human being. And, the pants in my closet were already a waist size of 42. How big had I gotten and how could I have thought so little of myself to let it go this far? How could I have ignored for so long the process of self sabotage that I allowed to take place within my own body?

I had a choice. I could either collapse in front of the closet in despair fueled by no job, no income and nothing to wear on an interview or I could pull myself away from the pit’s edge of swirling anxiety and depression and try to find a job, and myself, at 60.

It’s always a good day for a laugh, so feast your eyes on this!

I understand that internet ads are getting smarter. Well… maybe not SMARTER, but at least the people making them have devised ways to target specific ads at certain demographics. For example, it used to be that when I logged into facebook or hotmail, I would see ads for home mortgage rates and deals on new phones — pretty run-of-the-mill. Now though, the interwebs have wised up. …or so they think. I see ads for mountain biking gear, snowboarding deals, “date hot girls near SEATTLE” (ip address dependent ads, no doubt), credit score checking sites, and the odd weight lifting scam ad. Like this one.

I find this shit insulting, to be honest. I assume that these ads are targeted at me based on keywords in content that I have written about myself, whether that be on facebook or wherever. But am I seriously supposed to pop a half-chub over these obviously absurd pictures of dudes? What am I supposed to think when I see that? “OH MY FUCKING GODIWANNALOOKLIKETHAT!!!” –? Yes? No?

I can let the rest of it slide, although there are still obvious issues. First off, I’m listed as “in a relationship” on all my online profiles, so I don’t know why I’m getting “date girls from SEATTLE” ads on any page I load. If you were trying to date a chick from around the area, wouldn’t you already be advertising that on your profile? Whatever.

I sold my mountain bike, via Craigslist I might add, so I don’t know why the internet doesn’t have a record of the fact that I’m not interested in that sport anymore. I also don’t live anywhere near Killington, VT (or wherever it is), and I won’t be making a trip there anytime soon, so I don’t need to see those ads either.

I don’t anticipate that the people making these ads are geniuses. I’m willing to bet that most of this fat-fingered lot were given the job because they “knew someone,” not based on their marketing credentials. I’m just bored to tears of these retarded ads. If they made flash games out of ads — something like “use this bat to hit the fluffy penguin through the hole” or something idiotic like that.

These guys are definitely flaunting idiocy in their ad campaigns, it’s just not the right type of idiocy.

RN and seasonal sales top the list…

One million jobs that you can apply for

Consider a job in management

Seasonal Employment:  How to get a job in 30 days

Job Search, Careers and Employment

Online Job Search

Government Work

Job Search

Job Search for the Older Worker

How get a job in 30 days

$50,000 per year

Earning $25 per hour

Online Job Search

Government Work

Job Search

Job Search for the Older Worker

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How to Find a Job

Alternative Job Hunt

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Flower of Life

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pink moon

Moon Signs

• ************************************************************

Runes and Moons

Zazzle!

Love

NoBullArt

Angelic Verses

DeviantArt

Rumors of Angels

LuLu

Valentines

CafePress

Luck

Squidoo

Digital Art

Angel Sightings

Cyber Rainbows

How to Buy a Rainbow

Selling Rainbows

• ************************************************************

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How to Find a Job

Alternative Job Hunt

Job Search for the Older Worker

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Flower of LIfe

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Yes.. a compelling, online presence is important. Yes.. prepping for job interviews and following up is critical. But, sometimes you just have to rock ‘n’ roll!

I’ve always been a huge rock ‘n’ roll fan.. punk, goth, new wave, pop rock, heavy metal.. I love listening to it all while working and playing, which inspired this blog post: Rock music for the job search – a slight departure from my usual content.

Just for fun, I hand picked rock songs that I feel capture the mood of each stage of the job search. What do you think? Add your comments and additions!

Just Got Laid Off

• The Kids Aren’t Alright – Offspring Listen
• Sound of Madness – Shinedown  Listen
• Feel So Numb- Rob Zombie Listen
• It’s The End Of The World As We Know It – REM Listen
• Comfortably Numb – Pink Floyd Listen
• Too Bad – Nickelback Listen
• Eat The Rich – Aerosmith Listen

Recovering…. Beginning The Job Search

Papa Roach - One of My Faves!

• Let’s Get It Started – Black Eyed Peas Listen
• Suddenly I See – KT Tunstall Listen
• Life Line – Papa Roach Listen
• I Can See Clearly Now – Johnny Nash Listen
• Gives You Hell – All American Rejects Listen
• Kickstart My Heart – Motley Crue  Listen
• Indestructible  – Disturbed  Listen

Nabbed A Few Interviews

• I Don’t Want To Stop – Ozzy Osbourne Listen
• The Perfect Drug – Nine Inch Nails Listen
• Remedy – Seether Listen
• Every Day Is A Winding Road – Sheryl Crow­­  Listen
• Take a Chance With Me – Roxy Music Listen
• I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For – U2  Listen
  

  White Snake.. So 80's but I love "Here I Go Again"

Got The Offer­­

• New Divide – Linkin Park  Listen
• Here I Go Again – White Snake Listen
• All Star – Smash Mouth Listen
• We Are The Champions – Queen Listen
• Back In Black – AC/DC Listen
• Walking on Sunshine – Katrina & The Waves Listen
• Have a Nice Day – Bon Jovi Listen

What songs did I miss? Please add them to the comments section.

Copyright November 2009, Marci Reynolds, All Rights Reserved

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I’ve actually been working my ass off the last couple days. I had two interviews yesterday, one of which was a total waste of time and one of which went well…and resulted in me having to do a bunch of work to pass go, collect $200 (kidding!) and maybe land on free parking (please!) in my next run around the board. I won’t bore you with the details.

I also had some freelance stuff to catch up on today, so I worked about a 10 hour day all told. Yup. Around about seven I called it quits and had a beer.

Beer is what’s keeping me going. I’ve been so damn anxious! Usually I’m a bourbon drinker, but I don’t trust myself with the hard stuff right now. I had some leftover beer in the fridge from when I had people over last weekend and damn if it didn’t hit the spot yesterday at about 6 pm. This was beer snob beer, I didn’t buy it. But I drank two bottles last night and went out and got my own tonight. Coors Light. Now you know I’m not cool. I yam what I yam. Probably my favorite line in all of 20th century literature.

Which, hmmm, gets a drunk girl thinking. Let’s come up with a list of professions of my favorite narrators and protagonists.

• Paint factory worker
• Governess
• Hot dog vendor
• Gentleman
• Ad man
• Ghost
• Drunk, disorderly, demobbed wanderer
• Scholar/would be deposed king
• Lawyer
• Soldier
• SAHM
• Polyandrogynous immortal time traveler
• Salesman/typesetter
• Paid companion (not prostitute)
• Police chief

Now with a couple of exceptions my buddies spent most of their books unemployed. Food for thought, I guess.

Time wasted: about a third of a beer. But it’s a 12 oz. can. It’s cold fucking activated, guys.

So, Friday I was riding the train down to eat my BBQ with a friend and instead of reading my book I was kind of stressing about how much dinner and a couple beers might cost. My friends have been awesome about treating me to dinner or drinks since I got laid off, but I knew that this particular friend wouldn’t be able to swing that as she and her boyfriend are always living rather hand to mouth. Then something occurred to me.

If I’m going to sit alone in my apartment because I’m afraid to go out and spend any money then I might as well put all my stuff in storage and move back in with my parents halfway across the country until I find a job. Which I obviously don’t want to do.

So my social life is now a sanctioned budget line item. Good, right? And that’s why I decided it was also OK to spend $10 to take a friend’s yoga class today. I’ve known her for years, but never managed to make it down to her studio. The class was awesome, well worth the $10, but damn was it hard! (In fact, I’m a little worried about being sore tomorrow. And I now have two interviews, one at 10:00 and one at 1:00, so it’s gonna be a long day.)

I’ve been doing yoga on and off for about 8 years (I won’t say “practicing”) but I’ve never actually taken a class before. Part of this is that I’m not very coordinated. Part of this is that I’m generally cheap and busy (in that order). Part of this is that the spiritual side of yoga totally freaks me out. The stretching is fantastic, the breathing is awesome…but I’m not sitting there meditating on being and nothingness or anything. I’m usually just thinking my thoughts. Except in today’s class there were two choruses of ohms, during which time I was thinking “Oh no, church!”

It was still a really good way to kill the entire middle part of the day.

Retail – It’s a thankless industry. Between the elitist customers who look down on you for being a lowly salesperson and the family that does the same, you can begin to feel like you’re wasting your time in a position that has no potential to help you in your professional life. Well, you’re wrong. If you’ve been trying your best to get a so-called real job but feel that all you can get is retail, consider yourself lucky because you are now privy to the best on-the-job training for which you will not have to pay.

Your time spent on the floor of your retail store will give you countless hours of access to sensitivity, anger management, and customer service training while, also, developing your social skills, exposing you to deductive reasoning, working with a team, and developing your confidence. If you think these attributes are not important to your professional life, then re-read the skills and requirements that employers are looking for in their job ads.

You will begin to notice that people have a tendency to repeat certain actions. Take notice of these patterns because they can offer much insight. What follows is a list of some behaviors that you should take with you into your professional and personal life.

Read the fine print
When something is on sale, most companies list all of the exclusions in their marketing. This is the same for companies outside of the retail industry. Read through paperwork. Ensure you have full knowledge of what you are entering into. Don’t sign something without this knowledge.

Ask proper questions
Sometimes you can’t answer something for yourself, and you need help. It is perfectly acceptable to ask someone who is more knowledgeable about the subject for assistance. However, they cannot read your mind. “You know what I mean” will not always work. It is best to be clear on what you need so that the other person can adequately and efficiently serve your needs. Give the person clues to help them understand what you need.

Help yourself first
When was the last time you walked into a store that had no marketing, no price labels, and no item descriptions? Not recently, I would bet. How often do you bypass the marketing, price labels, and item descriptions to ask someone what’s on sale, how much something is, or what something is, though? In retail as in life, signs and labels are around to help you help yourself. People are much more willing to help you find a solution to your problem when it appears as though you have taken the initiative to educate yourself on the matter from the outset without expecting that you are entitled to receive the answers from someone else.

Double Check
You were taught this lesson in school. People make mistakes, but agreeing to their mistake will cost you in the end. After you have helped yourself, asked the proper questions, and read the fine print, ensure that all of the facts and figures are correct before signing your name.

Just because it’s on the front table doesn’t mean it’s for you
The first thing that you see is not always the solution to your problem. If you’re allergic to wool, would you buy a sweater without checking the fabric label? In the professional world it is necessary to dig deeper. Guarantee that you have fulfilled your needs before walking away.

Career decisions for young and old

I do a lot of career coaching.  I talk to youngsters of all ability ranges. I talk to MBA student making career changes after a flying start in management.  I talk to people who’ve been unlucky enough to lose their jobs and who looking for an echo career.

Are easy when we know what we want

What all these people have in common ~ those who are happy to get work at the minimum wage and those negotiating banker-size bonuses ~ is that they will not get what they want until they decide what they want.

And tracks are laid out for us by someone else

Many of us ~ particularly the talented, able and lucky ~ go through life on a set of rails. We go from one school to another, on tracks laid down by other people, and decision making has amounted to no more than “this” or “that”.   Both are good and we chose on the basis of the frills ~ which perks were more to our taste.

When the tracks are gone, we have to lay them for selves

Then one day, shock and horror, the tracks are gone. We will have to lay them down ourselves.  Suddenly, we realize that we are “institutionalized”. We haven’t being make decisions for ourselves.  We are capable of rolling down pre-laid tracks without thought, but we are totally incapable of laying the tracks.

Smashing Magazine has a very comprehensive list for finding work

It’s a steep learning curve.  Today Smashing Magazine has a list of “do’s” for free lancers. These “do’s” are the basis for job searches as well. Print them and rate your progress at getting them right.

The trouble is that step one is deciding what you want!

I can tell you right now which steps you will find hard ~ deciding which sector you want to work in and finding out about the companies.  That’s the equivalent of laying the tracks. That is the part that you’ve never done before because you always took for granted that the tracks were there.

How to lay your own tracks

1. Print out the article from Smashing Magazine
2. Get a shoebox or box of similar size
3. Keep your envelopes from junk mail
4. Take envelopes of one color or size and every day find a website relevant to the industry that enchants you.  Read and take notes.
5. Take envelopes of another color or size and every day find a firm in your industry that sparks your curiosity.  Read and take notes.
6. Every month sort through. Keep the ten best firms and make notes on questions you want to answer about the industry.
7. Also sort through and look at the people you would love to meet and learn a little about them

I can be sure that in 1-2 months of doing a little work every night, the industry will come alive.  Smashing Magazine’s list will begin to be easy.  Indeed, I strongly recommend that you start a blog.  Get a Posterous account, which is easy to manage, and start “Expeditions into the Publishing Industry”, or whatever.   In time you will be an acclaimed expert ~ and you will have got there by the first step that you took today.

Stop daydreaming about step 53 ~ take the 1st step

Indeed, if you don’t take the first step, if you keep telling me about step 7 or step 10 or step 53, then I know you are not serious.  Step 1: print out Smashing Magazine’s article. Step Two get a shoebox. Step Three get a junk mail envelope and make your first notes.

And sigh with relief that you live in days of the internet!

And stop whinging!  This is easy in the days of the internet.  Just 10 years ago, this was almost impossible to do!

One of the virtues of being an alum is that people start asking for your expert advice.  This past weekend, I attended a business conference in Boston, where I met several ambitious young women who all want to land fancy jobs after college.   They showered me with a barrage of inquiries: What interests should I include on my resume?  What kind of suit should I wear to my banking interview?  What about job sites, high school achievements, appropriate networking etiquette?  Finance vs. consulting, pants vs. skirts, New York vs. not New York?  And, my favorite question (if only for its implications that I’m somehow a career sensei): How do I become as wildly successful as you are?

Well, I’m here to say that it’s tough.  Some people just aren’t born with my natural charm, superior intelligence, and strikingly good looks.  But even if you’re awkward, stupid, and heinously ugly, you could still get struck by lightning.  And in this metaphor, lightning equals getting a job.

Given that you’re all astute business students, here is a Porter’s Five Forces diagram to show how the job landscape.

So, good luck everyone.  And if the job thing doesn’t work out, you can always turn to blogging (or, moving to India).

This morning I woke up and registered for unemployment.

It made me feel pretty crappy, actually. I’m not sure why. I’ve certainly paid into the system, and I was let go through no fault of my own. I guess it feels crappy in the same way an STD test does, or a tax audit. Memento mori…in the gutter! Or in the desert handcuffed to a dead man!

But the day got better. I found an opening for what could in the most banal way be called my dream job, and I applied. Then later I got a call from the HR department at one of the places I applied last week – a 20 minute pre-interview screening kind of call – and they want me to come in and meet with their recruiter next week.

I also cemented two freelance gigs for the next couple weeks. Not a ton of money, but I’m counting my pennies.

Actually, I paid for some pop using many nickels and pennies today…just like the drunken bum ahead of me in line. (People say “drunken bum,” but let me assure you that I am talking about an actually intoxicated homeless person who was paying for his beer by counting pennies out on top of the New York Post.) The guys at the corner store have been much more friendly to me since my ex moved out and I’m always in there alone – yeah, that happened a little over a month ago, so I’m at an awesome place in my life – and I ended up talking about how I just got laid off.

“Are you looking for a job, or just taking a break?”

Man, it must be worse out there than I thought.

Today is my last day at my job. I managed to survive the first two rounds of layoffs, but now my division is being eliminated altogether. I say “division” because I don’t want to be more specific. Who cares who I am and what I did, right? As Emma Thompson says in Mission: Impossible, “Anonymity is so comforting. It’s like a warm blanket.”

I found out that I’d be joining the ranks of the unemployed a week ago. I got a phone call from HR. Classy! Best part? It was actually a conference call: me, my boss, HR lady. (My boss was let go as well.)

So…the adventure begins.

A friend of mine just recently moved to Korea and gave me a couple of books since he couldn’t take them with him…or at least, didn’t want to pay to take them. Anyway, one of them was by HH Dali Lama. The “HH” stands for “His Holiness.” Throughout the rest of the book the Dali Lama is constantly referred to as “His Holiness.”

I didn’t finish reading the book because it pissed me off to much for two reasons.

First, the Dali Lama isn’t holy. He’s not the reincarnation of Buddha. Everybody except the most uneducated, remote mountain dwelling goat farmer and the most gullible Western city slicker, Starbucks drinking, pot smoking, pseudo-intellectual hippie thinks the Dali Lama is actually the reincarnation of Buddha. Common sense dictates that either the Dali Lama is a liar or is delusional…just like the Pope. But we give the Dali Lama and the Pope a pass because they’re supposed to be really nice people. So who cares if their identities are based on concepts that defy reality or common sense? Well, me, for one. The bullshit stops here. Both the Pope and the Dali Lama are regular-ass people claiming to be (for all practical purposes) demigods. In my book that makes them the two biggest assholes on the planet.

Second, from the very beginning of the book “His Holiness” constantly stresses giving up the desires of the world, the desire for money, power, possessions, etc. He says that the desires for those things cause us discontent and thus pain, and only by eliminating those wants can we achieve happiness. Okay. I agree with that to a point. Obviously, excessive want cause pain, but we need a little money, power, and possessions to stay alive. Some people (maybe even most people) take their greed too far, but the misery caused by those people’s greed doesn’t change the fact that in order to survive in the material world you need material things. This means the Dali Lama is overgeneralizing. Should we all gang up on the Dali Lama for making overgeneralizations? Actually, that’s none of my concern, because that’s not the point.

The point is this. If the Dali Lama is so hardcore about eliminating wants then why does he want Tibet so much? Forget the right/wrong morality of whether or not China should have taken over Tibet or should continue to control it, if the Dali Lama is hardcore about giving up worldly wants he shouldn’t give a fuck about who owns a country. Seriously. This isn’t just a little semantic joke. I’m serious.

But the Dali Lama has been fighting for decades to take control of Tibet back. You want to talk about wants. He wants Tibet worse than the average American wants to win the lottery, and if you’re anything like me, I really, really, really, really want to win the lottery. Now, let’s suppose that this guy (who tells everybody not to want anything) gets control of Tibet back. He’s going to control all the power, all the money, all the resources, and all the people. He’ll have more material possessions than any American to ever win the lottery. What’s he going to do with all that power and stuff?

He’s going to tell his people, as he and his predecessors have done for generations, that they should live in poverty and squalor because to want a comfortable life is worldly and immoral. If he gets to apply his ideology to Tibet his people are going to live horrible lives…as they’ve done in the past under the previous Dali Lamas’ rule.

Let’s sum up the Dali Lama’s political agenda. He’s a regular-ass guy who claims God-hood, gets everybody to call him “His Holiness” and confess their inferiority to him, then “His Holiness” convinces everybody that to want a good life or power over their destiny is immoral so that everyone self-imposes poverty and weakness upon themselves while at the same time giving all their money to their false prophet-led theocracy…Holy Shit! This guy is the most brilliant dictator the world has ever seen! Not only did he get a whole nation to hand over their lives to him without beating it out of them but he got the rest of the world (sans China) to buy into it and help him get his power back after it was taken away from him.

You know what? Fuck the Dali Lama. He’s a delusional liar. He’s a dethroned dictator who didn’t have the leadership to protect his people (whom he wants his to live in squalor while he lives a life of security and vain praise). And his plan for the future is misery for all his people and god-hood for himself.

So he’s opposed to violence. Whoopty fucking doo. I’m opposed to violence. Give me a country.

Yipee, tomorrow I have a job interview. It could be the job I’ve been training for my entire  life. It is universal, presence, serving, educating, supporting, community, fulfilling and collaborative. I hope the interview is a real conversation and not stupid interview questions to see how fast you can think. Some people like to think about things before they bleed from the mouth. So here’s to asking for your thoughts and prayers to be with me tomorrow morning!

Careerbrander.com is a new web destination for job seekers to manage their career transition, personal marketing and online identity management. Consider the company a new breed of outplacement service, delivered 100% online and purchased by individual job seekers, for a very low monthly fee.

What are Outplacement Services?

When we think of outplacement or career transition services, we usually think of services paid for by an employer and offered at the time of a layoff or job termination. These services are provided by vendors such as Lee Hecht Harrison, Monster or Right Management and include skills assessment, career coaching, job skills training, networking and resume writing. They are usually delivered in person, either one on one or in group settings.

Between 60-70% of companies involved in a layoff offer some type of outplacement service, which range in length from one month up to six months. (Sources: The Working Kind Blog, The Hewitt Report, Personnel Today)

What options does a job seeker have if they were not offered traditional outplacement services or if their services have expired?

A new Boston based company called Careerbrander.com, is trying to fill that void with a new, online product.

Per their website,  “CareerBrander.com provides individuals in career transition the best personal branding tools and content available on the Internet. Take control of your career identity. Build resumes, order business cards and establish a personal website in minutes. Learn how the Internet’s social networks, resume keywords, online identity, and job sites impact your job search.”

I had the opportunity to interview Career Brander’s founder and CEO, Ian Levine, to learn more..

1) Ian, what inspired you to launch the Career Brander website service?

Ian Levine

My background is in document management technologies and I saw a way to help job seekers by bringing efficiency to a portion of the career transition process. I committed to create an online service that would accomplish 3 things: 1) make job seekers’ lives easier, 2) save them time and 3) educate them about Internet job search.  At first I sold the service only to corporations as an outplacement service.  Then this past summer, I opened up the application and service as a direct to consumer offering under the Career Brander name.

2) In a few sentences, what does Career Brander do and why should I sign up?

Career Brander serves as a single web destination to manage materials associated with career transition, personal marketing and online identity management.  The service is focused on convenience and our interface is specifically designed for non-technical individuals.

Our site provides a robust resume builder, an instant personal website generation system, professionally printed business cards, financial calculators, and lot’s of proprietary job search content & links.  We educate job seekers on applicant tracking systems, keywords, jobsite search engines as well as topics like how Linked In or other social media can be applied to job search.

A job seeker can accomplish a lot more through our site than most job boards. The return on investment for our service is extremely high.  I am confident that people that use our service are better educated about modern day job search and organized to find work faster.

3) How much does it cost?

Well, we elected not to use the Internet’s “Free” pricing model.  You know, advertise free websites, free business cards and then charge you $20 or $120 in processing fees or premium services.

Career Brander charges $99 at sign up.  This is an unlimited license for the first 90 days.  We then charge $9.95 per month. It’s a month to month commitment. To date, we have issued hundreds of licenses and we have not had a single client stop service. I think that speaks to the value of the portal. It’s significantly cheaper than buying the services independently, but much more convenient.

We also offer a 14 day free trial , so job seekers can learn more about the services before they sign up.

4) Anything else we should know?

We are constantly adding new content, features and software based on client feedback.  We have a great product roadmap for the next 12 months.  We are currently looking at some truly cutting edge technology to assist with targeting and networking.

Lastly, as a service to J2B Marketing Blog readers, we’ve created a discount code, “J2B” which will save job seekers $40 on the initial set up cost.

For more information, please visit www.careerbrander.com.

Copyright October 2009, Marci Reynolds, All Rights Reserved

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Here is a great lens/blog focused on the ever popular job hunt. Definitely some great advice, tips, and trick to help you nail down that dream job. Check it out here.

Interviewers are human, so they tend to repeat their tasks. One of the things they tend to repeat often is interview questions. I always recommend that my clients scour the internet to find as many interview questions as they can and think about how they would answer them. Here are a few of the common interview questions you could be asked at your next interview. If you practice interview questions and answers with a friend you will be much more prepared when you sit down to try to get the job. Good luck!

Tell Me About Yourself:

This one is very common and is most often the first question. Have a short one minute answer prepared that touches lightly on your career, education, work experience. Keep this answer pretty simple as you will be likely touching on your strong points later in the interview.

Why do you want this job?

This is an important question. Try not to make this answer a generic or cliché one. Talk about what you would bring to the job and why you feel the company could benefit from hiring you.

Why should I hire you?

This is similar to the question above. This is a popular question, so have an answer ahead of time. Talk about your strong points as an employee and what past experience you have that meets the company’s needs.

How long would you like to work here?

It is really best to emphasize that you are looking for a long term employment relationship. Companies invest a lot of time, money and resources to train employees and they tend to look for candidates that are going to stick around.

How do you feel about your current or last boss?

Here no matter how you feel it is best to focus on the positives. The interviewer could be just fishing for how you feel about working with others. In any case, it is just best to be positive.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about my future, well planning it really. I know, I know I’m only 16 and I should be enjoying my teen years, doing all the ‘crazy’ things adolescents are supposed to do, but I really have no interest in any of that trivial stuff. I don’t see myself as ‘normal’ and I don’t think I ever really was or will be for that matter. I don’t see anything wrong with planning my future in scarce detail, I mean I’ve never really enjoyed been a typical teenager so why waste my time trying?

I haven’t exactly decided on some of the important factors yet like, what career path do I want to take? But for those types of decisions I’m just going to let the chips fall where they may. My number one priority now is getting some income, which will more likely than not mean a part-time job. And even though I don’t really want to have an actual job yet, I suppose I don’t really have a choice if I’m going to be saving enough money to make my way across the pacific, which, if you’re wondering one of my major plans in the next two years, is to go on student exchange to America and complete my year 12 there. Nothing is concrete yet but I have actually been planning that specific dream for almost 6 months now. As far as I’m concerned, I will be going there, and up until very recently I was sure I could actually officially complete my schooling there, but now I’m not sure even if I graduate there that that would count. And as I’m not decided yet on whether I may want to attend university I would still like to keep my options open, which means that me finishing school would need to be recognized. Anyways, I don’t think even that would stop me from going, it’s something I’ve had my heart set on for a while, even if it does mean doing year twelve again when I’m almost twenty, so long as I don’t actually have to go back to school I think I could handle that.