What If Im Only Good For One Thing

“What If Im Only Good For One Thing” Help from our Community “What If Im Only Good For One Thing?” * Serena has worked in her industry for many years, and people know and love her for what she does. She feels like it's time to move on, but she's scared of discovering that her only value lies in an industry she's no longer in love with. What should she do? What's your career history and current job? I'm Account Manager for a creative design company. I started my career in door-to-door sales when I was in my late teens, and have hopped around in the field of sales and client relations for the past 12 years. How do you feel about your work? I feel burned out. I used to be really excited to go to the office; I've always got along well with my colleagues wherever I've worked, and I know I'm good at my job, so there's a sense of satisfaction. I've built up some great relationships with clients over time. And I enjoy the business side of the job too â€" the figures and strategy stuff challenges my brain. But these days I'm always exhausted. Not because the job takes up too much time; I just feel as though so much of my time has gone into making other people happy for so long. I wonder what it would be like for me to be happy like that. I can't summon up the same level of energy - and I used to feel it so naturally. I just think it's time to move on. What would you like to be doing instead? There are a number of possibilities that I've considered for a while. I've always loved art and creative pursuits, and I'd like to see if I can make something of my painting. I'm also interested in nutrition and alternative medicine, and something about the sustainability and environmental field is attractive to me, too. Ideally I'd like to take a sabbatical and spend some real time trying these things out before I commit to a new path entirely. What's the biggest obstacle you're facing in your career change? If I'm not taking care of people, I don't know who I am. I've done sales and 'people' jobs for so long. I don't know if I've got anything else valuable to offer. It's not so much a practical obstacle â€" I know I can take some time off my job to experiment, or even leave and find a new job if things don't work out â€" but I can't seem to shake this fear that I'll get out there and change direction and discover that I'm only good for one thing. It's what everyone likes about me, and what they know me for. Deep down, I'm scared that if I stop doing it, I won't be me any longer. It's probably silly, but I'm scared. Can you help Serena? Have you been in a similar situation, or are you in the same boat right now? What can she do to feel more secure in her decision to change career? Do you know anyone she could talk to? Share your thoughts in the comments below and click the thumbs-up button to show your support. Give Serena a cheer of encouragement by hitting the thumbs-up button here:

Resume Skills - How to Write a Good Resume

Resume Skills - How to Write a Good ResumeIt is important to have an idea of what type of resume you should send when you want to find a job. The reason for this is that different resumes are needed for different jobs. It is always best to have some knowledge of the job you are applying for in order to be able to write a quality resume.Resumes can be easily created and are available from most of the online companies today. You do not have to go into a large printing firm in order to create a professional looking resume. All you need is a computer with internet access and your own personal computer.The first thing you need to do is find a place on the internet that specializes in resumes. The advantage of using an online resume service is that it is much easier for you to design your own resume. Most companies do not hire a full time designer, so they will be able to offer many templates for you to choose from. You can also have them create a cover letter for you that will make your r esume stand out.A good resume will list your academic background and the courses you have taken. It should also include any certifications you have received. It should also list your work experience, your current skills, and even previous positions that you may have held.It is also important to include samples of your work. You should highlight any areas that you feel would help your application stand out. You should include samples of your work in the area of math, science, computer, or mechanical as these are very important areas in a resume.Something else that you should include is a letter that includes any special qualities you have. Some companies will require you to write a different letter if you do not fit their requirements. This can be a helpful way to explain why you were not selected.When creating a resume it is important to list the different areas you have had experience in. If you have been a teacher you will need to list this in your summary of your experiences. You should be able to include any universities you have attended, employment that were held, and the number of years of employment you held.Finally, the resume should include all information about yourself that you would like to include in a resume. Do not forget to include your contact information if you need it. Using a free resume service will make it easy for you to find a job.

Do You Have a 2011 Personal Branding Reading Plan - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Do You Have a 2011 Personal Branding Reading Plan - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career Do you have a 2011 personal branding reading plan that lists the books you intend to read each month? A 2011 reading plan will increase the likelihood you will read the personal brand building books you intend toand should readthis year. Your reading plan should include the titles you intend to read and the specific months when youre going to read each title. Simply taking the time to create a list of personal branding books during each month increases the likelihood youll follow-through on your intention, and provides an easy to to track your progress. The idea came to me in an e-mail sent to me by Joel Whitaker, who publishes the Newsletter on Newsletters for subscription newsletter publishers. Joels e-mail contained a link to the Booking It in 2011 Life as Mom blog post that containing the 2011 reading list and a link to a free, no registration required, downloadable PDF describing the program. Lessons from the Booking It in 2011 blog post The original blog post is very detailed, but some of the the highlights I gained from it include: Two tracks. One track provides recommended books for each month, the other track allows you to determine the titles youre going to read each month. Lessons from the recommended titles. Pay particular to the recommended book titles when you visit the Life as Mom Booking It blog post. Analyze each title from the point of view of benefit, target marketing, and brand building. Community building and accountability. If you download the Booking It in 2011 PDF, pay attention to the quality of writing and graphic design, as well as the way the PDF helps users translate intention to read into monthly reading successes. Other lessons that Booking It teaches The above are just a few of the impressions I gained from reading the blog post. What are some of the other ideas, lessons, or tips you discovered in the blog post and downloadable PDF? Hint: explore the links contained on the blog post. In addition, consider sharing your list of the personal branding books you intend to read during 2011! Please share your discoveries and ideas as comments, below. Author: Roger C. Parker is a book coach who blogs every weekday and helps readers choose the right article, book, event titles for personal branding success.

Take these small steps in college for a big career later

Take these small steps in college for a big career later Back-to-school time isnt just about your coursework. Its also about your future. With that in mind, here are eight steps you can take at the beginning of the college year to lay the groundwork for your career. Follow them and you may just do justice to the amount of time you spend sitting in a classroom. 1. Dont stress about your major. College teaches you how to think. If youre good at thinking and learning in any given subject, youll be prepared to do the same in the workforce. You wont be an expert at anything after college thats what grad school is for. So just pick a major and get decent grades. Also realize that youre going to change careers at least three times in your life anyway, so having a major thats relevant to all your future careers is virtually impossible. 2. Recognize that law school can be a crutch. Its scary to be a good writer and good thinker and have no idea what youre going to do with your life. But that isnt necessarily a sign that you need to go to law school. A huge number of people go to law school for misguided reasons, so be sure you know precisely what you want to do with your career before pursuing that JD. Otherwise, the loans youll have taken to get it will make your second thoughts about being a lawyer a first-class financial disaster. 3. Help your parents organize their network. Sure, everyone tells you to network in order to get a great job, but who are you going to network with? Your fraternity brothers? Of course not. Their parents, however, are a different story. Everyones parents have friends, and the charm of the baby boomers is that they want to be involved in every little aspect of their kids lives. So get your parents to put all their contacts into a tool like LinkedIn. That way, you can go through the list and systematically network for your own benefit. 4. Join the cheerleading squad. Really. Cheerleaders are great salespeople. Its probably self-selecting after all, introverts dont run onto the football field at halftime and jump around. But when companies recruit at colleges, they often cater to cheerleaders in the same way that they cater to athletes. Both types are high-performers in the workplace, so join a team to do well in your career and, yes, the cheerleading squad counts as a team. 5. Make time to read Getting Things Done. True, you wont get graded on this assignment in school. But you will in life. The way to reach your goals is to keep yourself working productively toward them. Productivity is a skill, and in the adult world youll be competing with the samurais of productivity, so get started on building your skills by reading David Allens Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. 6. Learn your strengths. One of the best ways to find meaningful, fulfilling work is to understand what your strengths are. Theres no single job thats right for you, but there is a single type of job the type that allows you to be your best self by leveraging your best traits. So use college to  discover your strengths  and practice applying them consciously. That way, when its time, matching them to a job will  be second nature to you. 7. Take a class in positive psychology. The best way to make a happy career for yourself is to know what really makes you happy. And heres a newsflash it probably isnt your career itself, but the general level of optimism you have. This is what youll learn in a  positive psychology class. If one is available at your college, itll provide you with the basis for defending your decisions to your parents about things like taking time off to travel, getting bad grades so you can start a business in your dorm room, and following your girlfriend to  Idaho  instead of going to grad school. 8. Learn to be vulnerable. When your career demands that you lead, or inspire, or even just connect with the people around you, the best way to do so is to show your vulnerabilities. Not all of them, and certainly not the most pathetic ones. But some. Because the only way to connect with people for real is to open yourself up a bit. Dont be the big man or woman on campus be someone whos approachable and authentic. Its not easy. First you have to know something about who you truly are, and then you have to project that true self to others. This is the hardest thing to learn in life, so start in college and you wont be lost later in life.

Personal Branding in the Classroom - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Personal Branding in the Classroom - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career I had a discussion with a friend late last night. He is an old roommate and is now in Japan doing his last semester of law school. While he is a regular reader of my blog, he actually finds personal branding very hard to understand. Im still trying to determine whether thats a factor of being a lawyer or perhaps that the definitions of personal branding are confusing. He wrote to me: I guess I am one of those guys who doesnt have a full grasp of the personal branding concept. but its becoming so mainstream is it something they might start teaching in schools or is it something which is inherently tied to stuff like social networking? Its a great question. How do you define it? How would you teach it? And, is this something we will begin to see in universities? Defining personal branding My friend brings up a very good point. What is personal branding? After all, just looking at the Personal Branding Blog, you will get a wealth of tips and perspectives from people who all see personal branding a bit different than the next person. At the end of the day, I think Dan Schawbels tag line for the blog is actually quite fitting, Navigating YOU to future success!. If you think about it, personal branding is all about how to be more successful using the tool, YOU. This blog will discuss how to be more successful through your image, through your communications, through the way you work, or through the way you influence. No matter what we discuss here, we are all focusing one singular goal; helping make you more successful. Personal branding in the classroom? Will we ever see a personal branding course taught in university? What would a personal branding course teach exactly? Would it be a communications course? There are already thousands of those. At the end of the day, it is in the universities best interests for students to personally brand themselves; it makes them look good. But, if personal branding is essentially about navigating you to success, then Id make the case that universities already do this today. They do it by giving students solid backgrounds, educations, and a degree to help navigate their students to success. That is why I would see difficulty in creating a class on personal success. However, universities are still not doing enough to help their students personally brand themselves. I dont think a personal branding course would be the answer, because I think its something that needs to be baked in a universitys overall strategy. It should be a mantra they preach on a daily basis. How can we ensure our students come out of here with the competitive advantage they need to succeed in the market? What has been your experience? Do you agree? Author: Adam Salamon is Partnerships Director at Bazaarvoice, Inc., blogs about social media, entrepreneurship, and pop culture. Follow him on Twitter for daily updates.

What to Consider When Preparing for an Interview

What to Consider When Preparing for an Interview Photo Credit â€" Pexels.comYour work has paid off, you have a job interview, but are you prepared?Many people think they can “wing it” at an interview without any preparation, but very few people can pull this off. There are thousands of articles on this topic, but the basic points are generally the same.There are several types of interviews: initial interviews with recruiters, telephone interviews and “in-person” interviews, and final round interviews.evalSome of the basics interview tips. are:1. Be Prepared â€" Research the company before the interview There are many resources you can use to get a better understanding of the company’s products and markets. It is easier to do this with public companies, but you can find out information on almost any company these days.LinkedIn â€" There is an excellent chance that the company has a listing on LinkedIn. Take a look and find out all you can. You will most certainly find current and former employees on LinkedIn who may be lin ked to someone you know Know what you are good at (and not good at) and be prepared to discuss them. Prepare to speak to those strengths and experiences which align with the job description.8. Dress ProperlyGenerally speaking, you can’t go wrong with proper business attire. This may not be the case all of the time (such as Internet startups), so use your judgment based on the industry, position and company.Reasons People Fail in a Job InterviewYou think you’ve done everything right but you are just not getting any job offers. The following list includes some of the most common reasons people fail on an interview:Failure to read background material on interview techniquesNot knowing the answers to common interview questionsNot dressing properlyChewing gum during the interviewArriving late (or arriving too early)Not knowing the details of their own resumeDiscussing compensation requirements without being asked the questionSaying that your are “rushed for time”Displaying a nega tive attitude or generally being negative about your current employeeVague interview answersWearing too much perfume or aftershaveForgetting the name of the interviewerLying about your skills or experienceLying about your educationYawning (get plenty of sleep)Not making eye contact or making too much

Putting Your Résumé into Words How To Verbally Pump Yourself Up In an Interview - Pathfinder Careers

Putting Your Résumé into Words How To Verbally Pump Yourself Up In an Interview - Pathfinder Careers Putting Your Résumé into Words: How To Verbally Pump Yourself Up In an Interview Some people are writers. Others are talkers. When it comes down to the job search, everyone has to be able to do both… and well. You can buy a book or hire a résumé writer to get the written part of the application complete. But how do you get over the interview jitters and really come across as the polished professional that you are on the job? For those people who are naturally inclined in sales, the interview isn’t something to be feared. Everyone else hates the stress interviews cause, and are constantly worrying, “Will I say the right thing?” Getting to the point in a highly stressful situation is actually more of a critical job skill than you realize. Practicing speaking can build your competency in this core area. As a frequent speaker myself, people are stunned to hear that not only was I a stutterer when I was a kid, but also that I am an extremely shy person. You wouldn’t know it if you met me! Fortunately, thanks to the dedication of a family member, I was quickly entered into the world of speech and debate throughout my high school and college years. Then I was off into my professional career, and I remember quite distinctly being at a conference listening to a riveting keynote speaker, who had no notes and was fully engaging the audience. Wow, I thought, wouldn’t it be great to be able to carry something off like that! Fast forward twenty years, and through progressively responsible experience in my employment lifetime, I have had to step up and provide sessions and leadership at conferences and workshops. This thrust my own public speaking into a suddenly new role. The pivotal moment was when I was on stage addressing 500 people at an awards banquet, and I realized that this was just about the same as a workshop. You have a message, and everyone is there to hear it. The interview is the same thing. You have a message about yourself, and the prospective employer is interested enough in you that they called you in for an interview to hear it. A great resource for finding the supportive proving ground in speaking is Toastmasters. I am not a member, but I know countless people who have joined, and reaped the benefits as a result. They’ve been able to focus on what they are saying, how they are saying it, and sense how the audience is receiving their message. Learning what kinds of words or phrases could provide subtle clues as to your state of mind in an interview can be very enlightening. Use of “ums” and “ahs” are hedgers, and can communicate that you are not confident about what you are talking about, or let the interviewer know that you are very nervous and not focused. Toastmasters or other clubs that encourage members to develop their speaking skills are definitely a wise investment into your skill set. You never know when you might have to give an executive-level presentation, or need to pump yourself up in an interview. If you are relaxed and comfortable with the act of speaking in a highly scrutinized setting, you’ll perform a lot better by staying locked in on the content that you are delivering. For more information on Toastmasters, please visit their website at toastmasters.org â€" and gain a whole new skill set!

Rousing Review The Artist in the Office

Rousing Review The Artist in the Office I feel like Im not quite ready to review The Artist in the Office like it needs about a dozen more reads, as I want its awesomeness to really rub off and sink in and lead me to being a better coach. And yet, I dont wanna drag my feet in introducing it to all of you. It would be nothing but downright mean of me. I bought The Artist in the Office at my local indie bookstore (yay Greenlight!) quite a few months ago, and I knew it was not a transportation book. By that I mean it wasnt a book I wanted to read passively on the subway, getting interrupted and having to pay attention to where I am and having a Start and Stop point thats dependent on how far Im traveling. Instead, I wanted to delve into it on my terms, when I had the time and the space and the ability to get lost. And get lost I did. To put it simply, I wish I wrote this book. Its the type of book that I aspire to write and produce one day. Its encouraging, its inspiring, its fun, its beautiful, its quirky, its workbook-ish, and it literally is written for every single person whos pursuing their creative passion. Summer gets your head on straight by allowing you to own your artsy-ness and make sure its not left behind just because youre in a non-artsy environment. While she has a few disclaimers that these exercises shouldnt be done at the expense of your professionalism (or job!), she offers so many amazeballs ideas on how to make your workday creative no matter what youre doing, whether its Commuting Bingo, utilizing the copier for all its worth, or breaking into spontaneous dances with co-workers, she really opened my eyes to how creative a corporate environment could be! That I wish I had this book this time last year, when I was still Executive Assisting it up, goes without saying. Summers the friend whos ballsy enough to say, Maybe its your attitude that needs a change? while telling you all thats going right in your life and that shes so proud of you. Shell work you through the starving part of starving artist and make you feel that theres abundance, and offer you ideas to get un-stuck when the office gig has sucked the creativity from your veins and youre wondering, What am I doing with my life?! This little book which I read in about an hour or so, I think offers so very much. I think Summer, um, sums it up herself on the blog post I found about starting The Artist in the Office, which she did as a zine in 2006. She wrote: I feel there is this duality we live as artists with day jobs. We dont want our day jobs, but I do believe there is something in us that just LAYS OUR LIVES DOWN, that just says, OH, WELL. I dont want to say OH WELL anymore. If shes talking about you, then revolution! my friends. Pick up what Summers puttin down get yourself The Artist in the Office.