Category Archives: talent

Is your job like rollerskating in a buffalo herd?

Posted on June 7, 2016 | Leave a comment
buffalo blocking traffice

You can’t drive in a buffalo herd either.

I talk to many job seekers who want to change careers.  Some of them are accountants who should be salesmen.  They got into accounting because it is safe, pays well, and has a great future. Their personality is wrong for accounting.  They don’t like carefully following precise rules.  Reporting on what other people are achieving gives them the itch to do more, not the pleasure of a job well done.

Some people who want to change careers are salesmen who should be accountants.  Salesmen make so much money that, for some, it is irresistible to get into sales.  The “should be accountants” are great with logic, and to them, buying is all about carefully planned decisions.  But developing relationships quickly is not their way of living. Pressing emotional buttons feels somehow wrong.  Sales is just not working.

A favorite song of mine says, “You can’t rollerskate in a buffalo herd, but you can be happy if you put your mind to it. Knuckle down, buckle down, do it, do it, do it.”

If you have the wrong personality for your career field, CHANGE.  Do it now.  You will only have more obligations in a couple of years.

The first step is to work within your current company to see if you can switch careers.  Will they let you go from being an accountant to being a salesman?  Can you go from being a salesman to being a sales engineer or financial analyst?  Is there a way you can exploit your current job?

Often you have to change companies to change your career. You will probably have to take a big cut in pay.  Only you can decide if it is worth it.

One more thing to consider.  Is your career the problem, or the people you are working with?  I don’t know any accounting companies that are filled with rollicking, frolicking, totally off the wall, hard charging adventurers.  I do know that accountant personalities range from nearly dead, to micromanaging bosses from hell, to nurturing versatile entrepreneurs with great attitudes.  Carefully look at your situation.  Make sure that your company and the people you work with are not the real problem.  You may still need to change jobs, but your career may be fine for you.

Don’t settle for a job or career that you just can’t be happy with.  Seriously look at what it will take to work with a better bunch of people or to switch careers entirely.  Life is too short to choose misery.

Something To Do Today

Go online or to your local job center and take a personality test.  You will be surprised how accurate they are.

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Next:   Resume magic

Later:  Imperfect and highly paid

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Posted in Attitude, Focus, Promotions, Quitting or Fired, Raises, talent

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How to read while you are driving

Posted on March 3, 2016 | 1 comment
child reading

You can read while driving a car.

I love talk radio, but it doesn’t lift my spirits. It gets me perturbed.  Music on the radio doesn’t engage my mind as I drive.  I listen to books instead.  I love books that teach me and help me get a better attitude every minute.

The best source of books to listen to may be your public library.  Our main library has hundreds of books and college courses available on audio tape and CD. And all my favorites are available for free through interlibrary loans.

MIT has the vast majority of its courses available for free online.  Yes, free.  In most cases the lectures, notes, and everything you need to learn is available online and free.

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.  (Toffler)

Audible.com is a great place to get books on MP3 inexpensively. I use my phone.  You can use any MP3 player.  I like the quality, selection, and prices.  Getting a monthly subscription is the way to go. And if I am reading a book on my Kindle, the audio version and the Kindle reader sync with each other.

The books on my listening list include: Man’s Search For Meaning (Frankl), Theodore Rex (Morris), Love is the Killer App (Sanders), Networking With Millionaires (Stanley), First Things First (Roger), The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Covey), The One Minute Millionaire (Hansen), The Millionaire Mind (Thomas), and The Millionaire Next Door (Thomas).  I didn’t realize I am so fixated on the word “millionaire”.  These books have great “can do” themes.

Some books I love, but can’t get at Audible yet are The Power of Positive Thinking (Peale), How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (Carnegie), and Think and Grow Rich (Hill). And don’t forget to check out your library and interlibrary loans.

Something To Do Today

Engage your mind. Lift your spirits.  Listen to books that get your spirit soaring while you drive or exercise.  You’ll love it.

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Later:   Down by 20 at halftime

Feel the fear, and¼

Signs you will be laid off or fired

Creating reality – what to do with those dreams

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Posted in Attitude, talent, Time management, Training

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How to become a visionary leader – 2 things

Posted on February 17, 2016 | Leave a comment
eye undergoing laser surgery

You can improve your vision in a much more important and powerful way than laser surgery.

You may be more prepared to be a visionary leader than you think.  That depends on what you see, and what you do with what you see.

One employee of mine refused to talk to me unless I was looking her in the eye and following her movements. I am a champion daydreamer.  If I were in school today I would be given drugs to make me pay attention.

I flunked first grade–flat out flunked it.  That takes a lot of doing. I was brought in to see a psychologist who did all kinds of tests with me.  She told my mom and the school that I was a pretty bright kid.  I just hadn’t figured out what school was about yet.  So they sent me on to second grade.  My mom once told me that the first level I really passed was fifth grade.  I’m not sure I passed then.

Life without dreams is a prison of quiet desperation.  A slim giant of a man I know was in the Bataan death march and then spent all of WWII in a Japanese coal mine.  I believe the only thing that kept him alive was his dreams.  They tortured his body, but he lived in his mind.  In hell he was free in a way many people never are.  He lived.

Take the time to dream.  Please, dream of your family’s future.  Dream of what you can become.  Take the time to explore in your mind what just might be.  The future is not a series of decisions we make about pathways presented before us.  We build our own future from the vision we have of where we can go.

Some men can see the future more clearly than their own reflection in a mirror.  They think about that future.  They live in that future.  Somehow the world molds itself to their vision.  That vision changes a little with every twist of circumstance, but the dream’s architecture, the purpose and meaning do not change.  For a man of great vision, life is revealed and changed as he passes through it to the future. He acts on his great visions.

A vision without action is called a daydream, but then again, action without a vision is called a nightmare.  (Sorenson)

The only thing keeping you from being a visionary is your ability to truly believe in your dreams and then act on them.  See the future as you would like it to be.  Take a few minutes every single day to purposely dream about the future, about a greater future.  Dreaming every single day is the key.  This is where a visionary’s transformational power comes from: daily dreams, then living according to those dreams.  As you dream every day, watch the world shift around you and accommodates itself to your vision as you act.

Something To Do Today

Set aside time in your schedule every single day for dreaming.  Take a week and decide what the future should hold.  Make sure that your relationships and family are primary in that dream.  Write it down.  Refer to it regularly.  It will change your life.

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Next:     Audible

Down by 20 at halftime

Feel the fear, and……

Signs you will be laid off or fired

Creating reality – what to do with those dreams

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Posted in Attitude, Focus, Perseverance, talent

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How to motivate a recruiter to find you a job

Posted on January 20, 2015 | Leave a comment

Many recruiting offices have a button that rings a bell.  You can only push the button when you make a placement.  Some recruiters live only to press that button.  When they do press it, they keep their finger down for a full minute.  It drives everyone else nuts with envy.  Recruiters are competitive people.

Placing someone in a job motivates recruiters.  Sure recruiters want money.  That’s not their base motivation.  Their whole job is centered on making placements.

Want to motivate a recruiter?  Convince them they can place you quickly.

Some things that help:

  1. A great resume showing accomplishments, not responsibilities
  2. A positive attitude
  3. Talents that are in strong demand
  4. Winning interview skills
  5. Reasonable salary expectations
  6. Motivation to take a new job
  7. Little job hunting done on your part already
  8. A list of companies you would like to work for
  9. An exclusive relationship with the recruiter
  10. Your spouse and kids back you in the move
  11. Willingness to relocate or commute
  12. Ability to interview at a moment’s notice
  13. Great references that can be checked immediately or that are already on LinkedIn
  14. A current job

If you bring me all of the things above, I’ll start salivating.  I’ll drop everything I am doing and find you a job.  So will any other recruiter worth his salt. With that list, you should find a recruiter who will market you.  Get his commitment to report back how his marketing is going. If he won’t commit, he is the wrong recruiter.

The way to motivate a recruiter is to be a great candidate.  If you have a motivated recruiter, soon you’ll have a new job.

 Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score.  The real excitement is playing the game.  (Trump)

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Something To Do Today

Go back over that list.  Can you figure out how to line up more of those things for your next job hunt?  Ask a recruiter for his honest opinion, AHow marketable am I and what can I do to make myself irresistible to employers? You can, get a commitment from your recruiter of how much he’ll do and when he will call you back to report on his results.

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Posted in Accomplishments, Finding jobs, Recruiters, Resumes, talent

How to overcome an employer’s resistance to hiring you

Posted on December 10, 2014 | Leave a comment

Why won’t they hire you? Do desperate employers resist hiring anyone?  Do they resist change? Or is it something else they resist?

Would you like to win a million dollars tax free?  But isn’t that a change?

If Oprah gave you a new car and money to pay the taxes on it, how hard would you resist? That is also a change.

Did you notice that I added that line about taxes in each question?  I had to add that because you might resist otherwise.  It isn’t the taxes, it is what the taxes represent in your mind that may cause you to resist.

Employers have the same resistance to hiring you that you might have to accepting a new car or even a million dollars.  They are afraid there is a hidden tax, a hook, a hidden problem.  They are afraid they will be forced to do things they don’t have time or energy for.  It can all be boiled down to their fear of losing control. People are afraid of losing control of their million dollars or their new car due to taxes. They are afraid of losing control if they hire you.

They lose control when they make you a job offer

As long as the employer is looking at resumes, interviewing, testing, talking about candidates, doing reference checks, and thinking about making offers, they are in control.  The second they make you an offer, they lose control.

Suddenly it is all up to you.  They get edgy.  To regain some control they will put a time limit on their offer. Usually they will give you overnight.  Sometimes they will give you up to a week.  But they want to have control over the process.

They have even less control when you start working for them

I am sure your new boss has worked with someone who was hired and was an absolute disaster. That person looked like the solution to their problem and was a horrible mistake.

You look like the perfect solution to their problem.  But, if they hire you, they lose control. When you come on board, there will be training, detailed supervision, review of your work, correction, adjustments to team duties, interpersonal conflicts, and a lot of other things that change. They will lose control of all those things the second you start with the team.

You have to help them regain control before you are hired

In order to soothe your potential boss, you have to give them as much control as possible.  If you can prove a few basic things, they will hire you immediately.  You need to prove:

  1. You will take the job and keep it
  2. You can do that job
  3. You won’t take too much training
  4. You will take the initiative to do things within their system
  5. You learn quickly
  6. You get along with all kinds of coworkers – good and bad
  7. You will quickly take other burdens off the boss’s back and give them back control.

How do you prove it?

We’ll talk about that over the next few days.

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Posted in Accomplishments, Attitude, Focus, Followup, Interviews, Networking, Perseverance, References, Resumes, talent

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Fixing your career and job search: As intense as possible is more

Posted on June 20, 2014 | Leave a comment

The harder I work on me, the better my life gets.  But I can only improve a little each day.  So I focus intensely on one or two things that I want to be better at. That makes my career much better with the least effort for the reward.  It also improves your job search.

Light is very intense in a laser.  Laser pointers are under 1/200th of a watt.  Focus that pointer laser’s beam to the size of a period and you can burn paper.

Intensity at one small spot is the secret of lasers.  Intensity at one spot can also be the secret to advancement in your career.

Some examples:

  1. Some programmers study 20 different programming languages.  As a recruiter, it is almost impossible for me to find a job for someone who has only worked a month or two in 20 different programming languages. It is easy for me to find a job for someone who has studied and worked in one programming language for two years.
  2. In accounting it is easier for us to find a top paying job for an internal audit specialist CPA, than a job for an uncertified general accountant.  Finding a high paying job for a legal secretary is easier than finding a high paying job for a regular secretary.

You cannot get better at everything at once.  An hour a day carefully spent studying a single skill that is in high demand will turn you into an expert in a few months. An hour a day studying new subjects each day won’t help your career nearly as fast..  Now is the time to start narrowing your field and increasing your intensity.

I had learnt to seek intensity – more of life, a concentrated sense of life.  (Berberova)

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Something To Do Today

What is the hottest skill in your profession?  What is the most important bit of that skill?  Study it an hour a day for a month. You will be an expert.

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Next week:  When I ask what time it is, how can someone look at their watch and give me the wrong answer?

Later:  Put your feet up on his desk.

Sunshine collecting

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Posted in Finding jobs, Focus, Resumes, talent, Time management, Training

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Job and job search help I saw at the library

Posted on June 5, 2014 | Leave a comment

My email signature is, “The harder I work on me, the better my life gets.”  There is only one person I can control.  There is only one person I can manipulate into changing.  Me.

Years ago I decided I can work on “me” an extra 30-45 minutes a day.  I converted brain dead commuting time into learning time.

My local library is as large as an average two bedroom house.  Small.  So, I decided to go to a much larger library 10 miles away.  I expected to go in and find a few dozen books on tape.  That’s not what I found.

The library had thousands of books on tape and CD.  There were courses in physics, history, philosophy, music, foreign languages and a hundred other subjects.  Novels, biographies and non-fiction books that have been bestsellers filled bookcase after bookcase. I can even order them by inter-library loan from our little library.

Invest in yourself.  Your mind is the only thing the government can’t take from you.

I listened to a book on how to think.  What makes a genius like Leonardo Da Vinci a genius, different, and great?  Another series of books was on Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Napoleon, and others.  I listened to Freakonomics.  I’m learning.

“If you want to be truly successful invest in yourself to get the knowledge you need to find your unique factor.  When you find it and focus on it and persevere your success will blossom.” (Sidney Madwed)

I’ve got the next 30 years figured out.  I’m learning something. I’m going to invest in myself.

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Something To Do Today

What is your dead time?  How can you most easily transform your dead time into head time?

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The 7 highest demand job categories are…

Posted on June 2, 2014 | Leave a comment

After years hearing about the lack of IT professionals, you’d think those are the hardest jobs to fill. But a new report by human resources firm Manpower indicates they are not.

Electricians, welders, and other skilled trades professions are the biggest headaches to hire for in the US and globally…

Read the full list here.

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Posted in Economy, talent, Training

How to find out what you want to be, do, or pursue

Posted on May 30, 2014 | Leave a comment

I went to a Boy Scout camp where a fire company put on a rescue demonstration.  They had 3 cars.  One by one they ripped them apart using hydraulic tools.  Right then I decided that I want to be a fireman when I grow up.  I was 49 and ineligible, but I’m willing to dream.

A friend told me that he was the fastest machine operator at the plant where he worked.  They always put him in the job that would challenge him the most. If there was a bottleneck, he’d clear it up.  He also cried at times because he hated the work so much.  He studied to take up a different profession for 8 years.  He struggled with very low paying jobs, serious health problems, and a wife and kids he solely supported.  Finally he started working as a Mechanical Engineer at a major DOD contractor.

Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.  (Aristotle)

Why do people stay in jobs they hate? No one is legally bound as an indentured servant or slave anymore.  Why do people need help finding what they like to do?  There are a lot of reasons.  Fear, money, social pressure and unexplored possibilities can all be reasons.

You are a slave if you believe you cannot change.  You are free when you think about, study for, and work towards a change for the better.  So take a little time today and write down a list of things you always wanted to do.  Make a list of jobs and careers you might enjoy.

Need help? Every university has a department to help students discover what they would like to study. The internet has sites to help you choose a career.  Every state run job center will give you interest and aptitude tests for free.  Friends and family are always happy to tell you where to go and what to do when you get there.

You may want to consult a career coach or a consulting coach.  For example, I work with people who want to be consultants to help them have a viable business without worrying about where the next client is coming from. Others help you figure out and pursue your best and happiest career.

It is worth taking time to find out if you really want to be a fireman, mechanic, professor or plumber.  If you start working towards a career goal you can always turn back later and be better off for trying.  However, you will never get anywhere without taking the first steps to think about, study for and work towards a change.

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Something To Do Today

Make a list of every hobby you have attempted.  List every subject you have studied.  Rank them all as “liked”, “don’t care” and “disliked.”  Look for a pattern.  You may be surprised.  Take an interest test or two.  They’re actually fun.  Many are free.  Contact me.  I can help too.

Next:  Mortal combat: win every time

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Posted in Attitude, Focus, Perseverance, Quitting or Fired, talent

Find out if you have Olympic Class job talent

Posted on May 27, 2014 | Leave a comment

We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess. (Mark Twain)

It doesn’t matter how hard I practice, I will never be an Olympic class sprinter.  My muscles aren’t built for it.  If I had large, efficient lungs, I might be an Olympic marathon runner.  I don’t.  My talents are the natural advantages I have over others.

I have a lot of talents.  I’m good with computers.  I’m a decent salesman.  People trust me.  Some things just aren’t my talents.  I like running and physics, but they are not my talents.  How do I know?  I am slow at learning the basics.  I’m always in the bottom third when I run.  There are many things I like.  Some things I am good at.  My talents are the things I learn more quickly and do better than the average person, like working with computers.

Some talents are difficult to develop.  They require years of effort.  The average professional concert musician practices their instrument 5000 hours before getting good enough to regularly solo professionally. The book Outliers claims the number is 10,000 hours.  Louis L’Amour, a prolific writer, submitted story after story at the beginning of his career and very few were published. He developed his talent until he sold over 100 million books.

So how do you discover your talents? 

Take an aptitude test online.  They also give them at job centers and military recruiting centers.  They are designed to find out what you do well, not what you like.  If the test asks a lot of questions about what you like the most, it is NOT an aptitude test.

Honestly assess what you found easiest in school.  Where did you get by with the least effort?  What teachers liked your attitude the most?  When did others come to you with questions?

At work you have probably been given some particular tasks.  Is it because you are better at those things?  Maybe that’s a talent of yours.  Do other people have trouble seeing answers that seem obvious to you?  That could point to a talent.

Discover your talents and you can use the gifts you’ve been given to excel.  That’s what Olympic athletes do.   You will find work more interesting when you are flexing a talent.

You will also be paid better.  Talents are worth discovering.

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Something To Do Today

Write down what you can do easily or what you excel at.  What do you pick up more quickly than others?

Tomorrow:  I want to be a fireman when I grow up.

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