The big news on the career/tech front this week was that Brazen Careerist transformed itself in “an all-out social network focused on flipping the conventional wisdom surrounding the resume by focusing on “idea feeds.””
While Brazen Careerist has been a great place for Gen Y bloggers to find one another, its renewed focus this week could change the game for employers and employees alike.
The main frustration I hear with recent graduates is that no one will hire them because they don’t have any experience. And they can’t get any experience unless someone hires them. This is the awful Twilight Zone paradox of trying to land a job in our world. After all, how can you really demonstrate that you will do a good job, even if you just haven’t had the chance to do a good job yet?
I hope that Brazen can change the career game by showcasing the great ideas of its community members. Then, I hope this trend will catch on and allow all of us to showcase our great ideas when looking for work. And ultimately, I hope that companies and organizations the world over will begin to find ways to measure the potential of new employees, and not just the past.
Tell us: when looking for work, how do you draw attention to your ideas?
photo credit: melissaclark
Nietzsche once said, “I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.â€
Amen, brother!
Often we are so focused on the fact-based realities of whether or not we have “lied,†as if that is itself the arbiter of right and wrong, of positive or negative consequences. Isn’t the real issue whether or not we have nurtured trust with other people?
There is a lot going around about the technical aspects of truth in some local community dealings. And it really seems to miss the point by a wide, wide margin. The point is that in order to continue to function as organizations, as government, as friends and neighbors and lovers and the rest, we have to have a bedrock belief that the information we exchange with one another is not only technically correct but that it comes from a place of purposeful honesty, not evasion.
Sadly, it is so easy to take for granted the good will and belief in us that most people offer up front; you only internalize what you have lost when you realize that gift is gone once you’ve treated it too casually. Getting it back can be a long road.
What holds you back from purposeful honesty, in personal as well as public life?
This post was originally published on www.essediem.blogspot.com on May 11, 2009 and is reprinted with permission.
photo credit: Valerie Everett
It’s about as cliche a desk accessory as it gets, but a framed photo on your desk of something that inspires you may be just the thing you need to keep you focused and driven to succeed.
A few jobs back, I was overextended, managing three of the company’s top five goals within my small team, but it seemed worth it because I believed something good would come of it in the end, both for the company and for me professionally. But to try to make it all work, I was putting in really long hours at the office. Which meant that the very reasons why I wanted to succeed — to enjoy my life with my husband at our beautiful home in relative comfort — were out of my reach when I needed the motivation the most.
So I spent a couple bucks on having good quality prints made of some of my favorite snapshots of my husband and my home, and put them in good frames. Sure, I could have just made those images my computer screensavers or desktop wallpapers, but then I wouldn’t have them there in my peripheral vision all the time, just waiting to remind me about why I was there in the first place. Which also reminded me, after I’d put in a long day’s work, to go home and enjoy what I was working for.
Now that I work from home, I don’t need the reminder in such a visual way, but I do occasionally take a break from my desk to go hug my husband or take a stroll through our garden.
Maybe your inspiration is different: maybe yours has to do with places you want to go, or things you want to do. Maybe mementos of the past keep you focused on the present. Whatever it is that keeps you going, find a way to remind yourself frequently.
How do you remind yourself what really matters? Share your tips in the comments.
photo credit: chanchan222
Regardless of what you think of football or Brett Favre, you’ve seen the same song and dance happen in different sectors. You’ve seen the CEO who hops from one large company to the next, even after his judgment and ingenuity have left him. You’ve seen the teacher who needs to retire instead of hang on one more year. You’ve seen the designer who no longer has a knack for creating compelling book covers.
But none of them can let go. Financial needs aside, some people can’t walk into the sunset peacefully, knowing when to call it quits and to move on.
I’m sure there’s a little bit of Brett Favre in most of us. Something is telling us to move on, but we just can’t do it.
I’m reminded of a stellar article written by Dr. Jeff Cornwall, Director for the Center for Entrepreneurship at Belmont University. He challenges the entrepreneur (and the non-entrepreneur, too) to not “become the noun of what you do for a living.”
He continues:
One of the risks of using nouns to describe what we do in our work is that it can reinforce the tendency we all have to get carried away with our work. I loved starting a growing businesses (most of the time, at least). I love teaching and writing. It is indeed a blessing to love what one does for a living and enjoy the hard work that goes along with it. But, with every virtue there is a vice looming in the background. Although hard work is a good thing, it can be taken to excess and become a vice if it keeps us from all the other things we should be doing with our lives.
Go read the rest of the article and come back here and tell us how you resist becoming the noun of what you do for a living. How do you keep things in check and know when it’s time to exit gracefully?
