Category Archives: Time management

Are you eating the seed corn in your job?

Posted on October 2, 2012 | Leave a comment

The first winter in Plymouth Colony killed a third of the Pilgrims.  During that winter one of my ancestors was caught eating the seed corn.  He knew the whole colony would fail if the seed corn disappeared, but he talked himself into eating it anyway.  I’m glad he was caught.  I’m glad he learned.

Every job is the seed of your next job, even if you are changing fields entirely.  Your future boss will be looking back at your accomplishments, drive, leadership and enthusiasm for your current job.

When you decide to sit back and relax at your job, you eat your seed corn.  No one wants to hire an “average” person.  They want to hire a superstar, or at least a hard worker.

Figure out how to make a difference.  How can YOU make the company more profitable?  Is there some way you can prove you are above average?

When I was doing janitorial work at 4 a.m. every morning, I excelled.  I only missed 2 days in a school year and I called in advance for those.  I did my entire job no matter how tired I was.  That work got me promoted to the afternoon shift.  It was a lot nicer. The early morning job was the seed of my next job, and that was the seed of the next.

Don’t relax.  Be at least above average.  It will be the seed corn for your next job.  And invest some of the money you earn to get training.  Use it as seed corn.

Something to do today

Be honest. Are you sliding by?

List what makes you above average.  Put it on your resume.

List what makes you below average.  Eliminate it.

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Tomorrow:     Bill Gates’ momma

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Posted in Resumes, Time management, Training

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50 job hunting tips from recruiters

Posted on September 25, 2012 | Leave a comment

Need a job? Recruiters see every possible mistake, and some unusually successful ploys.

Here are 50 job hunting tips from good recruiters.

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Posted in Accomplishments, Attitude, Counteroffers, Finding jobs, Focus, Interviews, Job Boards, Networking, Perseverance, Quitting or Fired, Recruiters, References, Resumes, talent, Time management, Training

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Picking up a hundred dollar can halt your career

Posted on September 20, 2012 | Leave a comment

Do you pick up money you see on the ground?  Do you stop your career in order to do a menial project or take a job someone else should do?

Bending over to pick up a hundred dollar bill is a bad investment of your time if you are Bill Gates.  He has averaged earning more than that every two seconds since Microsoft started.  I did the math.

Bill Gates has focused his career on multiplying his effectiveness.  He has focused on using internal and external resources to dominate the computer industry.  Microsoft did not create the PC operating system they sold to IBM.  They sold IBM something they didn’t own, but had negotiated a right to buy.  Bill Gates saw an opportunity and ran to make it happen. He passed up other opportunities to make that happen.  That is the way Microsoft has grown — a little internal innovation and a lot of focus on using other’s ideas. The most important ideas he could find.

Can you figure out where the biggest changes are happening?

If you focus on the innovations happening around you it can change your career.  When an idea, technology or procedure is new, it takes a week to become an expert.  A year later it takes a year to become an expert.

I became a database expert in a week when Oracle 1.0 came out.  I talked my boss into springing for $100 to get a copy.  I parlayed that into becoming a DB2 guru by buying a book.  One book.  I became a data modeling expert because no one else had a clue what that was.  One innovation led to another, and my bosses had no desire to stop me.  All the industry magazines and experts were using the buzzwords I could implement.  I was on the leading edge.  I was riding the wave of innovation. Every career progression was caused by taking 2 weeks to prepare for an upcoming, essential, mystifying technology.

Do like Bill Gates and I did. Do a little internal innovation and focus on using other’s ideas and new technology.  It is always easier to become an expert when technology and techniques are new.  What is new in your field?

Something to do today

Try it again. The greatest lunch topic you can talk about with your boss is, “What is the emerging world changing technology, technique or skill in our field?”  Figure out what the buzzwords are that people are barely starting to define in your field.

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Tomorrow:     Grandpa rotated crops for free

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Posted in Focus, talent, Time management, Training

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Zen: Perception really is everything

Posted on August 28, 2012 | Leave a comment

There are 10 guys with washboard stomachs and python like arms making $1,000,000 a year teaching others to exercise.  Each year a hundred men and women get PhD’s in exercise physiology and they will only become high school gym teachers. The guys making the big money work hard every day on how the world sees them. Perception really is everything in their world.

Actresses?  They have personal trainers, chefs and makeup artists who make more than most business executives.  They won’t leave their house without 2 hours of working on how you and I will perceive them. Perception is everything to them.

In every job there are people who, “Don’t care what others think.”  They are rarely the best paid person in the shop.  The ones who do care about “what others think” either succeed wonderfully or alienate others beyond belief.  The ones who succeed make sure their bosses know what they have accomplished and what their team did.  The ones who fail try to grab all the credit for everyone’s work, not just their own.  They fail because the perception becomes that they are conniving, scheming and untrustworthy.

Who do you respect?  Did they earn that honor?  If you respect a computer programmer because he “never sold out”, hasn’t he sold that perception?  A musician who is famous for “never going commercial” cultivated that precise image.  They all care for their image as carefully as Hulk Hogan of pro-wrestling fame.  A great salesman who never counts his commissions carefully implants that perception in his customers. That is what he sells: perception of himself as only interested in the customer’s success.

Figure out how you want to be perceived. Be that person.  Prove to your boss that you are that person with weekly reports that show it.  That same proof can be applied to your resume.  Show what you have caused to happen in the past and you’ll get the chance to do more in your next job. Perception will be reality.

About Today          

This series is about what makes or breaks a job hunt.  Reality and the real world.  My list of the reasons people get a new job or struggle includes:

  1. Nothing beats a positive unstoppable Helium II attitude.
  2. People who are hurting are terrible employees and everyone knows it.
  3. You have to know your advantages and ruthlessly exploit them.
  4. The people competing against you must be known, measured, and either beaten, eliminated or enticed elsewhere.
  5. You can’t make a silk purse out of a buggy whip.
  6. You have to be worth more than you are being paid
  7. A man dying of thirst will still want a bargain on a bottle of water
  8. Perception isn’t important, it is everything
  9. Character really counts
  10. Diamonds in the rough don’t stay that way
  11. Relax and get cleat marks up your back

Think about your job search. Just think.  And then take notes about your conclusions.

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For 1 week:         Zen and the art of getting a job

Tomorrow:           Character counts

Later:                    Diamonds in the rough

Cleat marks up your back

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Posted in Accomplishments, Attitude, Focus, talent, Time management

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One way your ego can suck up your life

Posted on August 23, 2012 | Leave a comment

Your ego is like money. In fact, I believe there is something called, “The Ego Economy” that you might be wasting your time on right now.

In this economy, your ego can be traded, bartered for, bought, and sold.   more…

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Posted in Time management

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How to manage engineers, developers, (and accountants)

Posted on August 10, 2012 | Leave a comment

“The reality is tech support people, engineers, and developers have more in common with each other than they do with anyone else,” said Paul Glen, an IT management consultant and author of Leading Geeks: How to Manage and Lead People who Deliver Technology. “We see the world somewhat differently and we, as groups, interact differently.”

Read on…

 

 

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Posted in management, Time management

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10 ways to prove you are a fast learner

Posted on August 3, 2012 | Leave a comment

“I know I haven’t done that job before, but I’m a really fast learner”, so the applicant says.  Then I read the resume and can see nothing to back up their claim.  They have a “C” average in school, worked at a manual labor job and their hobby is woodworking.

I tell them, “Prove to me that you are a fast learner.”

Few have thought of how to prove it.  I ask more questions and try to find out if the person is a fast learner. I ask questions like:

   What do you learn quickly?

   Do others come to you for help with a particular kind of problem?

   What do you excel at?

   What projects did you lead?

   Are you particularly good or renowned at your hobby?

   Which were your best school classes or subjects?

   Who were you favorite teachers or supervisors and why?

   What have you written about?

   When have you won a contest?

   What do you do that causes you to lose all track of time?

Those questions can lead to a list of proofs of fast learning, or not.  If you are a fast learner, prove it on your resume with your accomplishments.

To be honest, being a FAST learner is less important than being a steady learner.  If you pick up new skills and apply them regularly, you can get farther than someone who is occasionally brilliant but lazy.  Employers respect someone who is a consistent learner and worker.

Show consistent learning and how you picked up new skills every year and that is enough. Prove it with new accomplishments on your resume, and I’ll think you are a fast learner.

Something To Do Today

For some reason many people don’t think what they learned is important.  Keep track of new skills you learn so you can brag about them. Prove how fast you can learn.

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Monday:           Re-entering the workforce

Later:                 I don’t want to spend my money on training

Make a game out of it

Before you know it

Who is driving?

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Posted in Accomplishments, Attitude, Interviews, Promotions, talent, Time management, Training

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Post It notes to meet your goals

Posted on July 19, 2012 | Leave a comment

In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it. (Robert Heinlein)

Making a goal a constant irritant is critical.  Anyone can set a goal and then forget it.  An effective tool for making goals a constant irritant is Post-it notes.  Write a single achievable goal on each note, then:

  1. Post your achievable goals on the bathroom or bedroom mirror
  2. Carefully read them when you get up and when you go to bed
  3. When you accomplish a goal, paste it in a permanent record

All three steps are critical.  You have to use them as an irritant and as a reminder that you can meet the goals you set.  You’ll find that you want to put up goals you are going to meet.

Remember the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle: the mere act of measuring changes the thing being measured.  Putting those goals on your mirror, measuring yourself against them, then cataloging your successes can change your life.

Something To Do Today

Take a pad of Post-it notes home. Write achievable goals on 3 of them.  Make at least two of them very short term.  Create an archive where you can keep all the Post-it note goals you achieve.

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Tomorrow:           How they determine your pay rate

Later:                    Certainly I can

But I’m a really fast learner

Re-entering the workforce

I don’t want to spend money on training

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Posted in Accomplishments, Attitude, Focus, Perseverance, Time management

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Promotions, new job hiring, and “The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle”

Posted on July 18, 2012 | Leave a comment

A biologist told me, “One chipmunk was trap crazy. That’s a technical term. Every time I set out an array of traps that one chipmunk ran right into one of the traps.”  Wildlife biologists have to deal with the strange changes that happen when they measure something.  The mere act of measuring changes the thing being measured.  That is the basis of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

What happens depends on our way of observing it or on the fact that we observe it. (Werner Heisenberg)

Tracking performance alters what happens.  For instance, I worked on one set of computer programs where the programmers were paid per line of each program.  Those were the longest programs I have ever seen.  As a salesman I was once rewarded for each call I made.  I made a whole lot more calls but sold no more of the product.  I was gaming the system.  I was winning the contest and losing my job.

So how does this get you a new job or a raise?

Bosses want performance.  They use reasonable, useless, and ridiculous metrics to decide what your performance was.  That is true whether it is a hiring manager at a job you want, or your present boss.

First: Figure out what is the most important measuring stick

Second: Figure out what will keep your boss (or hiring manager) happy.

You should know and care about every measurement of your performance that your boss takes.  It is absolutely critical to decide which are the critical measurements.  Some of those measurements will get you a raise and a new job while others will get you fired.  Most of the rest exist to get you to change the way you work. Look at the message you get from the non-critical measurements. Make your boss happy if you can.  Be prepared to fail on the minor measurements to win a spectacular success on the critical measurements. Keep a record of how well you do on the most critical measurements.

What YOU decide to pay the most attention to will change how you work.  You have to concentrate on the measurements that will get you to your end goal.  Again, the mere act of measuring will change the thing being measured.  That is the basis of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Figure out how to use that to reach your goals.

Something To Do Today

Do you know what you want out of your job?  Money, a promotion, free time or a place to hang out?  Write in your job journal what the most critical measurements are to help you reach that goal.

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Posted in Accomplishments, Attitude, Focus, Promotions, Time management

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3 job disasters and who’s in charge of you

Posted on May 15, 2012 | Leave a comment

What is the connection between these 3 job disasters and you?

A director of accounting went to the SEC with evidence of fraud.  Several executives were put in jail.  He was told by the new managers, “Trust us.  We’ll take care of you.”  Exactly a year later he was on the streets looking for a job.

An industry downturn was coming.  A merger happened.  The worker trusted that his 20 years of service would save him. He was laid off.  It was too late to get a new job.  The people who were laid off first got them all.

Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans.  FEMA came in to help a few days later.  It was too late.

You are in charge of your life.  You are in charge of your career.  If you hear yourself saying that someone or something will keep you from getting fired, stop and think.  If you die tomorrow, you will be replaced.  You can always be replaced or eliminated.

If your performance is outstanding you can find another job.  If you have been growing your credentials, learning, getting certifications and networking, then you’ll get that new job very quickly.

It’s your career.  It’s your life.  You need to be in control.  You have to be the first person to respond to an emergency involving your job. Don’t be paranoid.  Be prepared.

If you don’t accept responsibility for your own actions, then you are forever chained to a position of defense.  (Holly Lisle)

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Posted in Attitude, Finding jobs, Time management

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