Headed to Houston

Headed to Houston Good morning Yall! Im flying to Houston in a few hours and very excited. We have some really fun family activities and I have some very exciting business meetings set up Ill be there for 2 weeks. If you are in the Houston/Austin/San Antonio area Id love to hook up with you please drop me an e-mail at jason [at] JibberJobber [dot] com and we can arrange to hook up. I have one informal networking event in Houston in January 3rd (more details later) and another one in Austin on January 4th. If you know of any bloggers, coaches, counselors, career center directors or anyone else that I might should hook up with while in Texas please e-mail me, Im anxious to make this a very productive business trip! Thats it Ill blog tomorrow on something more for you! Headed to Houston Good morning Yall! Im flying to Houston in a few hours and very excited. We have some really fun family activities and I have some very exciting business meetings set up Ill be there for 2 weeks. If you are in the Houston/Austin/San Antonio area Id love to hook up with you please drop me an e-mail at jason [at] JibberJobber [dot] com and we can arrange to hook up. I have one informal networking event in Houston in January 3rd (more details later) and another one in Austin on January 4th. If you know of any bloggers, coaches, counselors, career center directors or anyone else that I might should hook up with while in Texas please e-mail me, Im anxious to make this a very productive business trip! Thats it Ill blog tomorrow on something more for you!

Self-sabotage is never limited to just one part of your life

Self-sabotage is never limited to just one part of your life At the start of our road trip to his cousins wedding in Illinois, the farmer says, I have a present for you. He pulls out a book that is wrapped in the paper that wrapped the last present I got him: Lolita. Which he reads every time he sleeps over at my house. I knew that he would be too embarrassed to buy it himself because he is still unsure whether it is literature or porn. He is a good gift giver. It is a romance novel: The Rancher and the Rich Girl, by Heather MacAllister. I found it at the library, he says. The story is exactly like our story. Its true. The rancher does not want to be romantically involved with the woman, but he is great with her kid, and she wants to use her money to make the rancher do what she wants. Even the riding around the farm together, with her holding him too closely. I like her immediately, and I start skimming the book, but then I am frustrated: Wheres the sex? Page 165. I read it to the farmer while he drives. Then I read our future aloud, Matt was looking around his kitchen at the new refrigerator, dishwasher, and stove. The farmer is quiet. It is serious business when I start talking about remodeling his kitchen. Which I talk about all the time. We drive for a while without talking. Then we stop off at the hotel to change. We are running late, but there is enough time for me to give him the sort of kiss that lets him know that I will try not to say things that bug him. I will try just to have a fun night. He seems happy. Like theres hope for the evening. At the service, guests look more like city people than I expected, and I get sort of upset that I let the farmer choose my dress because its a little bit too prim for the crowd. But then I realize that the spaghetti strap dresses are not on the farmers side of the wedding. The first guy to start a conversation with the farmer is his uncle: Did you start harvest? No. Everythings late. Illinois is, too. Harvest is a waiting game. All the farmers wait around to see who will cut the corn first. You want to wait long enough so that you dont have to spend money drying the corn with expensive propane. But you dont want to wait so long that the stalks start to keel over. This reminds me of working with venture capitalists. They want to invest, but they want to wait until we are almost out of money. And they cant stop talking about it. The venture capitalists and the farmers would love each other, if they could just agree on a place to meet. The farmers family gathers on the side, and each person asks me where Im from. I am feeling so good about the farmer that I say Madison. Usually, saying Im from Madison gives me a rash. Not a visible one, but maybe like a brain rash or something. So usually I say Im from New York City. (Side note: This is a good lesson in resume writing here, really. Because this is not a lie but not the first truth that comes to mind, but I always feel like it makes me look good, which is how you should look at a resume. The farmer, by the way, thinks that its a lie. He thinks I should say Im from Wilmette. Which is the town I grew up in and havent lived in in 25 years, and the last time I was there I wasnt even living in a house but in a mental ward because I was so insanely bulimic. But he still thinks Wilmette is the right answer. I ignore that. I am the resume expert, after all.) There is an hour between the ceremony and the reception. We drive around. And walk in parking lots. It is largely romantic because we are both dressed up and we look cute together, even though he picked both our outfits. He actually has a knack for fashion and I wonder where he could possibly get it. After a while of walking around, we can usually get to friction. Frequently we torture each other about religion. He asks me if Anne Frank died. I cant remember, he says. I tell him that Baroque church art shows St. Teresa having an orgasm. I say, I think God went down on her. (That is an example where he is not intentionally annoying me, but I am intentionally annoying him. If we break up, and readers want to blame me for the whole thing, they can refer back to this moment.) At the reception, the farmers extended family is fun. They talk about cities like Peru and Sandwich like everyone knows where they are, and I ask the stuff Ive been dying to ask but have never had the proper audience. For example, I ask a cousin if the farmers sisters hate him: Why dont they ever visit? I ask. The family hates conflict, and my friction-frought conversation gets me nowhere. Well, I do get more blog readers. Because the natural response to someone thinking Im a lunatic is, How did you two meet? The night in the hotel room is fun, once I stop feeling like Im at work, since half my work life is spent at hotels. We start to have sex but then he checks his calendar. He keeps track of my cycle in the same spot he keeps track of the cycles for the pigs. And Im ovulating. I roll over to his side of the bed and open my mouth to talk about condoms, but all that comes out is, I think Im going to die from the stress of funding my company. Were you thinking that maybe I am fun to date? Surely this has changed your mind. I give him back his underwear while I look for mine at the end of the bed. I can usually stay confident about getting funding and keeping the company on track, but now, not checking my Blackberry for ten hours (well, sort of not checking) has left an empty spot in my brain where doubt seeped in. I am doubting, I say. The farmer is surprisingly supportive. He is not the supportive type. I could write about my take on the origin of this deficit, but Im sure his family reads the blog. So let me just say that he really came through, and then, when I had my guard down, he said, Why didnt you get funding when you were not so close to running out? This is, of course, a logical question from a man who runs a small business with the cash flow equivalent of a prep-school student on spring break. The farmer is good with money. He could make his farm work on any amount of money. And this is my problem in life, I think. I have something good. Like a company that is on fire, or a relationship that is on fire, and I do something to mess it up. Not really really mess it up. But mess it up just a little. Like, maybe something is wrong with me that I cant have things just going well. But we end up having a truly romantic night where I am even being vulnerabledifficult for meand the farmer is making me feel like I can conquer the world. Or at least fund our next payroll. And then, on the drive home, Im spoiling it again. He is holding my hand and I tell the farmer that the woman in the book got a horse. I remind the farmer that I want a horse. She got it for her son. And my son wants a horse. The farmer does not like horses. But now he says, Okay, maybe. And I say, Great. How much is it? He says, Dont ask me about the horse while Im driving. I know this isnt going over well. So I switch to one of my favorite negotiating tactics: Silence. Sometimes if you are silent the other person will say something that gives you another opening for getting what you want. Instead, in the silence, I think about how maybe I should just drop it. Maybe I should practice now, seeing that I have a chance to have a nice drive home with a nice guy. I should take that and not mess it up. And then maybe, if I practice this for a while, then when investors tell me again that I have a great company that is totally fundable, I wont screw that up either.

3 Tools to Stop Recruiters Spraying and Praying on Social Media

3 Tools to Stop Recruiters Spraying and Praying on Social Media Social media is becoming an increasingly important medium for recruiters to source talent and promote themselves, and equally importantly, staying in your contacts peripheral vision. However, too many recruiters leave their strategy down to guesswork. They push out some content and leave it there hoping that will attract attention and create a vibrant online community. This is as naïve as a recruiter wanting to source a programmer with a good grasp of Java and C++ and deciding to type random combinations of 11 numbers into his or her telephone hoping to have a great programmer pick up the phone after a few attempts. Clearly recruiters would never do this. They aren’t stupid. Instead, they’d turn to the data and trawl their databases or the database of LinkedIn/Twitter/Facebook for the perfect candidate. Therefore, recruiters need to get themselves some serious data to help them get social media right, but have you ever known a recruiter with time on their hands? If you answered yes, then maybe you know the wrong kind of recruiter! Luckily, there are tools out there which provide exactly what the data hungry and time poor recruiter needs instant access to loads of useful statistics on how they and their competitor’s social media accounts are doing, and who are the key influences and most popular pieces of content within their field. 1) Who’s viewed your updates? Firstly LinkedIn provides a helpful bit of free analysis, which you may have noticed popping up on the right hand side of your page. This tells you how many people have viewed and interacted with your latest post, broken down by 1st, 2nd and 3rd  connections. So by spending a couple of seconds having a glance at this the next time they are on LinkedIn, you can instantly assess the effectiveness of your LinkedIn updates,  and thus get a grasp for what goes down best with your connections. This allows you to greatly boost the reach of your updates, as the more comments/likes they get the more 2nd and 3rd degree connections will see it. 2) Buzzsumo: The second useful bit of free kit for analysing social media effectiveness I want to bring to your attention is Buzzsumo, which can be used to search for top content and see who is most influential in your field. So for example, searching “recruitment” brings up the most shared articles written about recruitment, allowing you to discover what your audience is interested in and likes to share, meaning you can adapt the content you share on social media accordingly. The search’s default setting is to take the top content from the last six months and show you the very best, but you can alter this and thus transform Buzzsumo into an effective content sourcing tool like Feedly. Simply change the filter by date field to ‘past 24 hours’, and hey presto, you have a list of the most popular content currently being shared in the field your audience care about, so you can then share it on your social media feeds yourself to stay in your contacts peripheral vision, safe in the knowledge that the content you are pushing out is quality and what your associates will want to read and share too. Buzzsumo also lets you search for top influencers within whatever field you chose, so you can see how you and your competitors are stacking up on social media. By seeing if you go up or down in the rankings over the course of a few weeks you can see if your social media strategy is reaping dividends or in dire need of updating. 3) Facebook Insights: Finally, I want to draw your attention to Facebook insights, which comes with every Facebook page, but is often overlooked and not utilised. You can find it hiding right at the top of any Facebook page you are a manager off. By clicking on ‘insights’ you get a handy breakdown of how your page has been doing over the past week, and in this example I can see that my post reach is up 71% and engagement is up 212% from the week before. Either I was awful last week or my strategy is working! Insights also gives you a breakdown of how each of your posts did after posting, allowing you to see what goes down well and what is just not generating any interest. This means you can alter your strategy to only post what goes down well with your community. For example, I can see that in my post  on LinkedIn having a new button got twice the reach and four times the post clicks of any other recent post, so I know that kind of content goes down well with my audience. Stop spraying and praying: So stop spraying and praying with social media, smarten up with these three key tools to get some data and get social media right. The rewards will be better engagement, a more vibrant social community, and in turn a business that looks more attractive to talent and thus brings you that crucial ROI.

The Only 5 Interview Questions You Need to Prepare for

The Only 5 Interview Questions You Need to Prepare for There is an awful lot of chitchat, jibber jabber and small talk going on in interviews. When you take a closer look at the exchanges, you can see that there are only a few questions the interviewer is really bothered about. The rest are simply there to create rapport and filling the gaps. The reason you will always struggle to prepare answers to every single question you are asked in an interview is that the interviewer themselves didn’t prepare them. They dont really care too much about all the answers you give either. What we do know is that an interviewer has one major objective to fulfill and that is to get the answers to the five basic questions. Based on the answers, he or she will then compare the answers to that of any other interviewer’s and they will then rule you in or out. Here is the list: 1) What brings you to this interview? This is where the interviewer wants to see how well you have researched this position, how committed you really are to the company and why you are looking for a new job in the first place. Make sure you read up on the job and can say exactly how it fits to your skills. Do your homework on the company so that you can explain why you are on their interview couch and not the competitor’s. Finally, you will inevitably have to explain what brought you to a job interview, prepare to outline your reason for changing jobs. 2) What value will you add to our company? The interviewer is hoping you might be the solution to their problems, so let’s tune in to WIIFM and crank up the volume. List your main skills and how these will be directly applicable if you get the job. Back your claims up with achievements from your previous jobs, preferably quantified ($x increase in sales, 30% savings on paper clips). Forget what you want to get out of the job you are interviewing for, this is all about what they will get from you. 3) Can you work well with the team? Here’s your chance to elaborate on how well you get on with people from all walks of life. Tell them how you have a strong opinion of your own, but always make compromises and move forward for the best interest of the team and the company. Throw in some examples where you went the extra mile for your team and indicate how you will do the same for the team you would join. RELATED:  How to Build a Strong  Team  Spirit 4) What is special about you? Let’s face it; every candidate that comes through the employer’s door will be praising themselves in their interview. This means that not only do you have to brag about yourself, but in order to be credible you will have to give specific examples from when you have achieved greatness in the past. Tell them about when you solved that huge issue for your company’s biggest client and saved the Christmas party for everyone. Whatever nice and tangible achievement makes you special, memorize it and get ready to deliver it when prompted. 5) What’s your salary and when can you start? If you get this question, you are probably doing well. These two points are classic buying signals. They indicate that the interviewer is actually calculating how much money they can make from you and when to begin doing so. The answer you want to give has to be low enough to make you competitive and high enough to avoid looking desperate. A good trick is to be sketchy and give them a salary range and say that you can’t really give a definite answer until you can compare the benefits to what you have already. Indicate that you will be flexible and that there will be a way to work out both the financials and start date, should you get to that stage. Finally, what is your experience of these five questions vs. small talk in interviews? Related: 9 Killer Questions Candidates Ought to Ask the Interviewer. Image: Shutterstock

11 Ways to Turn Your Passion into a Successful Career CareerMetis.com

11 Ways to Turn Your Passion into a Successful Career All of you must be familiar with Rachel Green, a character played by Jennifer Aniston in the famous sitcom Friends. If you have followed her journey, you are also aware that she went from being a spoilt brat to becoming a waitress at the coffee shop. Ultimately, she pursued her passion for fashion by working for Bloomingdale’s and Ralph Lauren.The point of rehashing this story was to emphasize the importance of pursuing your passion and making a career out of it.evalAccording to a study, 85% of people worldwidehate their current jobs. So, don’t be too astonished if you feel trapped sitting in front of that computer all day. There’s hope for you yet! Keep reading to know.We can all agree that one of the most frustrating things you are likely to experience in your adult life is to see yourself in a job that you’re not passionate about. Being uninspired by what you do is not only unproductive but also unnecessary.But who says you can’t find joy in what you do? You can turn you r hobbies into a full-fledged career option.Given below is the checklist of things to ponder over when you want to pursue your passion as a career.1) Think about the activities that excite youConsider this, what would you do if you didn’t have that less-than-satisfying job to take care of? Think about the activities that awaken your zeal and passion, and doesn’t make you feel stuck.Maybe you like photography. Maybe you like writing. Maybe you like cooking or feel passionate about social causes. Any activity that you’re passionate about can be transformed into a full-time career.Now, it may take a considerable time before you finally decide on what you want to pursue. You need to be prepared to follow your gut.2)Don’t charge money just as yetevalThe Joker might have advised, “If you’re good at something, never do it for free.” But to do that, you have to hone your skills before you hope to have a steady income by pursuing your passion.Carrying out the side project witho ut worrying about turning your passion into a proper career right away will help you sharpen your skills and boost your confidence.Remember to take baby steps. For instance, if you’re considering a career in academic writing, you need to have a clear idea of how the assignment help services function. You can offer your services to people in your network for free.Working for free will also let you decide if you actually enjoy the work enough to consider it as a career option. Chances are, if you won’t do the work for free, you won’t do it for money either.3) Mix your passion with other skills you haveevalMaybe you’re thinking about a career in graphic design because you love playing around with visuals. Is there any specific skill that could amplify the scope for success?Maybe you also have great photography skills. You can use that skill to capture and create stunning visuals and promote it on social media to garner the attention of the audience.Every successful individual h as a success mantra that they swear by. So, you should figure out your secret recipe of success that’s made up of all the different skills and experiences that’s unique to you. This is what will help you stand out in your career and add to your credibility.4)Develop and maintain solid connectionsConsider how you can reach out to the people who are in need of the services you’re willing to offer. Are you familiar with someone that could connect you with your target clients? There are myriad ways to expand your network and attract the attention of like-minded people.For instance, if you feel passionate about blogging, then use social media. Make sure to tell your friends and followers to share your write-ups. That’s how you can build your audience effectively.Once your audience is familiar with your work and derives value from it, you can focus on creating your portfolio to show off your work.5)Determine what works and what doesn’tWhile pursuing your passion, you are likely to go through a period of adjustment, just like any other regular job. Now, this is the point where you have to identify what works and what doesn’t.Maybe you’ve discovered that the blog that you’ve been maintaining as a supplement for your photography business isn’t gaining traction, but your Instagram account is generating more engagement. This is probably an indication that you need to revamp your strategy.Always ensure that you note down any developments that may happen as you gain experience and keep practicing. Learn from both the hits and misses.6)Gain insights into the demand for your skills and competencies in your chosen industryevalAfter you’ve identified your passion, you need to have knowledge about the level of demand for your skills. Taking a plunge into a career that has a low demand can be risky. Same with the one that has a large number of competitors.However, the number of competitors shouldn’t deter you from pursuing your passion.If you are confident about your skills, you can establish your career despite the competition.So, you need to assess the demand. Check whether there are a considerable number of people who are keen to pursue that niche you have chosen. This isvital, specifically if you want your career to flourish in the long run.7)Pay attention to what you like and don’t like about your nicheMaybe you thought you could dabble into wedding photography. But the schedule could be too erratic for you, and you may feel it’s too tedious.evalAnyone who has pursued their passion as a career would vouch for the fact that it’s hard to gain the momentum to make the change initially. However, making the right efforts always pay off.You can’t stay stuck in a rut simply because you’ll have the least resistance. It’s always wise to keep exploring and reinventing as you move ahead in your career. This is particularly important if you’re really committed to doing the thing that makes you happy.8)Be open to suggestions and learn from the mistakesIt’s natural to make mistakes while in the early stages of your career. What’s essential in this case is to keep an open mind and learn from the mistakes you make. That way, you’ll have the scope to flourish in the path you’ve chosen as your career. You need to have commitment and determination to pursue the passion even after committing mistakes. The outcomes may vary depending on the situation and different factors could assume a role in the failure or success of your venture.Should the risks of failing prevent you from trying to earn a living out of your passion? Definitely not. If you find yourself doubting your decision, you must constantly remind yourself that the worst thing is staying within a job that you’re not satisfied with.9) Start smallOnce you have set out on the right track, you can charge money for the services you provide. When you reach out to the clients, and you’ll be able to show the work that you did for free at the start of your career as a sample or a portfolio.For a service-based job, always ensure you get recommendations to help you ease into the paid arena.A client who’s receiving some form of return for the work you’ve done will be happy to pay. If that’s not the case, find someone who will.10) Follow an influential figure in your chosen nicheFollow the seasoned professionals and reputed figures in your industry. These are the people you should be looking up to who are successfully doing the work that you want to venture into.While you should focus on a unique approach, learning from those who tasted success before you doesn’t mean your work can’t be authentic. You can take a cue from their strategy, but do it your own way.11) Consider the related careers as well (at least initially)We are not asking you to compromise with your passion. But having alternatives when you’re starting out is a wise thing to do. Also, let’s rehash what we stated earlier.Turning your passion into a career requires sacrifices, at least in the beginning. As they say, if life gives you lemons, make lemonade. You should be eager to accept something that’s in one way or another, associated with your passion and would gradually help you to get there.Let’s say, you want to do something for your community. You can try a volunteering position in an NGO. Likewise, if you want to be a stand-up comic, consider building your reputation by participating in events.Bottom line:While pursuing your passion as a full-time career may sound cool, the journey might not be easy. You have to be ready for a fair amount of struggle, and you also need to work on enhancing your skills. Aside from the zeal and passion for your work, you would also need to stay confident and continue doing what you do best. In the end, it’ll all be well worth it.

Science Happiness at work is good for employees AND the bottom line - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Science Happiness at work is good for employees AND the bottom line - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog There has never been a stronger focus on happiness at work in organizations all over the world than there is right now. And this is no wonder: Happy workplaces are more profitable and innovative, attract the best employees and have lower absenteeism and employee turnover rates. Simply put, happy companies make more money. Also, happiness at work is great for employees making them more successful, healthier and happier in private life as well. But why exactly is that and what trends are driving so many workplaces to take happiness seriously? At our 2018 Happiness at Work Conference I gave talk on that question and you can watch the whole thing here and get all the ammunition you need to make the case for happiness in your workplace. Thanks for visiting my blog. If you're new here, you should check out this list of my 10 most popular articles. And if you want more great tips and ideas you should check out our newsletter about happiness at work. It's great and it's free :-)Share this:LinkedInFacebookTwitterRedditPinterest Related

Spark A Change of Plans (and a Chat) - When I Grow Up

Spark A Change of Plans (and a Chat) - When I Grow Up I dont have the bestest of news, but I do have a way to deliver it in the most honest of ways. Because of low sign-ups, the co-founders of Spark (which I was going to speak at) decided to cancel the April retreat. They posted this to break the news, and Im just so proud of them (and to be associated with them) that I had to repost it here (with their permission, of course). Want more honesty, more vulnerability, and more integrity on the Internet? Here you are. It is with agonizing reluctance that we are announcing that we are cancelling Spark 2013. We can’t call it anything other than disappointing, and we three met this weekend to talk everything through. We had feedback: Spark, this year, was too expensive, too long, and focused in too many directions. We crunched and re-crunched numbers, imagining different scenarios where we might be able to lower the registration fees. We stepped through what we might have done differentlyâ€"and could shiftâ€"on a grand, image-of-the-event kind of scale. We strategized on how, then, to reach people who might have been thinking about Spark, but were on the fence, and to others who might not have heard of us already. But when it comes right down to it, we have less than two weeks before needing to get our final numbers and full payment to the retreat venue. And that doesn’t feel like the kind of time it takes to re-price, re-jig, re-communicate, and find another dozen (or more) of our right people. We tried. When we chose this year’s theme (or it chose us), we thought, “YEAH. Spark and Step Up.” And we did. However, where we think we missed the mark is in (what came to be) our blurry definition of “Step up.” We thought it might mean to “go big.” And we did. We chose the best leaders we could find, matching them up talent-for-talent, knowing that they were each number one, kick-ass, world-changers. We also made the retreat longer than it was last year, and while this made the retreat ‘bigger’, it did not necessarily reflect your desires and needs. To them, and to you, we apologize for not quite hitting the mark. As we dig deeper and step up into our roles as creators of this unique event, we see that what we created wasn’t exactly what we wanted. Somehow, we lost sight of you, the women who we most want to serve. It started to not feel right: we want Spark to be an authentic reflection of who we are and what we want to give others, and this piece, while originating in heart-centered goodness, became askew as we walked further down the Spark path. Because of this, we think that there was a disconnect between us, our people, and the retreat itself. We are calling off Spark in 2013. But not forever. After our discussions this weekend, our thoughts are more focused. We three are planning to meet in person this spring to really get down to the heart of Spark, including what we did last year that made it work, and what we did this year that didn’t. We need to focus, and solidify who we are and what we are all about. Unfortunately, we didn’t quite have things right on our end this year, and it is our promise to turn that around. We are sincerely grateful for all of the time, effort, and love that our leaders have put into trying to make this work. We adore each of our fans and supporters, and are ready to hear your kind feedback on where we went astray. Know that our hearts are raw and that this decision came with great reluctance. However, it feels better to be honest all around with where we are, and we know the work that we have in front of us to make Spark fly in the future. We hope that you’ll be with us along the way. With great love, gratitude, a little bit of sadness, and trust that this is the right thing to do, Tania, Deanna, and Lori. Before the announcement, I got interviewed by Deanna, and I just hafta share it here. Its too good not to!