5 (Plus 1) More Ways to Help Yourself Find Work

A colleague of mine, Dr. Marty Nemko, recently posted  A Plan for the Long-term Unemployed to Find Work, wherein he gave these five suggestions:

1. Do a personal audit. Ask others to give anonymous feedback via Checkster.com.
2. Contact your existing network.
3. Cold-contact realistic employers.
4. Start your own business.
5. Go back to school to change careers.

These are good suggestions, but they wouldn’t work for everyone. Of course, Dr. Nemko is writing for his audience, who are mostly professionals. But I work at a large urban career center where most of our visitors have low levels of education and skill, spotty work histories and few resources. (For many, they’re at the career center in the first place because they don’t have a computer connected to the Internet at home.) These suggestions would either fall on deaf ears there or, if implemented, wouldn’t be very effective. Below, I outline the limits of each strategy and then offer some alternatives.

The issue with #1 (personal audit) is that most of the people I see every day think they’re fantastic even if they read at 10th grade level, do math at 8th grade level and wear the waist of their pants halfway down their thighs. No one thinks they’re lazy, unskilled, of average intelligence, or lacking in workplace professionalism. And neither do their friends. They would all tell each other how wonderful they are and how life isn’t fair. The problem is always the economy, not them.

The limit with #2 (network) is that their existing network isn’t enough. Most of the people I see every day say they know 10 people and they’re all unemployed. People need to reach beyond their network. We offer classes on Linked In and social media at the career center, but few people take advantage of it. Even people on Linked In seem to have no idea how to use it to expand their web of contacts.

#3 (contact employers directly) is a good suggestion but most people are too intimidated to do cold calling. I don’t know a single person who has the guts and know-how to do this.

#4 (start a business) works for a minority of people – true entrepreneurs. I see so many people who tried to start a business and failed because they’re not business people. They don’t realize how hard it is to sell or market to get customers, or how many hours they need to put in, or how hard the work will be, or how lonely it will be, or how hard it is to get off the ground in the beginning, or how to choose a service or product that people will actually pay for, or how to price things so they’re not losing money, or how to partner with other businesses, or how to manage their money once they start making a profit.

#5 (go back to school) can work but people should have no delusions about how hard it is to start over. I had a client with 11 years in housing who came to retrain to be a medical front office assistant because she couldn’t get a job in her field. I told her how hard it would be to compete with experienced people. I also asked how she was looking for work. “Just answering job postings on the Internet,” she said. When I asked if she was using her network, she said she yes, she had a big network. I said, “So you’ve talked to the housing people in Oakland?” She no, “I only know the housing people in Richmond.” I’m working with her to mount a more effective job hunt, and I convinced her to look in other social services before completely giving up on the field (since she’s not seeking a career change so much as a job).

Every day, I help the long-term unemployed. These are the tips I give them:

1. Volunteer in something that will put you closer to a job. Don’t just volunteer randomly. You’d think this would be obvious. It’s not. I have a client who went to sterile processing school but has been waiting a year to get placed in an externship and is not allowed to get her own. She’s not employable without the experience. She volunteers by reading to seniors. I suggested she volunteer at a community clinic because at least it would give her health care experience. That had never occurred to her.
2. Do project work or temp work. Between oDesk, elance and Craigslist, there’s a huge market for freelance work. Temp firms will put you in contact with employers needing your skills, especially if you’re persistent about follow-up. Lastly, you can always create a website, get a business card and post flyers or ads where potential customers go. One of my contract gigs (creating Powerpoint presentations) turned into a permanent job that I stayed at 5 years.
3. Become slightly famous.  Leadership in one’s faith community, childrens’ school or neighborhood, board work, visible volunteering (at professional associations and conferences), writing/speaking (or partnering with those who can) and contributing to discussions online — these all help people get to know you. The fact that I am an active contributor to an email list has resulted in all kinds of opportunities.
4. Be a connector. You know those two people who need to meet each other? Introduce them. And don’t be shy about asking them to help you. Conduct new informational interviews every week. Pass job postings on to friends and ask them to keep an eye out for you. Give recommendations and get them. (They can go right onto your resume.) Text a fellow job seeker a supportive note or send an encouraging email. Invite a friend to go to a job club with you. Or go to a professional meeting. Or a chamber mixer. Use the buddy system to introduce each other to new people. And always introduce yourself to the organizers of the meeting.
5. Take advantage of career centers. The One Stop system is free. Each center has workshops, onsite recruitments, job postings, books, computer classes and they can even fund short courses to update your skills if you enroll in their intensive services program. Community college resource centers are also free. The one I interned at had career videos in addition to everything above. Counseling centers at schools with counseling programs are not free, but they are low cost. Some programs have a specialty in career.

Finally, work with a career coach. It’s their business to know about hiring trends and best practices of job applications. If they’re good, they know the economy, the fields, the resources, the careers, the employers, the jobs. They can steady your course, make sure it’s planful instead of accidental, and help you measure your progress when you’re despondent because your efforts haven’t yet borne fruit. (Job hunting is a marathon, not a sprint.) They can also give you a reality check.

When I coach my clients, I educate them about the new world order. I let them know how hard they’ll have to work to get a job, how they’ll have to embrace tools, technologies, or techniques they’ll not comfortable with – but that are effective. (And I do emphasize Linked In, which has been phenomenally helpful in my career.) I tell them how much time they’ll have to put in and how they’ll have to put aside a lot of fun stuff to focus on their job hunt. They can’t say to themselves, “It’s just a matter of time. If I’m just patient, the right job will come along.”

If you’re looking for professional assistance, I recommend Dr. Marty Nemko, voted Best Career Coach by the San Francisco Bay Guardian. He works distance and has clients all over the world.

Despite my push-back on his advice, I still think he is better than everyone else. Also, my six suggestions are all ones he has given multiple times in his articles, on his radio show or in his books.

In choosing who to listen to (or who to work with), go with the person who most seems to “get” you and your situation.

6 Ways to Get Your Resume Noticed by Employers

If you want to get your resume noticed by employers, think of yourself as the product and the employer as the buyer. Here are six things I tell my clients they can do with their “sales brochure” to ensure it generates “customer inquiries.”

1. Make it sell. Use a profile paragraph listing your features and benefits instead of an objective. Profile paragraphs list what you offer; objectives list what you want (something the employer usually doesn’t care about). Features are aspects of you; benefits are how your features will help the employer. Imagine you were trying to sell a copier. You’d tell the buyer how fast it copies, whether it prints in color, whether it can collate and staple and print in color, right? Those are its features. The benefit of it printing in color is that the buyer doesn’t have to take the color work to the local copy shop — saving him or her both time and money. Get it? Remember the copier.

2. Make it relevant. There’s a certain amount of matchmaking in hiring. Think of a job ad as a singles ad: “Employer seeks…” Make sure every part of your resume addresses the employer’s needs and if it doesn’t, cut it! Don’t count on the employer to figure out how to connect the dots — spell it out for them. This is especially true if you’re a career changer. It may mean that you have to “murder your darlings” (a writer’s way of saying cut your favorite parts if they can’t justify themselves). You don’t have to put in all your experience. And it’s okay to include background and skills you’ve gained from a job without listing the job itself. If it means you have a tight, meaty one-page resume instead a fluffy two-pager, that’s fine.

3. Make it organized. Parse the information for the reader. Break it up. Use tables and columns. Keep asking yourself: Does it make sense? Is it understandable? Does it hang together? Have someone else read it, both people in and outside your field. If it confuses or bores anybody, rewrite it. Your resume should tell a story — the story of your career. Don’t be afraid to use lines to separate information, or capitals and bold for heads. Read it for grammar. Parallelism, consistency in tense, sentence structure — these all matter when it comes to creating prose that flows instead of stands in the way of meaning.

4. Make it appealing. Design and content go hand in hand. As you’re thinking about how to arrange the information so it’s understandable, give thought to how it’s laid out. Think about the industry you’re in, what types of documents its practicioners read, how they like to get meaning. A resume written for a law firm will be different from a resume written for the creative department of an advertising agency. Make it appeal to your customer. (Remember the copier.) Stuck for ideas? This is when it can be inspiring to look at a few books. The Expert Resumes series has volumes specifically for the fields of education, computer technology, manufacturing and healthcare, to name a few.

5. Make it believable. Your resume has to be full of examples of accomplishments or there is nothing for the employer to hang onto. They want to hear about the value you’ve brought to previous employers; they want to read the results and outcomes. Did you save money, increase market share, raise awareness? All jobs have goals; quantify results and if you can’t do that, quantify your efforts toward those goals. Ask yourself, how was the organization better because you were there? How did you change things, improve things? Another way you can make it believable is to include third-party endorsements. It’s one thing for you to say how great you are; it’s another for someone else to do it. Include quotes from bosses, coworkers or peers in your field who know your work. List their name, title and company. Make sure they’re saying relevant things, too, not just that you were nice to work with.

6. Make it memorable. Your resume is going to go into a pile or a database (so you might want to send two versions.) Give it something to be remembered by: a graphic that suggests your field, a bit of color, your name going sideways up the page, your initials in the corner, two columns, boxed text (quote, overview, tech tools), an interesting font for the heads. There are many ways to spice up a resume. What you can get away with will be determined by your industry and by the limits of human perception. Yes, silver ink on a purple paper will be memorable, but not in a good way.

Lastly, remember that the best resume in the world is not going to help you if you don’t conduct an effective job hunt. The most important part of getting a job is the people-to-people connection. Get to know someone “on the inside,” through a professional network like Linked In. Here are five tips I recommend.

Where Do You Begin?

Continuing the discussion from my previous post and the comments it generated…

Colleges aren’t prescribing their courses for a condition of ignorance, saying, “This works in a lot of cases, but it may not work for you” (notice the lack of strength in that); rather, colleges are like those restaurants that post menus in little glass cases outside their establishments, saying, in effect, “Here’s what we offer for people who appreciate our cuisine, but this might not be the place for you. And if you have to ask, you can’t afford us.” A college is not a place of refuge, a la the Statue of Liberty. The colleges that come closest to that are the community colleges.

Colleges aren’t responsible for how much knowledge students retain. That’s determined by brain function, by memory. “Use it or lose it.” I agree that colleges require students to take far too much useless breadth classes that they’re never going to use and that they’re therefore going to lose, but you’re going about this argument the wrong way.

I’m not going to read “Academically Adrift,” but I read Inside Higher Ed’s review of it and all 92 comments, mostly by professors, a few by students. Am I right in assuming that, although you’re using it to point to the data, you’re not in agreement with the remedy? From the review:

“The main culprit for lack of academic progress, according to the authors, is a lack of rigor…. 32 percent of students do not take courses with more than 40 pages of reading a week, and that half don’t take a single course in which they must write more than 20 pages.”

… as if all that is needed is more reading and more writing without regard to content? One of the very last comments, posted by Jordan Shaw, a student, was titled “A new approach to rigor”; he had this to say:

“I agree that the missing element is rigor, but I disagree that rigor should be defined as time spent reading or doing difficult assignments. In my experience, the courses that required more reading and analysis were also the courses that had higher student-professor interaction, increased creative freedom for students, student-driven projects and presentations, and interesting subject matter. We can’t simply forget about motivation when trying to increase learning.”

The commenter goes on to say how demotivated the students were in a certain class because, although the presentations were increased, the normal requirements were not, and the students couldn’t do all the work.

On motivation, one of the final commenters was a professor from another country, who related this story:

“I came to this country with a sense of awe for the American higher education system. So much money, such incredible libraries, so many computers … I will never forget the first question I got from a student the first day I taught: What is going to be on the final? That student had never taken a course in the discipline I was teaching (formal syntax), did not even know what the course was about, but was intent on negotiating the best ‘deal’ he could to secure an A… [my emphasis] This student, as many others I have encountered since then, was not in college for learning. He was there essentially to ‘buy’ a degree, and was merely asking what was his part in this bargain.”

Marty, how are you going to deal with cynicism of the students themselves?

I have so much more to say, but I’ll end with writing professor Kris Kuhn’s comment, “Systemic Results”:

“I asked 40 students how many had written multiple 5-7 page papers in their last 2 years of high school. The majority had written only one and 15 had never written a paper of that length. “We watched movies and wrote about what we thought.” “we didn’t have to use database research” “I took Sports English”. ["Sports English"??] “I know how to write a 5 paragraph persuasive essay”. While no child has been left behind, where have they all been taken? Systemic change is needed. College can and should try to hold students accountable, [my emphasis] but it could be that the first 2 years in college are attempting to create students ready to be in college.

So can you fix college without fixing high school? And can you fix high school without grouping kids by ability? And removing teachers’ fear of failing non-performing students (a problem in college as well)?

… and if you think things are better in other countries:

Victoria, an English professor at a Canadian college, posted “Standard should not be a dirty word”:

Dear Student
No, you cannot rewrite the assignment because you don’t like your grade.
No, I cannot reschedule the final exam just for you.
No, I do not carry around a stapler.
No, I did not answer your e-mail. You sent it Sunday at midnight. I was asleep.
No, your paper is not marked yet. I have 60 of them. It’s only been 1 day.
No, you are not my client. And if you pay my salary, I’d like a raise.
Yes, you do have to read the book. It’s a literature class.
Yes, you have to write the essays. It’s a composition class.
Yes, spelling counts. Yes, I heard you say spelling is boring. Too bad.
Yes, you failed. You didn’t attend class, you didn’t hand in assignments, and you didn’t participate in class discussions. Really, you failed. You will not be scarred for life.

Dear Government,
Education is not a product. Students are not clients. We do not have stakeholders. We have a community. We are trying to teach people how to think and become active, engaged members of society. Why do we have to keep justifying this? Please send money.

And I bet she could have written a “Dear Parent” part, too.

Where do you begin?

Fiat Lux*

My colleague the career field, the esteemed Dr. Marty Nemko, has long been an advocate of college accountability and education reform. For the most part, I agree with him. I believe college “consumers” (students) would be well served by more transparency from colleges as well as greater emphasis on teaching rather than research. But I believe one of his arguments is flawed. Normally, I’d just post a comment to his blog, but this will be a longer piece, so I decided to post it here — not to pull traffic from his site, but to avoid “hogging the mike” in the comment section. If you are not familiar with his views on this topic, I encourage you to go to his blog and click on pertinent labels (e.g., “college reform”). I know the man personally and his credentials are solid: PhD in Educational Psychology with emphasis on educational evaluation; consultant to 15 college presidents; former professor in the UC and CSU system. Marty, this is my open letter to you:

You frequently compare higher education’s value to drug efficacy, saying that if a drug’s likelihood of working were as poor as the four-year graduation rates at most colleges, the prescribing doctor would be sued. In the marketplace of ideas, I think you ought to let this comparison go at deep discount. Drug efficacy is very specific; higher education’s value is very amorphous. With the drug, the patient is looking for cure or symptom abatement, but with higher education, people might be looking for life enrichment or the opportunity to study a field in depth (e.g., women’s studies, art history or integral psychology) without thinking that it’s going to lead to a job or that they’re going to graduate in the standard four years.

The doctor who would be sued for prescribing an ineffective drug would probably look to defend himself by pointing to the patient’s failure to follow directions. Someone who skipped classes and took six years to graduate is like a patient who skipped doses and wasn’t cured. The colleges cannot possibly be held accountable for students’ choices any more than the doctors can be held accountable for patients’ behavior.

Even if colleges printed something like, “30% graduate in 4 years; 40% in 6 years; 20% in 8 years; and 10% in 10 years,” what would that mean? All freshmen would think, “I’m in that 30%” until they realize they’re in the wrong major, at the wrong school, they shouldn’t be in college at all, a loved one dies and they drop out either to take care of family business or because it sends them into a tailspin, or they get an incredible job offer based on contract work they’ve been doing, or they have health issues, etc., etc.,” — then they think, “Well, I guess I’m that 40% – 20% – 10% after all.” ALL of those apply to me (except for health issues), which is why it took me 12 years. Which of the many colleges I attended would you hold responsible for my failure to graduate in 4 years? Not only did I have a full ride to your alma mater, I began my college career there with 10 units under my belt from AP exams and having taken classes there in high school. Clearly, I was a “good risk” — are you going to nail the college to the cross because I made the decision to drop out after a year?

Both of us have taken classes in learning theory, so I’m outlining these ideas not so much to educate you but to include our readers. In common parlance, instruction is equated with education, but let’s say instruction is what colleges promise to provide in exchange for tuition and education is what happens when students assimilate knowledge they get through instruction, reading and project research. In other words, education is what we call it when true learning happens. In my “other” field of T+D (training and development), there’s been a similar shift of terminology to emphasize the active role of the attendee at instruction: the job title “Training Specialist” has become “Learning Specialist.”

Are colleges providing instruction? Yes, they are. It seems like they’re holding up their end of the bargain. A better simile might be that a college is like a restaurant. When you go into a restaurant, you pay the restaurant to provide food and it does. But you’ll come out edified or not depending on what you ordered and how much you ate. The art history major who comes out unemployable but who loved what they learned is like the person who ate nothing but sugar or “drank their dinner” and enjoyed every moment of it. Some people will order to get the most nutritional value for their dollar; some will not. The anorexics will hardly partake at all.

Despite marketing, everyone knows that chefs at chi-chi, expensive restaurants are focused on presentation, not large portions. (Hence the comment, “It’s good, but you’d better eat before you go.”) Despite marketing, everyone knows professors at research institutions are focused on research, not teaching. Give people a little credit. It’s the same with Fendi bags — anything designer-label is going to be more even though the materials cost the same as something cheaper. You’re paying for prestige. Unlike you, I was unimpressed with UC Berkeley (probably because I grew up with it in my backyard) and was determined to go to a community college until a guidance counselor suggested that I, for kicks, apply for a Chevron scholarship. (Of course, she knew I was, like you, poor, smart and first-generation college — the very type that scholarship providers look for.)

Your description of “professors who don’t care” is in line with my experience of UCB but it is not at all what I experienced at Cal State East Bay. At that school, maligned by you as “third-tier” (propagating the chase for more prestigious institutions), I met many amazing professors who cared very much about teaching. In fact, all were stellar instructors whom I came to respect even when I hated the subject they were teaching. All with one exception. That exception was a math professor from another country and I believe his short-temperedness during office hours was a reflection of his notion that women had no business taking differential equations in the first place. At UCB, I got the feeling I was bothering the professors every time I spoke to them. At CSUEB, they said, “Let’s have lunch.”

I do believe colleges should publish statistics about graduation rates, employment rates for majors and whatever else you can get them to reveal.

You want to remake general education? Who decides what gets included? I might even be more conservative than you on how much breadth is useful. I hate biology but was required to take it. I got one of the highest A in a class of a couple of hundred, but I remember nothing. Should biology be included in general ed? I never use it in real life. If it’s moldy, I throw it out, but I didn’t need a biology class for that. You’ll probably ensure that your beloved genetics will be included. Genetics to me is like stochastic processes to you — useless arcana. (I don’t plan on having any kids.) I’d say a survey of all the sciences compressed into one class is enough. (And I was a science major!) People should understand that warm air holds more moisture for figuring out the weather but no one really needs to know that we’re accelerating toward earth at 32 sq ft/sec — our practical knowledge of gravity is plenty. Is there a reason why we should know white light is composed of all colors? A lot of people get through life just fine without understanding rainbows. One thing we agree on is that school should be relevant with little theory and much real-world simulation, very like my master’s degree program at John F. Kennedy University.

I think you need an award like a MacArthur Fellowship to lend both funding and visibility — then you can get even more funding. The thing about such awards is that the winners are already doing the work. Utopia U. will never get funded unless you start a pilot program and show some results. And who will fund your pilot program? I have bad news, Marty. You will need to piggy-back your pilot onto an effort to help the underachieving in order to get funded. Why not run the pilot in Detroit, Pittsburgh or Oakland? Too much like sleeping with the devil? Do you believe your model will work with all students? Maybe your pilot students should be high-achieving people of color (perhaps with low-achieving histories) who are turning their lives around. You’re just continuing the success. Maybe instead of a two-year general ed program that feeds into a four-year degree, you could get scale it down to be a one-year program that feeds into a two-year degree, or even a summer-school version that fills a gap between high school and college. You emphasize the designer-label degree or certificate they’d get. Think about who would really like to have that. I had a client who went to a historically black college who continually reminded me that he had a certificate of some sort from USC.

And Marty… despite our occasional disagreements, you do shine a light in the darkness better than anyone else I know.

*Latin for “Let their be light,” the motto of UC Berkeley.

Professionally Written Resume: Evil or Good?

This morning I interviewed Marty Nemko, PhD, author of Cool Careers for Dummies. I’ve long known Marty disapproves of resume writers because, he believes, they “put lipstick on a pig.” He states that more often than not, they make a worse candidate look better, making the actually better candidate, who might not have paid to have his resume professionally written, look worse by comparison.

Last time we tangled about this, I pushed back by telling about my own experience as a job seeker who hired a resume writer:

My writer, Bob Burch, a career counselor in El Cerrito, introduced me to the concept of selling my capabilities on a resume. Not only did I not know how to do that, I didn’t know you were supposed to do that. He helped me remember things I did on each job by asking, “And what else did you do?” over and over again until I ran out of tasks. He used probing questions, like, “And why was that important to the business?” or “Who did you work with on that?” or “What was the result?”

I knew how to write, puncuate, use grammar correctly and spell — I was a proofreader and copyeditor — but I knew nothing about resumes and didn’t realize there were books on it. Back then, there was probably only Yana Parker’s Damn Good Resume Guide. And even though I knew Yana personally (God rest her soul) because I took a book marketing class with her, I still didn’t know jack about resumes.

Another thing Bob did for me was help me think like an employer. He actually taught me what employers found valuable. When I told Marty that some months ago, he said he might rethink his position on resumes. However, today he wrote on his blog:

“Hiring a resume writer is no more ethical than a high school student hiring a professional to write his or her college application essay. Imagine you were looking to hire someone, even if it was a job working with their hands. Wouldn’t you appreciate being able to judge how well the applicants organize their thoughts? When an applicant hires a resume writer, s/he gets an unfair advantage–the employer sees the resume writer’s thinking and communication skills, not the applicant’s. Resume writing is an unethical profession.”

What Marty is ignoring is that the resume doesn’t get you the job; it gets you the phone interview. A good person with solid experience and a crappy looking resume that is at least coherent, spelled right and has real achievements on it will pass to the phone interview phase unless the company is inundated, which I understand many are in this economy. The bad candidate with the pretty resume might reach the phone interview phase, but wouldn’t make it past that, and the recruiters would go back to the pool of applicants and call more people, eventually tapping the good person passed over earlier. The same thing happens in the face-to-face interview. If someone is not an organized thinker, they won’t be able to hide that in a discussion with an employer no matter how good their resume is. I’ve been on both sides: I’ve been a job seeker and I’ve been a hiring manager, and I know what I’m talking about.

A good reason why some very capable people go to a resume writer is that they have a hard time writing about themselves. Multiple times, Marty, who has not one, but two radio shows, has said, “You have to have a pretty big ego to be a radio show host.” Well, Marty, not everyone has your ego. Some people have difficult time putting themselves forth and go to a writer for help with that. I had an extremely successful PR professional come to me for a resume. He was a behind-the-scenes guy. He’d done major splashes in the go-go 80s and 90s and was hardly done with his career, but his life was all about pushing others into the limelight, not himself.

Consider, for a moment, all the applicants for a director-level job. They’re probably all pretty good, or they wouldn’t have gotten to senior management. What’s wrong with a resume tune-up for one of them? There isn’t a “pig” in the bunch.

Marty, who would you rather have work on you? A heart surgeon who is better with the scapel than the pencil or someone who writes better than he operates? Much of resume writing is editing. The job seeker may be very accomplished and is having trouble choosing what to leave out.

Sometimes, a candidate is a good thinker, speller, doer, but is too close. Yes, they could hand it to a friend or someone in the industry, but unless that person has been a hiring manager or in HR, their opinion might not be very helpful: “Looks good to me.“

So Marty thinks resume writers, their clients and probably more than a few career counselors are damned to hell and are going to bring about the downfall of civilization. If that’s the case, why does he refer people to resume writers?

Cool Companies and Hot Areas

A client of mine was disappointed because he didn’t get a job at a tech giant. I suggested he go after smaller companies and start-ups where not everyone is competing to get in. Here’s a list of companies I pulled together for him. The last few lists are specialties, industries and careers, rather than companies, but I included these to help him think about going sideways from his background. If you only have time to click through one, look at the “10 to Watch: Hot Biotech Prospects” as it gives an idea of the diversity within one field. If you know of similar lists that would fit here, please let me know and I’ll add them.

100 Brilliant Companies

10 Companies to Watch in IT

10 Start-Ups to Watch [in Networking]

10 Smart-Grid Companies to Watch

10 Green Start-Ups to Watch

10 Companies to Watch in Manufacturing

10 Healthcare Management and Development Companies to Watch

10 Companies to Watch in the Automotive Industry

10 Companies to Watch in Home Construction

5 Biotech Companies to Watch

10 to Watch: Hot Biotech Prospects

10 Industries to Watch

Best Careers in 2010

Business Incubators as Job Sources

There was a great article in my local paper by Tapan Munroe about business incubators. Here’s the sound bite:

“We cannot just depend on the government to solve our problem. Our best bet is to concentrate on our strength — innovation and entrepreneurship. Why? According to the Census Bureau, entrepreneurs and small start-ups create jobs at nearly twice the rate of the nation annual net job growth rate.”

Job seekers should expand their employment options to include either starting their own businesses or approaching new businesses.

Professionals who can’t give away their skills (and I’ve been there) might want to approach enterprises that have just “graduated” from an incubator. “Launched” businesses are the incubator’s success stories, so they’re happy to talk about them.

Of course, new businesses don’t have a lot of capital. As Marty Nemko made the point on one of his recent shows, one can always work for deferred compensation or as an intern for a while. Wow them while working for free or cheap and they’ll figure out a way to pay you. (I once approached an employer offering to work for free and the wrote a grant to pay me $18/hr.)

My key learnings:

• There are 13 business incubators in the San Francisco Bay Area
• You can find your local ones through the National Business Incubation Association (NBIA)
• There are different types of incubators

Many people are aware of technology incubators, but there are incubators dedicated to other industries, too: biotech (incubator includes access to lab space), food services (kitchen space), social services, environmental services, women and minority enterprises, etc.

Tapan Munroe mentions several by name in his article:

“Incubators Fertile Ground for Job Creation”

Seeking out young businesses is a great way to find a job where you’re not competing with the masses on Craig’s List.

10 Best Jobs for Women Over 40

The November 2009 issue of More magazine has an article on the 10 best jobs for women over 40 — “best” meaning jobs with bright futures, perks and a high level of satisfaction. The jobs are:

• Community Service Coordinator
• Personal Financial Advisor
• Environmental Scientist
• Registered Nurse
• Computer & IS Manager
• Education Administrator
• Crisis Communicator (PR)
• Accountant
• HR Specialist
• Niche Farmer

The article has descriptions, interviews, experience and education requirements with an explanation of why the field is hot.

Theologian Speaks — Guitar God “Gets” It

Dan Miller in the November-December 2007 issue of AARP magazine, quotes novelist and theologian Frederick Buechner:

“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

then follows up with two career-related questions:

* What is the world hungering for right now?
* How can you use your unique skills and talents to satisfy that hunger?

I believe it’s my vocation to help people find work that touches that deep gladness in themselves.

A couple of years ago, I went to see Dick Dale, the king of surf guitar. He was 70 years old, but that guy could rock! He said he’d just done 39 performances in the last 42 days. Sometimes his 15-year-old son plays on stage with him. He brought the house down. Obviously, his deep gladness is creating his music and making real connections with his fans afterward. And the people who came to see him needed to hear the joyful, celebratory sound he makes. As I was listening, I kept thinking about how the music was somehow contemplative even though it was often fast. Dick was just really “in the zone” while he was playing but he brought us into the zone with him.

Dick is proud of his Lebanese heritage. You can hear it in the Middle-Eastern-tinged “Miserlou,” his first hit (found all over YouTube). His site explains that he has practiced martial arts for 30 years, has been a vegetarian for 40 years and has never touched alcohol or drugs. He has been wholly dedicated to his craft. He answers all his email personally. I purposedly stayed to be the last fan so I could observe his interactions with everyone. Whether flirting with girls asking him to autograph their breasts (!) or explaining techniques to local musicians who brought their guitars for him to sign, each time he spoke to a fan, he treated the person as if he or she the only one in the room.

If you ever get a chance to hear him and you like surf guitar (dreamy / driving instrumental pieces with no resemblance to the Beach Boys), do it. You’ll be moved.

What is the world around you hungering for?

The Better Way to Work a Tradeshow

Kevin Kermes, author of the “Build a Better Career” blog had a great post some time ago in response to a client who was reluctant to give a hard sell at a tradeshow. She said, “I don’t want to be walking around with a stack of resumes asking people if they are hiring.” Kermes’s advice to her was to leave her resume at home and don’t ask for a job. Here’s what told her to do instead:

The Introduction – You aren’t going to be the only one working a tradeshow or networking event in hopes of finding a job. So, how do you differentiate? Don’t ask who is hiring. In introducing yourself, you are going to say who you “were” with – stating you are not working and implying you are looking. There is no need to go beyond that. If you are at a tradeshow, chances are the person you are talking to is ecstatic that they still have a job. So, shift the conversation to them. What presentations or speakers are they going to hear? What new products or solutions are they rolling out? Talk about anything other than your job search. If they are looking to hire, they will drive it to you.

The Give to Get – Do your homework BEFORE the event. Who are the speakers and presenters? What topics are they covering? Research an article that is timely and pertinent to anyone who would be interested in those speakers. When you are “introducing” yourself, bring up the article. When you find out they didn’t read it or haven’t seen it, offer to email them a copy. They will give you their information, you have just made a new contact and you have established yourself as someone in the “know.” Again, don’t ask who is hiring.

The Follow up – After the event, email those contact you have made with the link to the article you discussed. This is when you can ask them to help you network. If you are interested in their company specifically, ask to be introduced to a hiring manager how covers that area in which you want to work (not HR). Otherwise, try asking them this: “Would you introduce me to the top 3 people you hold in the highest regard in your industry?” These can be former/current peers or bosses. Ideally, steer away from asking about who is hiring – it pigeon holes your networking and can keep you from the 2nd or 3rd degree of separation that will be your next job.

Differentiation is the key to standing out in what is becoming a very crowded job market. You need to take advantage of every opportunity when you can showcase your subject matter expertise in your field. Having conversations like these not only helps the person you are aiming to network with, but shows that you are on top of your game and the current events in your industry. This is all part of creating demand in the brand you want them to buy: You.

Kevin Kermes publishes the ‘Build the Career Your Deserve’ e-zine with over 17,000+ subscribers. If you are ready to empower yourself with the vital tools and information necessary to find the job you want and build the successful career you deserve, visit him now www.kevinkermes.com