Career Hope and Advice For Everyone Starting Over

If You Can't Be Choosy About Your Job, Be Choosy About Your Friends

2009-12-28T07:10:00.001-08:00

I hope you’re having a wonderful holiday week. As for me, I’m spending much of it doing my all-time favorite thing. No, not eating – which does happen to come in at a close second. I’ve been reading. And I spent much of Christmas Day reading Kay Redfield Jamison’s book, Nothing Was the Same. And crying my eyes out. The book is a memoir of the last few years she had with her brilliant husband, Richard Wyatt, as they came to grips with his terminal cancer. And how she – who suffers mightily and famously from bipolar disorder – would manage the stress of his illness and her inevitable widowhood.

Why I should pick this book for Christmas Day is beyond me. I have very little in common with Jamison (although I exuberantly loved her previous book, Exuberance, which, as it turns out, she was writing as he was dying). I’m not bipolar (at least I don’t think so); I’m not dying (at least I hope not); I’m not married (that much I know for absolute sure). And I’m not especially fond of bassett hounds (although their ears really are irresistible). But still the poetic precision of the way she writes about discerning the difference between grief and depression is a transcendent journey into another person’s heart and mind and experience of loss.

So I did a little bit (a lot) of crying on Christmas Day.

As I was closing the book this morning at 5 a.m., I came upon a line that is actually brilliant advice for all of us. Especially these days:

“Keep away the ungenerous and unkind.”

That one sentence – among so many stingingly beautiful lines -- hit me right between the eyes. And I want to pass it on to you.

As I’m writing these words, I’m painfully aware that Dr. Jamison, or her publicists, might be reading this post (Google Alerts is a wonderful thing; but there’s no more writing in obscurity). And they are appalled at how I could have the gall to turn her message and journey into a blog posting on taking care of yourself when you’re on the job hunt. So, first of all, my apologies to Dr. Jamison and all those who surround her with kind and generous love.

And now let’s get down to business. You may have noticed, in your own passage from one job to the next, that some of those people who would be called your friends, well, aren’t. You’ve lost your job. You don’t know when the next one will show up. You’re grieving. You’re trying to find your footing again in a world that has found many interesting ways of implying that there’s no place for you among the busy, productive, respected, and the paid.

Some people in your closest circles will give you all the room and time you need to writhe and howl with the frustration you’re feeling. Others will fling false upbeat advice at you like pasta against a wall. And then study their watch, tapping their feet, waiting for you to cheer up already. Still others will make you feel like you’ve fallen down a rabbit hole of disgrace and now you’re four inches tall – and they have suddenly soared in stature.

This is the time when your friends will divide themselves into two groups. The generous and the kind in one group. And then, on the other side of the classroom will be gathered all those who fall under the category of “un.”

What does kindness and generosity look like to someone who is struggling to land their next job?

Kind and generous friends

* Don’t judge.
* Don’t change their opinions of you and your journey because they have arbitrarily assumed that you should be fill in the blank by now.
* Return your phone calls.
* Will ask you what you want; not tell you what you need.
* Make it easy for you to tap into their network.
* Make introductions and then get out of the way.
* Talk about you in the context of what you have to offer, not what you’ve lost.
* Keep their promises.
* Remind you of your gifts, talents, value when you’re feeling especially unwanted.
* Help you see things in a slightly different way.
* Help you keep your standards high.
* Listen.
* Include you in social gatherings and projects that have nothing to do with job hunting.
* Don’t judge you for false steps, unseemly behavior, embarrassing moments that arise from the stress you’re under.
* Tell the truth.
* Keep their unsolicited opinions and “you shoulds” to themselves.
* Let you make your own decisions.
* Keep a watchful eye out for your wellbeing but won’t meddle in trivialities.
* Will swoop in if you’ve truly lost your way or bearings.
* Will respect you no matter what.

As for the others, keep them at a very, very safe distance. Preferably, as Jamison says, away. Later, when you’re strong and stable again, you can consider the value of their friendship – or even acquaintance -- and see whether you want to keep them in your life for whatever reason. I’m thinking that with the clarity that stability brings, you’ll come to some surprising conclusions about which friends to keep and which friends to cull.

TMI! Scan Your Resume and Applications For Door Slammers

2009-12-15T13:56:00.000-08:00

You know that a letter to an advice columnist is going to be good when it’s signed, “Anonymous.” Personally, I’m thinking that if you feel you must hide your identity, you pretty much already know the right answer. You just want to go the other way.

A couple of weeks ago I was reading the Ethicist’s column in the Sunday New York Times magazine and was dismayed by the question: Is it okay to discriminate against otherwise fabulously qualified applicants who clearly disagree with you politically? The questioner was hiring summer interns for a law firm that is completely politics neutral. So there wasn’t really an issue about a skills – or even affinity – fit with the firm. This person, though, is decidedly not politics neutral, and he/she just couldn’t abide the idea of working with someone who wouldn’t agree on the matter of world affairs. The assumption was that anyone with such opposing politics would be definitely unlikeable. In fact, the headline of the column actually used the word, “unlikeable.”

To Ethicist’s credit, he advised the recruiter that it wouldn’t be right to discriminate on that basis. And he advised him/her to set aside the mini-McCarthyism. But in an updated note, Ethicist informed the readers that the recruiter went ahead chose only the applicants who didn’t leave any clues about opposing political affiliation. What’s interesting here is that the recruiter could have hired Hitler, just as long as he was qualified for the job and didn’t put his political point of view on his CV – leaving some really terrific, qualified, public-minded citizens in the big heap of the unemployed, unlikeable pile.

For several years now we’ve been talking about the inadvisability of posting pix of you wearing a lampshade on your head on social media sites. And one young woman actually lost a job because she posted on her Twitter account that it was such a bummer to have to go to work on a daily basis. (Problem solved!) You’d think that these choices would be obvious – and most of them are (although I’m still trying to convince a friend of mine that “calling in drunk” is not a smart thing to say on his Facebook page. He’s finally told me, nicely, to back off, so I guess I will. He’s a big boy, I respect him, and I value his friendship.)

But little, seemingly inoccuous, things can sneak into your public profile, resume, and applications. And even though they might be perfectly innocent, and actually indicate that you’re an active participant in life, they will slam the door on opportunities for you just as assuredly as if you had put “heroin addict” on your Profile. And what’s really too bad here is that you would never know. If you’re being screened out on the basis of your resume alone, you would have no way of tracking the reasons why you were being eliminated from the short list. Many biases (like your political inclinations) aren’t legally prohibited. And even if they were, why set yourself up for unfair exclusion?

Am I suggesting that you create a politically correct resume? Maybe I am. It’s killing me to do so, because freedom of expression is important to me – especially these days. And the way our society is becoming increasingly polarized is breaking my heart. But still, right now we’re talking about improving your chances of getting hired. Or at least getting the interview. And if you can tolerate the possibility of working with people who might disagree with you on the headlines, why destroy your chances of a great job?

So here are some details that you might want to scan your public image for. That means your resume, your Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, any public description of who you are that you have control over.

How you vote: Some activities are political hot-buttons that could spit you out of consideration on sight. PETA. NARAL. Planned Parenthood, any committee to elect, re-elect, or impeach anyone. Anything having to do with saving endangered but not especially attractive fish or reptiles. Anything having anything to do with polar bears. Pro or con. Sorry. I’m not saying you stop caring about the polar bear situation. I’m just saying that you might not want to go bragging about it for a while.

What you believe. Yes, it’s definitely illegal to discriminate on the basis of religion. So are you going to be there to tell the screener who is sifting through the plentiful resumes that the applicant tracking system managed to cull from the thousands? I’m thinking probably not. It’s not right. It’s not legal. But it is. So you might as well deal with it. Places of worship are wonderful, enriching and powerful community support systems. No doubt about it. And the fact that you can carve aside precious time in your life to actively care for others is a sign that you would be a credit to any company. Again…not telling you not to devote your time to these things but while you’re looking for a job, you might want to consider stripping the description of your activities of anything that would indicate your religion – or lack thereof.

What you read. If you like to read books or blogs that set other people’s hair on fire, you might want to take down your lists for a while.

If I were in your shoes right now, this is what I’d be thinking: This is bogus. I wouldn’t want to work for an organization that was so ideologically rigid as to not accept me for who I am. Well, here’s the thing: The person who is screening your resume is most likely not the person you would be working with directly. And you can’t be absolutely certain that the resume screener who stands between you and your ideal job (complete with ideal boss and wonderful company) won’t take advantage of the position of power to populate his/her company with “only the correct kinds of people.”

This isn’t to indict recruiters and HR (I love HR, as my long-time readers will tell you). It’s just that there are some people out there who take advantage of the power of their position (as we’ve already seen in the Sunday Times magazine). And neither you nor the company that needs you deserves to lose the opportunity of the two of you finding each other. So why take the risk?

Now it could be that you might also be thinking: I can’t working with or for someone who doesn’t think just like me. So if I get spat out at the early stage of the game, well, saves us both some heartache. Okay, fair enough. But, just to reiterate, remember that the resume screener isn’t likely going to be your manager. And there may be your perfect boss waiting for you, and wondering how it is that the screeners keep sending in such politically extreme weirdos.

You’ll have a chance to see how simpatico you will feel with the company and boss. Just get that interview first.

Anger Won't Get You Anywhere

2009-11-14T04:04:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, Duncan and I published an article called “How to Network Without Sounding Phony, Lame or Desperate” on the AOL/Careerbuilder site. At last count, there were 73 responses, most of them angry, resentful, hopeless and raging. One commentator simply wrote, “Blah, blah, blah, blah.” How’s that for effectively moving the conversation forward in a helpful way?

As I read the responses, I got lower and lower in my own spirits. And then I thought, “It’s bad enough to be out of work, and hunting in this terrible market. But how much worse is it to be hauling around so much anger. These people are wrecking their own chances, just by their attitudes.” No, I’m not suggesting you behave like Shirley Temple and tap dance your way through adversity, as she had tap danced her way through the Depression. (Although, many of those songs she sang – “Be Optimistic” is going through my head right now – did have a point. Only now we call it positive psychology.)

Shirley Temple singing \”Be Optimistic\”

I wouldn’t in a million years suggest that you deny your very real feelings, and stuff them down only to have them pop up later like a beach ball submerged in a swimming pool. But I would like to suggest that you take a look at those feelings, recognize what damage they might be doing to your prospects, and decide which ones you really want to hold on to. And then which ones you might want to replace with a more productive attitude.

Anger is wrecking your chances for getting out of these economic times with an intact career (however interrupted it might be). Researchers have discovered that negative thinking actually inhibits your ability to come up with creative approaches for your situation. When you approach your life and world through a negative frame of mind, you inhibit what is known as your temporary thought-action repertoire. This is actually an evolutionary phenomenon…a positive attitude helped us survive in the wilderness by coming up with creative solutions to that tiger making a bee-line for us. Conversely, a negative attitude would freeze us in his sites, with a big deadly “duh” overwhelming our brains. And soon we would become tiger mortadella.

Anger only attracts other angry people. When you’re in a good mood, it’s not long before you want to move away from someone who is doing nothing but complaining. You know that. So do you really want to hang out with other people who have nothing to add to the conversation beyond agreeing with you that it’s hopeless out there? I’m thinking you’d probably want to spend at least some time with people who have an upbeat outlook on life. Well, what do you need to do to change yourself so they’d want to hang out with you?

Anger keeps you from seeing things the way they are now and changing your strategies accordingly. A lot of people are angry because it’s not as easy finding a job as it was three years ago. Okay. So? The New Age crowd has an expression that absolutely drives me up the wall. And that is: It is what it is. As much as I hate that expression, it fits here.

We can rage that the present isn’t what the past used to be. But where is all that expenditure of energy getting us? If we’re so busy mourning the fact that the old opportunities have gone away, we’re not using this precious time to discover what the new opportunities are. Okay, so the old methods of job search are as extinct as our negative-mindset ancestor staring down the charging tiger. What would be more productive from this point forward? Focusing on what’s past? Or identifying what the new skills and techniques are today that will land us the jobs we’re looking for?

No one’s going to want to hire you if you’re angry. You may have been a rock star in your profession last year. You may look flawless. But if you have given yourself over to anger and frustration, that smell is going to seep through your pores just as unmistakably as if you had just been on a bender. Your interviewers won’t be able to get you out of their offices fast enough.

Do I really have the nerve to tell you not to be angry? Not on your life. But what I would like to suggest is this: Don’t let your anger keep you from achieving your dreams and meeting your potential. Feel that anger if you want to. Wallow in it every day if it makes you feel better. But assign yourself a budget of time in which you can go there, break things (only cheap, replaceable things that belong only to you), holler so loud the neighbors can hear you, if you have to (although I wouldn’t recommend it). Set a timer, if you must.

And when that timer dings, show’s over. Settle back down to the business of building the life that will make you happy.

What to Do When You're Flat Out of Friends

2009-11-01T08:57:00.000-08:00

(This post is based on some of the principles included in my new book, Unlock the Hidden Job Market: 6 Steps to a Successful Job Search When Times Are Tough which I wrote with San Diego-based executive coach, Duncan Mathison. For a free sample chapter, visit the book's official site: www.unlockthehiddenjobmarket.com )

If you’ve been following my posts, you’ll know that I’ve been writing about networking a lot lately. Or at least it seems like it. Networking, networking, networking. Maybe it’s me but don’t you think that when you say it out loud enough, it begins to sound like earwax? Okay…it’s probably just me.

Networking doesn’t have much appeal, does it? It doesn’t sound nearly as much fun as going to your local Applebee’s with some friends for a beer and some wings. Now there’s a problem with even that Applebee’s scenario. Based on the emails I’ve been getting, a lot of you are feeling that you don’t have too many friends either. And the ones you do have are getting, like, really tired of hearing you talk about your struggles to land a job. And you’re getting really tired of talking about it too. In fact, you’d just wish they’d change the subject.

I don’t think my readers are social losers. (At least I hope not, but, then again, what are you doing reading this blog post when it’s such a pretty day outside?) When you’ve been out of work for any amount o time, it’s easy to feel that you have run aground in the contacts department – especially in recent years when we’ve all been so busy taking care of our jobs and our families. We’ve let outside friendships perhaps atrophy. Maybe all your friends were work-related. And now that you’re out of work, you’re also fresh out of buddies. Or you’ve moved to a new town where you really, really don’t know anyone.

Whatever the reason for your feelings of isolation, you know you have to mix it up a little bit, well, a lot. Get some fresh meat, I mean talent, into your tight circles of relationships. Get out of the house. So I thought I’d offer some tips in that direction.

Remember that one thing leads to another. The thing about circulating is that your first dip into big world probably won’t net you a job. It’s a cumulative kind of thing. So leave that desperate, graspy, over-eager feeling at home when you head out the door. Just be open to meeting who you meet. Maybe tonight you’re destined to actually help someone else. And you’ll come home feeling just a little better about yourself.

Look for opportunities where you can become a regular. And no, I don’t mean the Applebee’s bar. When your face starts becoming familiar, you will emerge from invisibility to someone who people will be glad to see. Maybe they’ll even shout out your name, like, “Norm!” (But don’t count on it.) If you try a business mixer or worship service or volunteer opportunity, and people completely ignore you, keep going. Week after week. Introduce yourself as often as you can. And just let the cumulative effects of time work their wonders.

Stay away from solitary pursuits, even if they’re out of the house. Going to a matinee movie doesn’t count as “getting out there.” Go to local economic development or chamber of commerce meetings, receptions, mixers. Your local bookstore probably offers booksignings, author lectures or special classes. A friend of mine who is a professional coach is part of a team who gives courses at Whole Foods! Go! The home improvement stores offer free courses. Go! The American Red Cross offers courses in first aid, cpr, etc. Go!

Make job-related networking events only a small percentage of your out-of-the-house activities. First of all, you’re so much more than unemployed. And you need to nurture those other parts of who you are. At the very least, this way you’ll lead with an opener that’s so much more interesting than, “Hi, gotta job?” But most importantly is that your self-definition has a chance to stay strong and defined beyond this immediate need of landing a gig. You will also stand a better chance of meeting people other than fellow job-seekers. You know…people who already have jobs? And who would be thrilled to help you get inside their companies or organizations.

Learn something. Go to local college courses – especially the ones at night, when employed people go to school. You don’t have to matriculate and take on the expense of a formal semester. Continuing ed courses can be inexpensive. The teachers are often professionals in the community (hint: employed people!). It’s probably best if you took a course that would help you be more qualified for the kind of job you’re looking for. But even taking a non-job related course will at least remind you that there’s more to life than your daily bread (although, it’s kind of hard to make that argument right now, I know).

Teach something. Surely you know something that will benefit others. How to read, for adult literacy programs, for instance. If you have a profession or skill that’s useful in the for-profit world, surely you can introduce at least the basics to young people. Convene a panel of other experts and put on a program! (You’ll be able to find a venue. A friend of mine hosted the annual meeting of his professional association – on the premises of the company that had just laid him off. Awkward.)

Volunteer. Those same skills you can teach you can donate. It will make you feel good about being who you are and what you can do. That boost in self-esteem will give you the added confidence that will send out the signal that you’re a valuable contributor to the world.

Call old friends – even if they haven’t heard from you in a long time. This is where Facebook comes in handy. The other day I heard from a dear friend for the first time in about 8 years. We’d been looking for each other off and on over recent years but, thanks to Facebook, she found me first! And we talked on the phone for a full three hours. A lot of it was catching up. But, she was also very candid about the fact that she needed some professional advice from me. Did I see this as a cheesy ulterior motive? Heck no! First off all, I owed her a gigantic favor from 10 years ago (I mean, huge). Secondly, I love her and I know she loves me. So whatever I have is hers. (Advice, I mean.)

Ask for introductions. Unless you’re a bitter whiner who needs to blow your nose and brush your teeth (and, uhm, a little roll-on?), the friends you have should be happy to give you introductions you need to move your job search forward. If they’re reluctant to help you, find out why. Wouldn’t you want to know the truth, especially if it was something you could fix? And, if they’re possessive with or protective of their contacts to the point where they’re keeping you from helping yourself, or making you feel judged, it’s best that you should know that now. You might have just discovered a brand new opening in your group of friends to fill.

They say that once you achieve a certain age, it gets harder and harder to make new friends. Everyone is set in their habits, patterns, commuting routine, relationships. Well, one of the upshots of these economic times is that everyone is thrown higgledy-piggledy into a big pile of confusion and some flavor of disconnectedness. Now is a fantastic time to build new circles of friends and business contacts.

And vow to take better care of them in the future. Like, don’t wait 8 years before picking up the phone.

Really Crappy Advice -- And How to Keep It From Killing You

2009-10-30T16:54:00.000-07:00

In recent weeks I’ve been watching events unfold in Sedona — that whole James Arthur Ray thing and how people died in an ersatz sweat lodge. I suppose for many people, a terrible event such as this (where people paid $9,000 for the privilege of dying a horrible death, surrounded in the gloom by their vomiting and fainting companions) is so exotic that most people might think, “that could never happen to me.” And that would probably be true.

However, this whole clutch of motivation and self-help teachers has been bugging me over recent years. Most of them are pretty small potatoes. But they promise big, and encourage people to take risks with their money, relationships, future, and careers that they might not otherwise take. The cumulative effect of little damages everywhere can be very destructive indeed. I’m worried that the general public might be even more at risk as the economy continues its stagger, stagger, crawl mode. These are emotional frontiers we’re in, folks, and the woods are lousy with snake oil salesmen – people who promise to give you a breakthrough secret to life in a week or a weekend, for the price of a semester of college or a small car.

I have had in my bookshelf for a couple of years now the book, SHAM, by Stephen Salerno. And I’ve been really reluctant to read it. Primarily because I knew he would blow the lid off of the mechanics behind self-help gurus and their business models. And at the time I was also reading Martin Seligman (the very legitimate founder of the very legitimate positive psychology movement), and I was also dabbling in more than a little Jack Canfield, Tony Robbins, Marianne Williamson and even Joel Osteen. And, frankly, I still like the way their messages make me feel. And while I certainly didn’t buy The Secret’s promises hook, link and sucker (I mean, sinker), having grown up in a family whose mantra was mainly, “ain’t it awful, ain’t it tragic,” I knew there is definitely something to be said for willfully focusing on the positive side of things. A positive attitude is more conducive to creative thinking and endurance during a time where everything seems to be hitting the fan. At least it makes the ride a little more tolerable.

But I also know a manipulative head-game when I see one. (At least I hope I do.) I certainly learned to recognize the signs when I bought into one, much to my ever-lasting regret pretty quickly thereafter. So, I thought I’d lay out a list of danger signs for you – with the hopes of helping you keep your money in your pocket. (I get the fact that this could mean that I might miss out on a few sales of my own books – but at the end of this post I’m actually going to offer you my first book for free. I won’t even ask you for your email address as one of those cheesy quid pro quo gambits.)

Avoid any course with titles containing such words as “breakthrough,” “success,” “transform,” “dream,” “vortex”and whose tuition includes a comma. Speaking from personal experience here. These kinds of courses are mostly warmed over material drawn directly from the texts of books that you can purchase for $20 to $30. There will be much playing of John Denver and hugging of total strangers — most who look like they either haven’t been hugged in decades or they’re really really really looking forward to hugging you. The break times are dedicated to urging you to sign up for the advanced course at twice the price (but today – and only today – slashed to the same amount you just paid for the basic course). My memories of those break times involve softly trance-inducing singing from the stage and a certain zombie-ness of the people moving to the back of the room where tables are conveniently set up, where staffers cheerfully accepted credit cards. Did I get anything of value from that basic week? Yes…my mastermind group is still intact after almost five years. We meet on the phone every other week and have become supportive friends. But have our circumstances changed significantly since we met that that “breakthrough” week? Nope. (As you can imagine, I’m usually the cranky one on our phone calls.)

If you go to any course with a title that includes the words “spirit,” “warrior,” “vision quest,” make sure there is an EMT on call at all times before laying your money down. Most spiritual quests are flat-out scary. Who are these people to say they know the way, and will lead us there through a regimen of fasting, meditation and bodily deprivation? The way people refer to spirituality as Spirit, as if Spirit is their next door neighbor with handy cable piracy skills, is revolting. And the way white Americans romanticize the mysteries of Native American life and traditions is deeply hypocritical or willfully shallow. If they’re so enchanted by the Native American way, how about coming out to the Southwest, don’t stop at the spas or casinos, and spend that week teaching Native American children to say no to crystal meth addiction and alcoholism? Share the inspiring benefits of your own education, skills and privilege, rather than trying to siphon off a few sips of mysticism from authentic traditions that you will never get anyway?

If someone wants to teach you how to be rich (for whatever price), first find out how he got rich himself. Look at the frequent fliers of this particular line of work, and you’ll find out that most of them got rich by sticking their hands into pockets of people just like you (and me). And they’re getting richer. Did he ever grow a company, other than the staff of eager minions he has working for him now? Did he turn around a major corporation? Did he emerge from his own family of alcoholics and desperados to blaze his own trail by making something or contributing something useful to society (that is other than an ultra-expensive retreat)? Is he an unimpeachable researcher who has the gift of translating esoteric, hard-to-understand information into immediately useful ideas that anyone can have for the price of a book? That might be someone worth paying some attention to.

When someone tells you that you’re nowhere without his secrets or gift, laugh and walk away. Need I say more? Okay, I will. I know of one so-called Buddhist guru (she’s American) who actually replaced the words “Higher Power” in the 12 Step Program with her own name. That’s amazing. But what’s even more amazing is that hundreds of otherwise intelligent people said, “Duh, okay.”

Just say no to any product marketed to you via email by someone you’ve never heard of but endorsed by someone you have. These people exchange mailing lists, knowing full well that purchasers of self-help products are the most likely to come back for more and more. The cynicism is mind-blowing.

Avoid self-help books that were Number 1 on Amazon for, like, three hours one day. Again, it’s the lists at work. These people know how to game the system and they use each others’ lists to snag that coveted spot, even for an instant. This way they can call themselves “bestselling authors.” Big whup.

Don’t give up your own dreams. Life is full of true mysteries. My personal favorite one is the mystery of synchronicity. I’m a total sucker for those stories, and I have true, first-hand stories of my own that would curl your hair. But I wouldn’t bet the ranch on a synchronicity that I perceive to be an omen. (Even though, in my heart of hearts, I kind of hope it is.)

We all need fresh infusions of inspiration now and then. And personal growth does involve keeping your mind open and venturing into uncomfortable zones now and then. But no breakthrough experience should involve group puking or even close bodily contact with strangers to the strains of “Sunshine On My Shoulders.”

Keep your wallet in your pants. Or purse.

(Now for the free offer: I will give you a free copy of my very first book, Find Your Calling, Love Your Life. For absolutely nothing. Not even your email address. Just click the green button on the home page of Unlock the Hidden Job Market, and it will lead you to free downloads. You can also have a free sample chapter of our new book, Unlock the Hidden Job Market. Naturally, Duncan and I would love it if you also purchased that book. But you know what? You don’t have to.)

Confidential to "I'm Not Shy"

2009-10-25T07:26:00.000-07:00

The other night I received an email from a reader who had this to say:

"What if I'm not shy? What if I'm just not good at the art of shameless self-promotion and have difficulty identifying my value proposition? Then what?"

Hmmmm. Hate networking as shameless self-promotion? AND you're having trouble identifying your value proposition? If you had one of those two problems, I'd take you at face value. But put the two of them together, and I'm hearing code for "shy." But, whatever, call it what you want.

I think you might have missed one of the core points of my earlier post on networking shyness. To wit: Even though you're networking to find and land a good job, if you hate networking, don't make it about yourself. Make it about discovering how you can contribute your gifts, skills and energy out there in the big wide world.

You can set the tone of how your networking activities come off. Networking is not about shameless self-promotion (unless you're a shameless self-promoting kinda guy, which evidently you're not). If you want a real, authentic, interaction with a full calendar of people who you hope will ultimately lead you to your next job, have a real, authentic interaction. You're out there trying to figure out how and where you fit in. If anyone criticizes you for that, well, that's their problem. Move along to the next appointment on your calendar.

Moving to your next issue about not knowing what your value proposition is, that's not an issue to take lightly. It goes straight to one of the main pieces of your place in the world. And with the marketplace changing as rapidly as it is, it's practically impossible to keep up with how your place in the world changes in relation to the world itself. I think three generations of working adults are going through a mid-life crisis at the same time, right now.

The good news here, for you especially, is that if you're struggling with "who am I" questions, you're going to come off authentically humble in networking meetings. So instead of worrying about "shamelessly" promoting a self when you don't even know who that self is (at least vis a vis your working life), approach your networking from the point of view of gathering data about how you might fit into the changed world now.

Use your early networking meetings to ask questions. And be sincerely interested in the answers. Then ask more questions. And be sincerely interested in those answers. (Remember, we're talking questions about work, not "how're the kids?") Eventually you'll start seeing how you fit into the world as you're coming to understand it because of those questions. And your value proposition will make itself known to you.

It's about questioning, not crowing.

(There are a lot of books out there that help you discover what your value proposition is. If you'd like to read a collection of inspiring stories of people on that journey, email me and I'll send you a free copy of my book Find Your Calling, Love Your Life.)

Are You Too Shy to Network?

2009-10-12T12:33:00.001-07:00

My friend Patricia is probably the only person I would call a natural networker. Her worldly possessions have been in storage for most of the last 10 years as she goes where her heart tells her to (always beautiful places: Hawaii; Aspen; Naples, FL; San Diego; hey! Why not?). Jobs and projects fall into her lap no matter where she goes (and right now she’s in Austria after having spent a couple of weeks in Spain). She always has friends to stay with or a house to borrow. I would say she’s female version of Tim Ferris. But she’s her own self. And she makes her way in the world through relationships she builds along the way.

You ever have one of those right-words-at-the-right-time moments that blasts all your illusions away? Patricia gave me the right words at the right time and showed me the way to think about networking. It was a few years ago while she was visiting me on Cape Cod. I was feeling rudderless, pitiful, unnecessary, unwanted, all those un’s that make it such a drag to get up in the morning. Patricia and I were sitting in the livingroom wrapped in blankets and drinking coffee (well, she was drinking herbal tea, of course). I was saying that I just couldn’t bring myself to knocking on Cape Cod businesses begging for a job. And she gently said this:

“It’s not about what you need, it’s about what you can contribute.”

Oh.

Ohhhhhhhhhhh.

I’d been thinking about networking all wrong! It wasn’t about what a pitiful needy, loser, user I was. It was about letting the world know that I was here to help. Patricia certainly isn’t a needy, loser, user. She moves through the world like a queen (in a good way), and people take their cue from her – treating her accordingly. And she benefits a lot of lives as she goes. She may not have a permanent address (other than her Naples PO box). But she has real friends who love her, and she earns an honest living (thanks to laptops and cell phones), growing spiritually, emotionally and professionally along the way.

You may not want to live the life that Patricia has (although, for me, every time she breezes through Santa Fe, where I live right now, ever fiber of my being screams ROAD TRIP!). And you may not have the flexibility of treating the entire planet as your own personal marketplace.

But then again, maybe you do. At the very least the marketplace that you most naturally belong to needs you! But it may not know you’re there. If your resistance to networking is keeping you shy, I don’t blame you. So maybe the thing to do is examine your beliefs around networking. And maybe change your mind just a little.

Networking is a waste of time. It could be, depending on what you expect from your networking activities. If you want a job right this very minute (of course you do, just bear with me here for a minute), you’re probably going to think that networking activities are a waste of time because what are the chances that any given networking encounter will result in a job offer? To be honest – practically zero.

Yes, I get that you need a job – right this very minute. And networking will eventually bring you that job. But it’s a cumulative effect kind of thing. One person leads to another who leads to another who leads to five others. As my coauthor for Unlock the Hidden Job Market, Duncan Mathison, says: Networking is about planting seeds. Lots and lots of them. Some will sprout. But the more networking you do, the more of those seedlings will sprout. And some – not to drive a metaphor in the ground or anything – will bear fruit.

Still not convinced? What are the chances that staying at home will result in a job offer? Guaranteed: Zeeee-roe.

Most of the people I meet at networking events are people who are out of work themselves. That's probably true. Those networking events are the worst. They suck the life right out of you. They waste your time. And feed your growing sense of despair and overwhelm. So. Stop going to them.

Networking is not about going to networking events. It’s meeting people one-on-one, showing sincere interest in what they do, your shared industry or profession, your community, future trends, ideas, etc.

This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t network with other people who are out of jobs. But still make those one-on-one events, high-quality conversations where both of you end up with a growing list of ideas, connections, phone numbers, companies, introductions.

People don’t want to meet me. How do you know? Somewhere someone needs you. And that will only happen if you get the heck out of the house.

Just because you don’t have a job, that doesn’t mean you don’t have value and that you have nothing to contribute. People need you. To use Patricia’s philosophy: Get out and find out who they are. Under other conditions would you let negative self-talk prevent you from lending a hand where your unique strengths and gifts can really make life easier for someone? Of course not. So why let the inner gremlins have the power now?

People only want to hire to people who already have jobs. That’s a myth. If you’re unemployed right now, you actually have some advantages working for you. You’re available now. You’re not coming in with that entitled “what can you do for me” attitude. You won’t be taking their offer back to your current boss to try to snag a sweeter offer. Everyone knows that really great talent is on the loose right now because of the massive trend of lay-offs. The fact that you’re between jobs right now is not a black mark on your record. It’s just one of those things.

There’s no point in starting now, since the holidays are around the corner. Wrong. This is absolutely a terrific time to look for a job. Budgets are being formulated for Q1. So while you might not start until January 1, you’d be making great use of your holidays by networking your brains out. And just think, if everyone else thinks that there’s no point in job hunting right now, you are out there with very little competition.

For a great article on this subject, check out: T’is The Season To Follow the Money.

I look like hell. That might be true. If you’ve been stuck at home all day, not having seen the business end of a razor in weeks, it might be time to put on your go-to-meetin’ clothes (assuming they still fit) and see if your car will start.

Not judging here. In recent months I’ve been stuck at home writing books. Yoga pants and t-shirts have been my friends. My business clothes have been on the floor, serving as bedding for the cats. And just yesterday I spotted a coyote sauntering past my windows. And, while I was admiring its glossy coat and bushy tail, the thought came to me that it is better groomed that I am. I picked up the phone and made an appointment. For tomorrow. Can’t wait.

If you look like hell, you know what to do. You probably won’t look like Heidi Klum, once you’ve spruced up. But you won’t look like Tom Hanks in Castaway either.

People will know that I’m only networking because I need a job. So what? You’re not the only one looking for a job. The question is: are you the person they’re looking for? It’s up to you how they’ll regard you. They’ll take their cues from you. If you act ashamed or frustrated, they’ll pick up shame and frustration and treat you like you have a contagious disease. Figure out what it will take to behave with confidence, calm and professionalism. And do that.

Focus your conversation not on what you need but on what they need, what they think, who they might introduce you to, who you might introduce them to, etc. Remember: It’s about contribution, not need.

I’ve already done everything I can think of to get my resume into circulation. No you haven’t. Networking is not about bugging your family, friends, the Rotor Rooter man. A reader actually wrote to me saying that she gave her resume to her mail carrier.

Networking is about expanding your circles of contacts, acquaintances, colleagues. It’s about making lists of people and their phone numbers. Then picking up the phone and calling those folks. It’s difficult, I know, especially for people who don’t enjoy calling strangers. But remember, you’re calling colleagues and peers…people you have something or someone in common with.

These are people you might be able to help.

And that’s what it’s all about.

Don't let the official stats totally bum you out

2009-09-27T16:11:00.000-07:00

There are always more jobs available than those that are officially posted. Really.
http://bit.ly/C6g4M

How to Give Good Luck a Leg Up

2009-09-26T14:05:00.000-07:00

If you’ve been between jobs for, like, an hour, you already know that wishing will get you only so far. In fact, you might have been wishing that you weren’t on the list of people to get laid off. So you know better than just about anyone that wishing has its limitations.

Now. Luck. That could be another matter altogether. While you can’t control everything in life, you can certainly help good luck along by the actions you take and the way you take care of yourself while you’re looking for your next job. No I’m not being superstitious. Just practical. If you don’t believe me, take a look at this from the flip side. How much luck to you think would come your way if you stayed at home, refusing to answer the phone or checking your email? See? You can control the way luck behaves in your life – at least to some extent.

Now that you’re looking for your next, great job, you need all the advantages working for you. And that includes luck. So let’s see how we can give it a nudge in your direction, shall we?

Expect that the right job really is out there waiting for you to find it. Yes, even in these days when it appears that “no one is hiring,” people are getting new jobs. You’ve got to hold onto the belief that you will too. If you don’t, you’re going to be sending out those freak-out vibes that will tell potential employers that you’re about to self-combust right then and there. And who wants to hire that? Keep that grounded core of calm, solidified by the belief that, yes, you’re on your way to your new job.

Release your attachment to the so-called system. Amazingly, 70% of all jobs never get published or advertised in any way. That’s why we call it the hidden job market. But even though those jobs are hidden, you can still find them. But that means you have to release your grip on the expectation that “the system” will deliver up a selection of jobs for you to choose from every morning. It might have before (like in 2005) but it won’t anymore. The hidden job market is where you’ll find the great jobs. But you have to go looking for them.

Take that as good news. Sure you have to be more proactive than you were a few years ago. But the hidden job market puts you in the drivers seat. You have the power to go out and find the great jobs and companies that meet your criteria. That’s so much better than just sitting back and waiting for a diminishing stream of the wrong jobs trickle by you.

Keep your funnel full and your calendar crammed. Successful salespeople will tell you to never run out of appointments and possibilities. Some of those appointments will be job interviews. Great. But as you’re working the hidden job market, most of them will be networking meetings. Which is actually even better. You’re not under pressure to get the job. You’re meeting peers and colleagues and exploring ideas and new introductions. Sure, if you’re like a lot of people, you may not necessarily enjoy meeting new people week in and week out. But you’re in sales now. So it’s time to take a page from those guys. And get out there, ready to fill your days with great conversations that will help you understand where the really great opportunities can be found.

Keep your mind open. In our book, Unlock the Hidden Job Market, Duncan Mathison and I tell the story of one of his clients who found a job through a friend of his mother’s. The daughter of a friend of his mother’s, no less. But it took this guy four weeks to pick up the phone and make the call that would ultimately land him the job. Whether it was generic sexism or mom-snobbery that was holding his client back from making the call that could change his life, who knows? Either way, it’s a good story to keep in mind when you’re inclined to say “nope” to hope.

Be prepared to meet your opportunity when you least expect it. I don’t mean you have to be dressed in go-to-meetin’ clothes, with your resume at the ready all the time. In our book, we also tell a great story about another client who meets his next opportunity while standing on the beach in San Diego, dripping wet, battered and bruised after a raucus competitive ocean swim. He was CFO caliber, and the guy he met was a CEO looking for a CFO. Suffice it to say, not exactly your dress for success moment. (Personally, I’m imagining an ill-advised Speedo and a decidedly snotty nose. If this guy can land a job with that as a first impression, just think what luck you’ll have just being dressed!)

Look at what you have to offer from the point of view of your potential employer. The line, “look, I really need this job,” is compelling only in the movies. In real life, it’s darn pitiful. And will net you sympathy, not a job offer. Don’t lead with your need. Present yourself in terms of what you have to offer. So look at your pile of gifts, skills and experiences from the standpoint of how they will solve a company’s problem or meet a need. That’s a conversation that will inspire the right person to say, “How soon can you start?”

Tell your career story in a positive way. When you launch into the response to, “So, tell me about yourself,” stay away from “…and then I got laid off.” Emphasize the results you achieved, talk about the people who noticed your performance and chose to promote you to the next level, tell about the teams you worked in or led. As you near the sad-sack conclusion that takes you to how you’re out of work now, don’t gloss over it. But quickly turn the tables and ask your interviewer a question about the company, his or her own experience in some similar project or team, his or her opinion about the current state of your profession.

Finally, keep your standards high. Luck won’t find you if you’re targeting job opportunities that are clearly beneath your abilities. When you keep your standards high, you will be at the right place at the right time. On purpose. And by design.
So much better than just crossing your fingers, wouldn’t you say?

Why “Job Clubs” Are Bad For You

2009-09-20T14:43:00.000-07:00

Why “Job Clubs” Are Bad For You

Advice on Finding a Job in These Tough Times

2009-09-17T16:38:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone! Great news! My new book is only a week away from the bookstores! (well maybe 10 days, maybe sooner!)

It's called Unlock The Hidden Job Market, which I wrote with Duncan Mathison, who is an expert in helping people find work in really sucky economies.

Working on the book is why I kinda let this blog lie fallow for a while.

In the meantime, the official book's website is up and live! Lots of free content there.

www.unlockthehiddenjobmarket.com

I hope you enjoy it and will tell your friends about it too!

Discouraged? Here's How to Re-Energize Your Job Search

2009-09-08T11:18:00.001-07:00

Did you happen to see yesterday’s NY Times article about how the nation is flooded with millions of would-be job seekers who have just plain given up? No? Well. Don’t bother. It’s a bummer. (But I linked this article to the online page anyway, just in case you’re like me and you just have to take a look.)

Probably someone somewhere said something along the lines of “Fate favors those who don’t give up.” That only seems to make sense when you’re flying high and everything seems to be clicking in your direction. But when you’re in stagger, stagger, crawl mode, you’re thinking something else. Probably something that includes words that my mommy taught me to never say.

While I can’t change your life for you, maybe I can help you restore your faith in fate and your own future. The name of the game here is to re-energize yourself and your search. Put faith back in the saddle (hey, I live in New Mexico, what do you want?). Since I’ve been dedicating myself to the issue of finding work in rock-hard terrible times, I thought I’d share these tips with you:

1. Adjust your expectations. Ugh. Not helpful, is that? Okay. So let’s look at this just a little more closely: Depending on how old you are, your internal clock that tells you that you should have some hot prospects by now may have been set during recent boom times when all you needed as a pulse and preferably no prison record. One reason why you might be feeling the gut-punch of discouragement at this particular time could be that your clock is out of synch with the mud-slow slog of today’s job market. Know that it will take significantly longer this time to find that great job that really is out there waiting for you, and you’ll be able to handle that one-day-at-a-time approach a little more easily. Every “no” that comes your way takes you one “no” closer to that ultimate “yes.” Salespeople will tell you that.
2. Keep your funnel full. Salespeople will also tell you about how important it is to have a full and busy calendar of appointments with prospects, networking partners, information sources, etc. Knowing that you always have new opportunities coming up will keep you relatively relaxed as you deal with the one currently on your agenda. A dud meeting won’t feel so apocalyptic when you have more appointments to look forward to. Don’t let an empty calendar catch you flat-footed and discouraged. It’s awfully hard to get that funnel flowing again when it’s gone bone-dry.
3. Lay off the sugar, fat, and booze (I don’t have to mention the other stuff, right?). Comfort eating will suck the life and spirit right out of you. You’ve seen people eat crawfish in Louisiana right? It’s like that when you eat for coping. Buh-leeve me, I know. Plus, glazed-over eyes and gaposis don’t count as business casual.
4. Expand your networking. My coauthor, Duncan Mathison, for our new book, Unlock the Hidden Job Market, says that the first wall of discouragement that job seekers hit is when they’ve handed their resume out to all their friends and business contacts with the request that they pass it along to their contacts. And then they wait for a job interview to come back like a bottle in the tide. As Dr. Phil says, “How’s that working for you?” Bust out of your immediate clusters of social and work contacts and reach out to people you might not have thought of yet. Professors. Reporters. Your employed counterparts in other companies. The membership director of your professional association. Even Mom’s church friends. In our book, Duncan tells the story of one guy who got his new great job because a church friend of his mother’s had a daughter who…. You just never know.
5. Seek out networking relationships with people who truly have something to offer. Now is not the time to be codependent. You don’t to be a heartless user either, of course. (But you wouldn’t do that anyway, right?) Just like the tip from #3, keep your networking diet filled with healthy, positive people who are functioning in society. You might feel like you’re being compassionate and understanding listening to someone’s problems for the umpteenth time. You’re not. You’re being enabling. And look where it’s getting you.
6. Expand your ideas of what a great career and/or industry might be out there. The steam might have run out on your current professional train. Don’t rage against the wind that no one wants what you do anymore. What good will that do you? Think about all the different ways you can put what you do into good use. Perhaps another industry? Another customer base? Another part of the corporate organization? Maybe the government? Strip away all the external contexts that surround your skills, look at what you offer in terms of the value you bring to a potential employer. And speak to that. Who you can be, not who you once were.
7. Always be ready to talk to strangers. If you follow this blog, you know the story about how I met a guy on a plane from Albuquerque to Dallas, found out that his wife was threatening divorce if he didn’t find a job in Albuquerque. When I reached my hotel room in Connecticut that night, I sent off an email to an HR person at a big manufacturer in Albuquerque. Long story short, he got the job. And it wasn’t ever advertised. You just never know who knows whom. By the way: The missus still divorced him. Can’t win ‘em all.
8. Remember that any conversation can turn into a job lead. I once met someone in the ladies room on the 32nd floor of a mid-town NY skyscraper. Why I was in my underwear at the time is beside the point. But I was. She was the office manager of The Cousteau Society. The position of membership correspondent had just opened up. One thing led to another, and soon I was drinking Perrier and eating brie next to The Captain himself. You just never know.
9. Stop relying on the system. Online job boards are good but they should only take up a fraction of your job search time. Maybe a few years ago, they spat out job leads like tennis balls out of those scary machines. But not anymore. You’ve got to be proactive in your job search. You say you are being proactive? Good. Now. Be more proactive.
10. Be grateful that you’re unemployed. Pretty sick, huh? The thing of it is: In this terrible market, you have to use all your time to search for that next great job. This isn’t a spectator sport anymore. You’ve got to be out there swinging. It’s said that 70% of all job opportunities are never published, so plumbing the hidden job market is the way to find that great job that’s out there waiting for you. If you were holding down a job (probably one that you wouldn’t like but would be too afraid to quit), you wouldn’t have the time to meet the people who will ultimately introduce you to the people who will have the job you would really be happy with.
11. Redesign your goals. The job will come. But it probably won’t happen today. But you can still be successful today. How many phone calls can you make today? Can you set three up more appointments? Can you research 10 new businesses or industries that might be a good fit for your skills and values. Of course you can. Every day you’ve got a job. And this is a job you can do. And once you realize how much control you really do have, you’ll start to feel re-energized.

Note from Martha: These principles were borrowed from my new book, Unlock The Hidden Job Market: 6 Steps to a Successful Job Search When Times Are Tough, which I co-wrote with Duncan Mathison, who has had almost 20 years' experience at the outplacement firm Drake Beam Morin helping executives find their next great jobs. Please pass this on to everyone you know who is out there hammering away at the job market!

Why Being Mouthy Is Good For Business

2009-07-04T14:21:00.000-07:00

You might not have noticed yet because it is, after all, a weekend, and you do have a life. But the media is all abuzz about a major blunder (not to mention ethics violations) coming out of The Washington Post, which will be printing a special “note to readers” about it tomorrow. Long story short: In an effort to gin up additional revenue sources, the marketing department thought it would be a good idea to launch high-level salons at the publisher’s house, giving media, lobbyists and other Washington, DC, power brokers relaxed, off-the-record, access to each other (hence – as the information food chain goes – public opinion). In theory a possibly good idea. I’m always looking for a good salon, aren’t you?

Here’s why it’s a bad idea: For $25,000 to $250,000, you too can be a sponsor of these salons. Basically buying your way into the public’s ear. Sort of like a tick. When you boil this scenario down to its core components, it comes out this way: The newspaper is selling extraordinary, exclusive access to its reporters. And it flies in the face of basic journalism ethics in so many different ways, it’s hard to know where to begin.

So I won’t. Unless you’re in journalism, you’re probably wondering what this has to do with your own business. Here it is: If the reports are true, the newspaper’s reporters (the ultimate individual contributor) don’t have it in them anymore to stand together as a group and go: “Uh, hello? Stupid idea!!!! We won’t have any part of it!” And because of this, they allowed the Post to thoroughly embarrass itself. It's quite possible that your quiet employees are letting you destroy your business, too. By accident, of course, but still...

According to today’s New York Times article, the Post ombudsman said that “the plan was well developed with the newsroom.” And that made me wonder, “Really?” Somehow I don’t think so. Not the Washington Post newsroom that I know from growing up in the Washington, DC, area.

Here’s what I’m thinking has really happened: The Washington Post reporters have lost heart. They are too busy doing the jobs of multiple reporters to really focus on any one thing. And they have spent recent years hearing over and over again how newspapers are a business and no one will have a job if journalists refuse to get the fundamental fact of newspaper life: It’s all about making money. Jobs are being lost right and left. Newspapers are closing around the globe. An essential component of democracy – the free press – has been compromised to such an extent I’m reminded of a line in the movie Breaker Morant when the main character casts aspersions on the virtue of a woman he dallied with: “Who’s going to miss a slice off a cut loaf of bread?”

Journalists are discovering the same thing that the rest of us are discovering: The only way to keep your sanity about your job is to not care about your work anymore.

I'm just guessing here, but here’s what might have happened inside The Washington Post: Most seasoned journalists spotted this groovy idea coming down from Marketing for what it was: A spear in the ribs of journalistic integrity; an ethics time bomb just waiting for the rest of the media (competition) to get wind of it. Some of those journalists may have spoken up. And then got resolutely ignored. Perhaps some of those journalists already have a history of telling corporate that its desperate ideas are chuckleheaded. And some have resolved to not do it anymore, especially when they see people lose their jobs around them. Others are still doing it, but they’ve already been pigeon-holed as contrarians. So they get routinely ignored anyway.

Others just might not know any better. They’re young. They weren’t paying attention in their Legal Aspects of Journalism class – they certainly weren’t paying attention to the part about sustaining objectivity.

Others are just too plain tired. They’ve given up the fight for whatever has remained of the cherished Fourth Estate. They have lost that heart, that fight, that is supposed to be the red meat of good, solid journalism.

Result: Some young suit from corporate – who probably doesn’t know any better either – might have said to the gathered throng of silence: “So. We’re all in agreement, right? Good. Carry on.” And then the ombudsman gets to tell reporters from the competition that the plan “was well developed with the newsroom.”

I’m no romantic when it comes to journalism. The field has more mediocre schmoes in it than quality professionals – the same way with any profession. But the thing about journalists is that as a group they are more likely to be a gigantic pain in corporate’s backside than any other profession. And it should be that way.

So when they’re quiet – or even cooperative – with corporate on such a rotten, smarmy notion as sponsored salons, you know that you have a cadre of professionals that have had the stuffing kicked out of them. And they just want to hang on to whatever jobs might be left in a dying profession.

As a result, the Washington Post might be a cautionary tale for leaders everywhere. When you suddenly hear silence from quarters where you would normally expect shrieks of outrage, that is not a good thing. That means that you have lost the heart and passion of the very people who used to care enough to send their very best.

Mediocrity prevails when really great people stand by and go, “whatever.”

8 Ways to Keep Your Hopes Up While Looking for Your Next Job

2009-06-11T05:02:00.000-07:00

There are plenty of sad ironies around this current era of layoffs and job losses. It’s hard to just focus on one without feeling woefully inadequate about not covering all the bases. But for the purposes of this article, this is the irony of the day: Being without work gives you an awful lot of free time to brood, perchance to freak out. Just when you need most to be active and in the company of productive people, you’re on your own. And that’s, quite frankly, crazy-making.

Since exuding simmering desperation can guarantee that you won’t get a job offer, so holding onto your sanity is probably the most important discipline you can practice right now. This, in itself, is an essential skill. Here’s how you do it:

Remember that the children are watching. This is a powerful opportunity to teach your children how to handle modern uncertainty. You may be the first in your family to have been laid off (or maybe not) but you most certainly won’t be the last – and it’s a fair bet that at least one of your children will be laid off at least once in their lives. This is your chance to teach through your own behavior the power of positive thinking, a hopeful and calm outlook, and the importance of always remembering that intrinsic human value has nothing to do with your job or how much money you make. When it happens to them as adults, they’ll look back on these times and remember with admiration how amazingly gracefully you handled this crisis in your own career. And then copy you.

Break a stress habit. Who doesn’t have a stress habit? I’ll cop to mine: It’s those little fruit candies, hard on the outside and chewy in the center. It’s hard to break a stress habit when you’re knee-deep in the actual circumstances of that stress. If your stress habit was job-related, guess what! You don’t have a job anymore. So now’s the time to break that habit. At least something good will come from this down time, and you’ll have given yourself something to be proud of.

Start a health habit. Got time? Go for a walk. Got a lot of time? Go for a lot of walks. You know why.

Call your former coworkers. If you’ve been laid off, you may have discovered that as far as your former coworkers are concerned, you might as well have been abducted by aliens. Why haven’t your coworkers called to extend their sympathies, find out what happened and why, and join you in general righteous outrage? Reason: They don’t have a clue what to say. And maybe they’re a little fearful that it might happen to them (which it might, regardless of whether or not you keep in touch with them). It’s not fair, I know, but it’s up to you to make the first move.

When you’ve settled down emotionally and can be pretty sure you won’t get caught up in the turmoil of business that has long since gone on without you (no one’s paying you to care anymore, so don’t), give them a call. And get together for lunch or drinks after work. Show them that you’re just fine.

Layoffs are short (even though it doesn’t feel that way when you’re in the middle of one) and careers are long. You’ll be seeing these people again and again throughout your professional lives. So now’s the time to set the tone that you’re fine, there’s nothing for them to feel bad or guilty about (unless, of course, there is, but then that’s their problem, not yours), and that you’re still a good time at a party.

Rewrite your story. It’s possible to speak honestly about your layoff situation to potential employers. And you can even frame your story in such a way that you look really good – not expendable. San Diego-based executive coach, Duncan Mathison, explains the full process in Rebound: A Proven Plan For Starting Over After Job Loss. It’s too long to describe here, so simply take reassurance in knowing that there is a tried-and-true formula you can copy and practice. It takes two minutes to introduce yourself and tell your job saga on the most powerful, empowering way. Just writing your job story according to this formula is an especially powerful step in reminding yourself that you’re still an extremely valuable professional who had the misfortune of being tapped as a departee by a very regretful employer.

Get out of the house. In her book, The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron talks about “the artist’s date,” which is an excursion out of the house (away from the easel, computer, unringing landline) and into the world of enjoyment, adventure, tactile experiences, just plain old fresh air. You can only stare at online job boards just so long. You can only make a certain number of cold calls to potential employers just so long. You can only be in your PJs just so long. Get out! Go to a farmer’s market, take a hike (a laid-off friend of mine hiked the Appalachian Trail. Now that’s what I call going for a walk), go dancing. Go to a museum. Rest your eyes and heart and soul on something lovely and uplifting. Regularly. Like a date. With yourself.

Say no thanks to stupid advice. An engineer friend of mine knew that his job was going to be eliminated. And he took this as an opportunity to switch professions altogether, hopping the fence into the HR career path. Problem: he was already 15 years into his professional life, and he wasn’t so keen on starting at the bottom rung of a brand new profession. But half the people he talked to said, “No…you have to start from scratch and work your way up again.” Stupid advice. He listened very nicely, worked his network like a master, and made the hop – at director level.

Keep the faith. Whatever your religious beliefs are – or aren’t – whatever you do, don’t lose faith that it will truly all work out. I asked my engineer friend the other day, “How did you keep your cool during all this time of waiting and frustration?” He said, “I knew that the right opportunity was on its way to me and it was just a matter of holding out for it.”

Did he just sit on his hands and wait for the Good Luck Fairy to bop him on his head with the Perfect Job Wand? No. He worked like a fiend researching all sorts of job opportunities and companies, and even turning a few job offers down, because they weren’t the right fit. But he also held in his heart and head that as hard as he was working to find the right job, that right job was on its way to him. And that they would meet somewhere along the way. Which is exactly what they did.

This time will pass. But the enduring lesson is that true job security lies only between our ears. Which is why it’s all the more important to keep your wits about you. Keep it together. People are counting on you.

Should You Take A Job That You Really Don't Want?

2009-05-16T18:55:00.000-07:00

A month or so ago a chick in Northern California came very close to tweeting herself out of a job. Her snarky – and seemingly entitled – attitude about a fantastic career break outraged the Twitterverse out there who interpreted a casual tweet that she thought was among friends with a really spoiled attitude toward an opportunity that others would have given their right arms for.

But it opened a new question for me…which is “should you really take a job you don’t want?” In today’s job marketplace, it seems terribly ungrateful to look a gift job offer in the mouth. But let’s face it, just because the job market is squeakingly tight that doesn’t mean you should take the first job that’s offered to you, especially if the very thought of it makes you want to hurl.

Let’s take a look at some of the reasons why you might legitimately want to say “no” to a job offer:

1. It represents a gigantic step backward. Or at least a really nasty stall. Sure, there’s a recession going on, with very high unemployment rates in most places. But that doesn’t mean you should stop growing professionally. We deserve to keep moving forward in our lives and work. One of these days the recession is going to lift and when it does we’re going to want to be further along in our career path – not further behind.

2. You feel like taking the job will be slumming it somehow. There’s nothing wrong with being ambitious and seeking out really great workplaces filled with coworkers you can respect and learn from. Socially, we’re under a certain amount of pressure not to get “too big for our britches,” too full of ourselves. So, we can keep these feelings between you and me. But, again, let’s face it: Professional growth comes from working with people you can learn from and who can learn from you. If there isn’t that feeling of mutual elevation, you’re going to feel boxed in by reduced expectations. And…not coincidentally, your coworkers won’t be appreciating you at all. In fact you may end up feeling resented and rejected by a group that has rightly spotted you as not belonging. And you end up feeling really bad about yourself. For no reason.

3. You get the strong feeling that your hiring manager is a little too smug about taking advantage of the buyer’s market. In some areas, talent is on a fire sale (pun unintended). And many companies are able to pick up some great people who might not have been available otherwise. But that doesn’t mean that your potential new supervisor has to rub it in. Or lord it over you. Or make you feel small for being a little needier than you might have been otherwise.

4. You just plain don’t want to do the job. If the very notion of the job potential makes you mad, resentful or vomitacious (yeah, I know that’s not a word, I just like the way it sounds), don’t do it. You’d be taking away a job from someone else who would really dig it. You may have outgrown the level of the job that’s being offered to you, and that’s what’s making you mad. Or you’re burned out from having done that job too much for too long. Or you’re really ready for something fun and exciting. Notice the bad feelings. But don't let them spin you into confusion, send you into an orbit of rage or frustration, or at the very least cause you to commit a regrettable Tweet. Just take them as data points or even symptoms of a rapid growth spurt that even you might not have been aware of. And make your choices accordingly.

Only you will know whether a job is right for you. And even though the job market may be on life support right now, it is still okay to just say no to the offer if it just feels wrong. You’re not being spoiled or selfish. In fact you’re being generous. You’re throwing it back for someone else to catch it – someone who is totally right for that opportunity and the opportunity will be totally right for them. There will be someone on the planet who will never know you but who will owe you a debt of gratitude.

And, as for you, you will be free to say "yes" to the job that is right for you. And won't you be glad you had the stomach to be able to say "no" to the job you really, really didn't want?

How to Keep Your Spirits Up During This Time of Painful Uncertainty

2009-04-19T09:34:00.000-07:00

Last week I sent out a request to readers to tell me how they were punishing themselves for being out of work. Boy, that was a mistake. My inbox was flooded with emails from people truly in pain for being jobless. They expressed their suffering in alcohol abuse, isolation, insomnia, weight gain (or loss), hopelessness thinking, neglecting the kids, you name it. I got it all. So this week I’m going to focus my message on practical steps for staying positive in terribly uncertain times.

Remember, you don’t get extra points in heaven for your misery here on earth. You also don’t look smarter for being cynical. Not to belittle your suffering here (not at all), I would like to invite you to at least contain it in a sharply defined box, and not let it slosh over into all aspects of your life. Sure, when you do that, you will have really miserable people tell you that you’re just being silly, shallow, stupid by finding reasons to be happy. Let ‘em. Whole lives have been ruined by someone casually dropping their own D-bomb (D for despair, depression) on someone they just passed judgment on and then walking away from the wreckage, not realizing what they have done. Your life is your own to lead, and you owe it to yourself to find happiness wherever you can.

Listen to your heart. If people keep hammering away at you to do the "smart" thing, and your heart is telling you different, listen to your heart. Every time I ignore my instincts, heart, desires, etc., and let myself get talked into something I really don't want to do, I regret it dearly. And quite seriously and painfully.

Treat regrets like cavities. You can't erase regrets. I've tried. You can't even forget them, really. I've tried. Woulda coulda shoulda's should be treated like cavities: Permanent holes that should be identified, cleaned out from debris and the stinking ickies, and then filled with something really strong: gratitude, faith, hope, appreciation for what we have, lessons we don't need to learn again, that kind of thing.

Have a plan of action. The above-mentioned negativos would scoff at this and say, “well, duh.” Yes indeedy, duh. But here’s where I’m going with this: When you have a plan you have something to measure your progress against. Small wins – like how many phone calls did you make today? – are far more within your control than “did you get a job offer today?” Control will keep you from sliding down the muddy embankment of overwhelm. A plan will help you keep your spirits up, and that’s what we’re talking about today.

A plan will also do something else for you: It will give you something to talk about instead of your frustration. This could be especially important when it comes to talking with your significant other. In my book, Rebound, psychologist Bill Berman talks about how the stresses that he sees in marriages, especially around the job search, come from the other spouse feeling shut out. And to be “helpful,” that person starts offering up some well-meaning ideas – which, of course, as we all know, usually makes matters worse. Having a plan of action will stave off the “just get any job, already” last-ditch suggestion.

Declare a moratorium on downward spiral thinking. About 10 years ago, I was flat broke and living on Cape Cod (if you’re going to be stranded in life, Cape Cod is a good place to do that in). This was a time in the U.S. economy where it seemed that everyone was getting rich. And I couldn’t get a phone call returned, much less a paycheck. I couldn’t even keep a part-time job in a local bookstore, of all places. I was definitely in the trenches. I must have exuded some major loser vibe. So I would wallow in the question why? Why why why why why?

One day I realized that this kind of thought habit was getting me nowhere, and probably cranking up the loser vibe to glass-breaking decibels. So I gave myself permission to stop thinking like that. For just a month.

I still worked according to plan. I just gave myself permission to not feel bad about myself and my lot in life every single second of my waking (and most of my sleeping) hours. The relief was a kind of serene, heavy blanket of quiet. It really does feel better when when the anxiety stops.

Raise your sights, don’t lower them. We’ve talked about this in this space before. Don’t go for jobs you’re clearly overqualified for because you think they’ll be a sure bet. They won’t be. Remember: entry level does not mean easy entry. And healthy hiring managers are not going to be attracted to candidates who are so desperate that they’ll take “anything.” That’s insulting to everyone, including the hiring manager. And you’d be taking away an opportunity from the person who is the right fit for that job.

Be a cluster buster. Great networking (the kind that will get you your next job) is about meeting people in totally different clusters or groups than your current selection of social and professional circles. Use all that energy that you were using beating yourself up, and channel it in the direction of meeting people you wouldn’t have otherwise met before. Seek out one-on-one meetings with these people. I’ll be talking more about that in future columns. But you can certainly teach yourself this material in the meantime. Don’t wait for me.

Don’t depend so much on job boards. They’re good but they’re limited. And every time another half million people lose their jobs (that would be monthly these days), your competition is getting stiffer and stiffer. You’ve got to make your own way. Again, I’ll tell you more about that in future blog postings. Just know that over-reliance on online postings is playing a huge role in bringing you down.

Go out and play. As I’ve mentioned to you before, there have been tons of studies done on how people are more innovative, creative, and optimistic that day after they had a good time -- not the day after they kept their nose to the grindstone. Infusing your life with fun also helps keep up your resilience. If you have children, you also get the side benefit of knowing that you’re setting a good example to the kids that happiness does not depend on a steady paycheck.

Lay off the booze. Really. And pills too.

Coddle your noodle. I know, vitamins and healthy food are expensive. But you are placing a lot of demands on your mind right now, putting your brain through its paces. Give yourself the brain food you need to keep it running at its best. Blueberries, strawberries, walnuts, salmon, carrots, spinach…you’ve seen this list before. Augment the food with a multivitamin, E, all the B’s. We’re talking about keeping your spirits up here, and your brain needs every possible support it can get right now. Don’t be mean to it.

Likewise, watch your explanatory style. When your phone isn’t ringing, what are you telling yourself as to the reason why? When the other person on the line is sounding peevish, is it you? One of my favorite expressions these days is “don’t believe everything you think.” If you punish yourself by assuming that everything bad or disappointing that’s happening is happening because of you, somehow, knock it off.

If you have trouble getting to sleep, you might consider relaxation or self hypnosis tapes. My favorite (and I’m just saying this, I’m not making a penny off of this recommendation) is almost any “paraliminal” from Learning Strategies Corporation. (www.learningstrategies.com) There’s one on relaxation which knocks me out. But I like almost all of them, except the one on peak performance. My preference is the ones that feature just Paul Scheele’s voice alone. The ones he does in collaboration with others make me feel rattled.

(I have trouble staying asleep. So in the middle of the night I just reach for the earplugs and start one up all over again.)

In the morning, practice mind control. My waking nano-seconds are my worst time. For decades I’d wake up with a self-abusive tape already running (it’s amazing I’d even be willing to go to sleep the night before, knowing what would be in store for me upon my waking up). A few years ago, I resolved to start up my own brain engine in the morning. So the second I felt myself coming awake, I’d intentionally tell myself all the good things I could about my life, my world, my place in it, etc.

Yes, yes. I’m aware that might come off as very Stuart Smalley to some of you – especially you cynics out there. Tough. All’s I can say is that most of us would never talk to a tender young child the way we talk to ourselves. So if you are like me and somehow got the idea that despicable self-talk was the same as emotional discipline, then you need to change your tune – especially in the morning.

Finally, take your lessons, impressions and influence from positive people who are out there enjoying life and finding ways to thrive. In Rebound, I spoke with people who were laid off and then landed happily. I wanted to talk to those folks with happy endings to report. Let the news programs focus on the dread tales of over-qualified people humiliating themselves in the job search. That’s helping them sell ads; it’s not helping you keep your spirits up. I wanted to help you keep your spirits up by showing how happy landings can and do happen.

Keeping your spirits up will be your most competitive advantage when it comes to finding your next job. Hiring managers will want to work with the person they will enjoy being with 8, 9, even 10 hours a day. Not some sad sack who says, “I just want a job, any job.”

Remember the lessons of Tigger and Eeyore in Winnie the Pooh. You want to be Tigger.

PS: Another GREAT way to start the morning is by watching this following visualization tool. It's by the folks who brought us The Secret. I don't know what I think about the Law of Attraction but I do know that an uplifted spirit is its own reward. So check this out. It's free, wonderful, and you can watch without having to sign up for anything: http://thesecret.tv/secret-to-you/

PPS: If you have a favorite way of keeping your spirits up, email me at martha@reboundyourcareer.com and I'll send you a free PDF of my first book, Find Your Calling, Love Your Life.

Are You Punishing Yourself for Losing Your Job?

2009-04-09T07:18:00.000-07:00

Losing your job is terrible. But what are you doing to make it worse? Negative thinking? Assuming the job market is so hostile that there's no point in keeping your standards up? Spending weeks in your jammies? Cutting back on even the smallest pleasures in life? Less patient than you'd like to be with the kids? Applying for crappy jobs? Eating crappy food? Drinking more than you should be? Taking up smoking again? Letting the dishes stack up in the sink and dust bunnies do their bunny thing under your bed?

Being kind to yourself and your family is not about coddling yourself. It's about taking care of yourself. And, in the meantime, demonstrating to your children that self-respect and realistic optimism can prevail, no matter what emergencies are swirling around you right now.

What are you doing to punish yourself for being out of work right now? Write to me at martha@reboundyourcareer.com and let me know. I'll send you a free copy of my first book, Find Your Calling, Love Your Life as a thanks!

If You're Worried About Acing the Interview, You're Barking Up the Wrong Tree

2009-03-13T18:29:00.001-07:00

It’s hard to be choosy these days, isn’t it? The news is filled with stories like the public school that received more than 700 resumes in response to an advertisement for a janitor’s position (did you hear the emphasized detail that the resumes had to be put into a safe? What’s the deal with that? I truly don’t understand what that signifies. I’m thinking that’s just media hype, designed to get you all in a dither about something that’s neither here nor there.). It’s hard to hold onto hope and high standards for what kind of job you’d like to ultimately land when you’re surrounded by messages that the job market world is coming to an end.

Buy into the terrible headlines that people are losing jobs right and left (and, make no mistake, they are), and you’ll be tempted to abandon all hope for a job that’s good enough for you. But let me remind you, as Lauren Doliva said in my new book, Rebound: A Proven Plan for Starting Over After Job Loss, there is still a war for talent. “And talent is winning,” she said.

In other words, find the job opportunity that matches your skills, abilities and passions, and you’ll nail the interview – regardless of how worried you are about whether or not you’ll “ace” it. People are still looking for you. You just have to find those folks. And that means you have to be just as choosy as your interviewers are.

Easier said than done, right? Right. I get that. And it’s hard to forget that it’s the interviewer who has the ultimate power to actually offer you the job. I get that too. But remember, you have the ultimate power to say yes or no to that job offer. “Talent is winning the War for Talent,” and you’re on the winning side. Even if we find ourselves in a national economy of 10% unemployment, that means 90% of America is still working. So why not you?

So what does this have to do with worrying about “acing” the job interview? One word: Desperation. Regardless of whether you’re single or married, you probably remember at least one date when all you wanted to do was crawl out of the restroom window. Puppy dog eyes that transmit the message, “you’re my best and only chance for happiness.” Ew! Just typing those words makes my skin crawl. Memories….

So what are you going to do to keep the desperation to a low boil? Or a low howl? Here are some ideas:

Keep your dance card full. Don’t just rely only on online job boards for lining up interviews. If you do, you’ll be sitting at home staring at the unringing telephone forever. Seek out networking conversations that might lead somewhere, even if that lead is only more introductions to additional people you can have informational conversations with.

Get over your aversion to networking. I’m writing a new book right now with the ultra-fabulous Duncan Mathison, who is teaching me (and ultimately you) all about the fantastic networking techniques that remove you from those expensive, soulless, schmoozy schmoozy hiya hiya mixers that make you want to run screaming for the ballroom doors. But while we’re waiting for the book to actually hit the stores, I’ll share with you what I can. Let’s just say for the moment that one introduction leads to another. And you probably haven’t yet met the person who will offer you the job of your dreams. That person will most likely come into your life through a series of personal referrals. And it’s likely that you have met the person who will ultimately lead you to that person. Hmmmm, who could that be?

In the meantime, network your brains out so that you have plenty of options to pick from (or at least you feel as though you do), so you won't worry so much about "acing" the only interview on your calendar -- all the while ignoring the signs that you could be walking into the job of your nightmares.

Remember that when you are in the interview itself, you must be just as careful a shopper as the interviewer is. When you’re talking with the person who might be your boss, find out from him or her specifically what makes the person who will ultimately land the open position a top performer – in the top 20% sparkly bracket. First of all, it’s important to know exactly what those characteristics are. But it’s also important to know if your potential boss actually knows what those characteristics are. How can you please a boss who doesn’t know what he or she actually wants? And then decide whether or not you want to please your boss in just those ways. Qualify your potential boss just as much as they're qualifying you.

Make sure you are willing to actually meet those characteristics. If you’re picking up a vibe of prejudice, attitude or cynicism, don’t automatically think, “it will be different with me.” It probably won’t be. But you won’t really know for sure until you find out what’s behind that ‘tude.

I remember that during my first job interview, I heard the sentiment, “It takes a special person to do this job well.” Well. Let me tell you, that spoke directly to my confused, codependent heart. I thought to myself, “I’m a special person. Whatever the challenge is, I’ll muscle right up to it.” Translation: “I will earn your love.” Boy was I wrong. Boy was I stupid.

What I should have said was, “Really? Tell me more. What do you mean by, uhm, special?” If they were honest they would have said, “You won’t mind being treated like crap by a narcissistic prima donna witch – I mean, boss. You won’t mind being humiliated in front of strangers. You won’t mind being on the receiving end of smug abuse from the person who just had the job before you and was promoted to be your direct supervisor. You won’t mind being set up to fail by people who really don’t care that this is your first job and maybe you could use a little kindness and understanding.”

If all of those things were said to me in answer to a question that I posed: “Really? Tell me more,” then I would say that I aced the interview by getting the fact that I didn't want it. I got the job. I took the job. I lost.

I get emails all the time from people who feel abused by their bosses. They need so much help and emotional support. But the first piece of advice is “beware of the dog.” And in this case, that dog might be a lousy job. Don’t be so eager to ace a job interview that will chain you to a dog.

How to Land the Leadership Job of Your Dreams

2009-03-11T17:21:00.000-07:00

Don't Turn Your Back on Love

2009-02-28T11:38:00.001-08:00

Anyone who knows me well enough to be invited into my house will tell you I have a lot of (I mean, too much, of) several things: towering stacks of aging New York Times that seem to share in my delusion that I really will get around to reading them all, magazines that have bought into the same lie (Coastal Livings get read, Harvard Business Reviews never see the outside of their poly-bags, I’m sorry to say), and books. (There are some who might say that I have too many cats, but I don’t let those people in.)

Some of the books are cynical (like Working, by Studs Terkel). Some are silly (like Your Cat’s Just Not That Into You, by Richard Smith and David Sipress). Some are cherished, like Airman's Odyssey by Antoine de Saint Exupery (you know, of Little Prince fame?).

But the one that brings today’s post to mind is Marsha Sinetar’s book, Do What You Live and the Money Will Follow. I’m so glad to see that just one week short of its 20th birthday, it’s still going strong. Especially these days.

My worry for “these days” is that people are going to be tempted to give up on pursuing their passions, turning a deaf ear to that still small voice, in favor of pursuing some kind of career alternative that is “smart.” Smart or quixotic, we have all been leveled by the same economic scythe. And there will be some of us who might be tempted to put aside our yearning, burning passions to go after retraining in some field that the business magazines have identified as the top careers of the next decade (give, take).

Well, given the state of the journalism career path these days, my question is this: If it’s so smart to go after those jobs, how come the business journalists themselves haven’t dropped their press creds like poisoned pen letters and gone chasing after those gigs themselves? Answer: When your calling is in your blood, there’s just no ignoring it.

You still have to find work that you can love. It has to do more than paying the bills. In fact, if you have found a life’s work that falls just short of paying all the bills, don’t change the job, reduce the bills. Here’s why:

You will like what you see in the mirror. We are not our jobs. And we certainly are not our income. But we are definitely made up of how we spend our working hours. Are you proud of what you do and who you do it for? I sure hope so. That kind of pride is cheap to acquire and excruciatingly expensive to lose. Either way, it’s precious.

You will like whom you work with and for. When you are doing what you love, people who choose to enter into a transaction with you already have something in common with you. There’s a parallel universe of mutual respect that you two immediately engage on. And that just gets any conversation off on the right foot – especially a business one.

You become a much more valuable (read: indispensable) employee. Passion-driven projects ignite your imagination. And when your imagination is sparked, so is your capacity for innovation. And when that happens, boy-howdy! Companies see you as the ticket to their market dominance (at least the smart ones do, and you only want to work for the companies that get it). Which isn’t to say that you won’t ever get laid off again. But if it happens to you under those circumstances, you will rightly recognize it as a loss of a job, not of your livelihood. Big difference.

You’ll love your life 10 years later. Yesterday I reconnected with a friend I had met through work a little over 10 years ago. We haven’t seen each other in a decade but we threw our arms around each other and hugged long and hard (the kind of hug that you get when you’re not thinking to yourself, “okay, was this long enough?”).

I met Evelyn about the same time I discovered my own life’s calling and passion – which is, oddly enough, to study joy in the American workplace. The minute I discovered the kind of work I would love forever, I discovered a new part of myself to love. And when that happened, I discovered a whole new way to reach out to the world and connect with people I will love for the rest of my life. It’s quite a satisfying sequence, let me tell you.

So good times/bad times will come and go. And the jury is out as to how long this particular spate of bad times will persist. So while we’re sitting this one out (to whatever extent we’re sitting it out), let’s learn about love and how we can express it through the work we do and the people we meet along the way.

Not a bad gig, if you ask me.

Special free offer (really, no catch): If you would like a free PDF copy of my first book, Find Your Calling, Love Your Life, email me at martha@reboundyourcareer.com and I'll send it to you right away.

Make Up Your Mind to Change Your Life in 2009: Part 2

2009-02-22T12:34:00.000-08:00

Much to everyone’s surprise, it gets really cold here in New Mexico in the winter – frozen-solid-birdbath-water cold. Consequently I’m never in a hurry to slipper-shuffle down the long drive to the newspaper box – not when the flannel and down on my bed are so warm. And so my first news fix happens even before my first cup of coffee. Courtesy of CNN and my remote control.

This morning there was a segment about how seasoned executives are competing with 14-year-olds for summer jobs with theme parks. One former executive/current job candidate is quoted as saying how this is her chance to do what she’s always wanted to do, which is work with animals and people. To which I thought: Yeah right.

And then I thought: Uh oh. Here comes a whole new Recession-era story line: It’s gotten so bad out there that seasoned executives are competing head to head (in a manner of speaking) with youngsters who can barely be trusted to upsell by simply saying, “You want fries with that?” And then quickly on the heels of that dread scenario will be the executive applicants’ frustrated conclusion that “I am such a loser, I can’t even compete with a pimply pre-pube.”

What recruiter in his or her right mind would even consider a seasoned, middle-career executive for a job that a teenager can – and, by the way, should – do? There’s the over-qualified issue, of course. But even more to the point, these people are totally non-applicable. If we’re going to see more of this kind of behavior, we should add a third category to the problems of being qualified. You’ve got over-qualified (which is often code for being, well, you know). You’ve got under-qualified. And you’ve got N/A qualified. That’s where these people land.

Recruiters know that as much as these people might want the gig now, if they are handed a six-figure job offer in July, they’re going to ditch their summer job in a twinkling. They also know that the supervisors are going to be barely post-pubescents themselves. And who wants that kind of power issue going on? And, perhaps most compelling of all, if you’re talking customer service, just think of all those parents taking their kids to these parks for a jolly holiday and, perhaps, an escape from their own woes. Do they really want to hand their money over to someone just like them? Do they want to be reminded on their day of escape, “Don’t judge, you could be me before too long”? I’m thinking probably not.

N/A stands for non-applicable. It also stands for non-appropriate. And it just isn’t appropriate to crawl down your career ladder just for the sake of a job – even if you need one so badly that first paycheck is all that stands between you and Snidely Whiplash. Plus it’s insulting to everyone involved: you, the hiring company, all those kids who really deserve to take their spot on the first rung of their own career ladder. Entry-level does not mean easy-entry.

Which brings me to Step Two of my conversation with certified executive and life coach, and licensed mental health counselor Meredith Kaplan. (Click here for Step One: Acknowledge Your Feelings) Merry (that's her pretty picture at the top of this blog posting) says that if you want to change your life in 2009, Know Your Core Genius is the essential second step. If it’s counting correct change, filling bags of popcorn, and filing customers onto whirl-and-hurl rides, great! Knock yourself out. But I’m thinking you’re capable of more than that. It’s largely a matter of remembering what those things are and holding on to them for dear life.

“You owe it to yourself to figure out what your core genius is,” she says. “If you do it by yourself, brainstorm the answers to such questions as:

‘Where have I had peak experiences?’
‘What have I done that no one else can do quite like I can?’
‘What is it that attracts people to me in terms of my work-related skills?’
‘What is it that attracts people to me in terms of who I am as a person?’
‘What is it that I have or can do that is unique from other people?’

“These are the traits, skills and passions that can take you further in your career,” she says.

If you come up with a big, fat, “nuthin” when you ask yourself those questions, it could be that your self-esteem has been so hammered by your rough patch that you can’t see yourself as clearly as your friends can. So, says Merry, go to your friends for the feedback you need to get that clear picture of who you really are and what you can really do.

“Seek out people who really know you, people you can really be yourself with, and ask them straightforwardly, ‘What do you think my strengths are?’” she says. Those are the things you want to expand on and use to position yourself in the career marketplace.

Keep in mind all the elements that make up your core genius and you won’t be so tempted to give into the siren song of “gimme a job, any job will do.” First of all, you won’t get it. Secondly, be glad. Just imagine how silly you would feel if you encountered on Saturday the guy who interviewed you for an executive job on Friday. Only now you’re wearing a silly hat and counting change.

(To contact Merry directly, email her at meredithkaplan@bellsouth.net)

Wouldn't it be great if you could look under your prospective boss's hood?

2009-02-11T04:55:00.001-08:00

We get so wrapped up in trying to impress our potential boss that we forget to look for warning signs that this person might have some serious issues of his or her own. This article describes some of the indications that your potential boss might be a nightmare to work for. It begins after this brief introduction to my new book, Rebound.

Do you know anyone who has been laid off -- or thinks a lay-off might be coming? Please tell them about Rebound: A Proven Plan For Starting Over After Job Loss! To read more about it, click on the title, which will take you to the Amazon.com description.

Okay, so I have a quick question for you. Are you a nut? If I gave you this cup right here, would you be able to confidently take it into the bathroom, knowing that the results wouldn’t hurt your chances of a job? How do you blow off steam when you’re tense? If you found a wallet on the sidewalk, what would you do with it? If I called one of those background checkers on you right now, what would they find on you? Do you have multiple cats and have a tendency to leave newspapers all over the floor and dishes in the sink? (No, wait, that’s me.) Are you the kind of person who promises only one question but really asks, let’s see, one, two, three, four, five, six questions?

Prospective employers want to know these things about you (except, probably, not so much the thing about the cats; they would probably prefer not to know about the cats). And they have ways of finding these things out: experts in background checks, personality tests, aptitude tests, the cup in the bathroom deal. They can really peer under your hood and find out all sorts of things about you, maybe even stuff that you didn’t know yourself. Surprise!

It sure would be nice to have the same advantages when you are considering prospective bosses, wouldn’t it? While you can’t exactly hand them a cup, nor get their social security number for your own rap sheet research, or ask them to fill out this quick personality screening test, it seems like it would only be fair play. I mean, you have every reason to need to predict whether these people will go all nut-bag on you, just as much as they need to know about you. You’d think that they had already passed those emotional-health gates by now. After all, they were once candidates for the jobs they have. But there sure are a lot of wackoids (that’s a clinical term) out there who are in charge of other peoples’ careers and peace of mind.

We’ve all heard of bully bosses, for example. And I’d venture a guess that most of us have personal experience with at least one or two people who were just flat-out not very nice. To put it mildly. As it turns out, it may not be that these people are mean to the bone. It could be that certain parts of their brains are over-active. And it sure would be nice to know which parts are on overdrive before we accept the job offer, wouldn’t it?

Over this past weekend I found myself lost in a fantastic book by Daniel Amen, MD, called Change Your Brain, Change Your Life. (On Saturday morning I promised myself just one chapter, but before I knew it the weekend was gone at precisely the moment I turned the last page of the book. I’m a slow reader, plus I underlined a lot.)

A blog posting is not the place to go into total details about the book. But let’s just say that he has a scientific process, much like an MRI, that can read what components of a person’s brain are bouncing off the proverbial wall (another clinical term). And this way he’s able to show why the person is behaving so badly. Negative thinking, procrastination, emotional control, rage, violence, ability to control anxiety, ability to organize, capacity for empathy, tendency to worry, tendency to hold grudges, etc., (perhaps even the proclivity to write long sentences) are all seated in certain parts of the brain: the deep limbic system; the basal ganglia; the prefrontal cortex; the cingulate system; and the temporal lobes.

All very interesting. But the thought that kept occurring to me (in what part of my brain I wonder) was this: Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just inject our interviewers with isotope, make them lie down on a drawer, and slide them under one of those thingamabobs to find out exactly what’s going on with their noodle? As Eliza Doolittle says in My Fair Lady: “Wouldn’t it be loverly?”

Since you can’t, you really have to play super-detective when you go into interviews. And you have to have the nerve to see things for exactly how they are and make the decision whether you actually would want to work there. Here are some ideas:

Take a look around the department and the office: It seems that nowadays offices all look alike. Modular, cubicle. That’s okay for some, but that would just suck the life out of me. (I mean, what’s a workspace without newspapers all over the floor? I ask you.) But that’s just me. What you want to be looking for is an indication of whether you would be comfortable there. If everything looks so tidy that it appears that the staff is under direct orders to hide all the evidence, someone might be a little controlling at the top. Or if things look so sterile that a phone swab wouldn’t register a single microbe, could you possibly have a latter-day Howard Hughes on your hands? Maybe, maybe not. Just take notes.

Or does the office look like a teenager works there? Gum wrappers strewn everywhere? Candy spilling out of the drawers? Bent, empty soft drink cans standing forgotten on any available surface? Posters of some gawd-awful rock band on the walls? Files on the floor? Any kind of evidence of hyper energy and perhaps attention deficit disorder? Does the staff look crazed and on edge? Welcome to your future. You might want to google “twinkie defense,” before saying yes to the job offer.

Conduct a little behavioral-interviewing of your own: Personally, I think there’s nothing worse than being on the hotseat and having an interviewer ask me a question that starts with “Tell me about a time when….” I even draw a blank when someone asks me, “Do you have any questions for us?” My eyes roll back and all I can squeak out is “hummuna hummuna hummana.” Not very professional, is it? And I talk to people for a living. So if your interviewer is asking you to tell stories, ask a few back – most especially if the interviewer is your prospective boss.

The questions I really like are: “How do you like to work under pressure? Can you tell me of a time when you and your team pulled together under a really hard deadline? How did you rally the troops? What was the secret to your team success? How did you celebrate afterwards?” (Notice the positive orientation here?)

Another one: “What signs do you look for in a new employee’s performance that tell you that this is a successful hire?” Here you look like you’re gathering data on what the boss considers to be successful work habits. But what you’re actually getting is a solid idea as to whether the boss is a positive-thinker who has tons of stories of how much he or she appreciates the staff. Positive thinkers always have great anecdotes at their fingertips about how wonderful their people are. Word to wise: If you hear, “our people are our most valuable assets,” make a note of that and circle it in red. Danger! Danger!

Ask your prospective boss about the person who previously had the job. Why is it now vacated? Hopefully because the person was promoted from within or has gone on to a stellar career elsewhere. How long did the person have the job? What did he or she like best about it? What was it about that person that the boss especially appreciated? Listen for how the boss talks about your predecessor. Is he or she happy for that person’s ongoing success? Or resentful that that person has moved on? I actually heard one boss call a departed employee a bad word that is brought to you by the letters A and H. Hmmm. An unresolved issue there, I’d say.

Is the prospective boss polite to you? If you’re a candidate, you’re in the category of “guest,” not “slave begging for work.” So you should be treated like a guest. The interview should be on time. And if out-of-control circumstances make the boss late, someone should let you know. If the tardiness is more than a half hour, you should be given the opportunity to reschedule if you want to.

You may be actually be the one who was there first, with a new boss coming in to take over the department. How does that person treat the new staff? With humility and receptivity as befits a newbie? Or someone who is over-compensating for his or her discomfort? What language does that person use?

I was at a client’s office once when a new department head passed by me at the soft drink machine. While I had worked for the client for many years, both as a staffer and then as a consultant, this guy was totally new. When he saw me, he said, “Skulking around here, trying to scrounge up work?” Huh. That was weird. But everyone is a little weird when they start a new job. So I gave it a pass.

But then he hired a new direct report, who said to me, “If you intend to keep working for us, just know that I’m going to hold your feet to the fire.” Alrighty then. Given the choice (not to mention self-respect), I regretfully scratched that client off my list. That was that. The end of a great run.

I recognize that in these tough times, it’s hard to be too choosy when it comes to landing a great job with a mentally healthy boss. I mean, everyone is just a little bit nuts. But go into these interviews with your eyes, ears and intuition on full receptivity mode. The realities of food-in-mouth, roof-over-head may force you to accept the job as it’s offered to you.

But you will know that, with that peek under your boss’s hood, you should probably keep your resume current and in circulation. You’ll also know not to take any weirdness personally. It’s just them and that hot spot firing off in their brain.

How to Raise Successful Kids When You're Between Jobs

2009-02-10T04:52:00.000-08:00

These are different times, certainly. But you and I have both seen enough catastrophizing parallels with the Great Depression to wonder if maybe there are some personal lessons we can draw from our parents or grandparents who lived through tougher times than these. It’s certainly hard to feel in control during an economic storm. But how we react to this time will affect future generations who are watching us and taking their own lessons from our example. This article is about what to do with the kids so they continue to grow up hopeful, ambitious, confident, and optimistic.

There has been a lot of recent research into what creates a flourishing life founded on an emotionally empowered outlook. Positive psychology. Happiness. Learned optimism. Emotional intelligence. I think it’s very interesting that right before the proverbial matter hit the proverbial fan, there was an upsurge in research around these topics. It was almost as though our antennae were up for the wintery days ahead of us. Now it’s time for us to put that research to good use – especially for the sake of the children.

Watch how you talk about being laid off. First of all, don’t lie to the kids. They already know something is up – little pitchers have big radars these days. So if you lie to them, they’re going to come to their own conclusions or grow up learning not to trust their intuition. Both. Bad. In an age-appropriate way, tell them that you might be home more than before while you look for your next wonderful opportunity. In the meantime, everyone has to watch their pennies more carefully. And that means them, too.

In a related matter, be mindful of the vocabulary you use around the topic of money. In a recent TV news segment advising parents on how to talk to their children about money, a mother said, “I told my daughter it’s my job to worry about money.” Worry about money? Oh my gosh! Like a dog who only hears the words “Rover” and “food,” a child immediately parses out the words “worry” and “money.” And puts those two together for the rest of her life.

Money is not something to worry about. It’s a resource that we can control. We can make it when we need it (or want it), it helps us live the lives we want to live and if we take care of it, it will take care of us when we’re older. Money is a good thing.

Tell empowering stories. Whether the stories are from your past, your day, or the daily newspaper, talk about times when good things happened -- especially as a result of someone taking initiative or acted in a generous way. Talk about the meaning behind the work you do (or did) in an upbeat way that shows children how their efforts really can result in making the world a better place. And how somehow it all works out in the end.

Give the kids an appropriate role in the current situation. Right now the culture message out there is that everything is out of our control. Even when we think we’re being prudent and have millions in the bank, suddenly we don’t. Where’s the control? Where’s the payoff in self-restraint? Answer: In the little moments of every day when we go out of our way to help others, show kindnesses, taken on a project and see it from start to finish. Whether it’s picking up the toys, doing the dishes or helping with a Habitat for Humanity house project, there’s something that every children can do to make the world a better place and see immediate results.

Have a good time! It’s so important to remember that a parent’s job is to teach their children to be joyful. And joy isn’t job-dependent! It’s as free as an afternoon in the park. And there’s huge ROI associated with joy. Harvard researchers have shown that people are much more creative and innovative the day after playing than they were keeping their nose to the grindstone. So, in case you’re so Type A that you need this little extra rationale: Fun is good for the career.

Keep those dreams coming. It’s tempting to focus only on the terrible headlines, how one more friend is out of work, another house in foreclosure, etc. And, yes, it’s also important to share the realities of real life (in an age appropriate way, of course). At the same time, dreaming of a happy future is an essential survival skill, especially when you brainstorm with your children about how to put feet to those dreams and actually achieve milestones toward making them happen. It costs nothing to dream. And maybe as you brainstorm as a family about what practical steps to take to make dreams come true, everyone (even you) will be more and more inspired to greet the future with a hopeful heart.

Make Up Your Mind to Change Your Life in 2009: Part 1

2009-02-06T09:03:00.000-08:00

If you're a magazine nerd like I am, you might remember when Self magazine was first published. I loved that magazine, especially the feature that always appeared in the back, called Fresh Start. It was always just a one-pager, featuring the story of how one young woman changed her life in a really significant way. Oh how I missed that department when they canceled it. I just loved stories of people who were given the chance to begin again.

Well, here's the deal now. With hundreds of thousands of people being laid off and many more facing the prospect of losing their jobs in upcoming months, we're all being given the chance to begin again. Woo-pee! Right? Yeah. I didn't think so. But, like it or not, change is being handed to us, if not actually being shoved down our respective throats. So we have a choice: we can change our lives intentionally, or have them changed for us. I pick the first choice. Which would you pick?

But, you know as well as I do that no life change can actually stick unless we make the change from the inside. And we have to make that choice happily and hopefully (not in the context of dread and punishment). So, to get the best possible advice for all of us, I went to one of my favorite sources for mental health counseling and positive thinking -- Meredith (the very aptly nicknamed "Merry") Kaplan. (That's her pretty picture at the top of this posting)

(I also interviewed her for my chapter on handling rage in Rebound: A Proven Plan For Starting Over After Job Loss.)

Merry (meredithkaplan@bellsouth.net) is a licensed mental health counselor and an executive and life coach with a national clientele (but she herself is based in Palm Beach Gardens, FL). And she gave me this six-step process to align your thinking around change and to organize the way you manage your life from here on out.

We've broken this interview down into seven parts. Use this process and see what your life is like by 2010! We're thinking that this action process will prove to you through real experience that you do have the power to make your life exactly what you want it to be. So...here's Step One:

Step One: Acknowledge Your Feelings

Merry says, "It's so important to acknowledge your feelings because if you don't you are in denial. And your denial will hinder the process of setting a new course for yourself. Once we are in denial and we are not accepting, we limit ourselves from opportunities for success, opportunities to visualize what it is that we want from our future. Also by acknowledging your feelings, you are able to share them with those near and dear to you. When you are able to verbalize how you feel, you are able to get the support from the people who are in the best position to help you emotionally. They'll be able to understand how you're feeling and respect the journey that you're on. Even if all they can do for you is be a circle of good listeners, that's a very important part of your toolkit for change."

Merry says that even though there might be social pressure to put on a happy face and hide your true feelings, regardless of whether you are a man or a woman, you really need to be fully and expressively authentic with both yourself and your closest friends.

"Because of our socialization, it's much easier for women to express their feelings and have their friends and female relatives acknowledge those feelings and be empathetic. It's more difficult for men to express their feelings, especially to other men. When they do have someone in their lives that they really can share those feelings with, it certainly lightens the burden. They can actually reduce the possibility of psychosomatic illness that comes when they internalize toxic feelings. That's when they develop all sorts of stress-related medical problems. So it's extremely beneficial for both men and women to acknowledge their feelings to both themselves and to confidants whom they know and trust."

So Rebound Readers: Here's your assignment for the day...Make a list of all the emotions that are swirling around you right now. Get them down on paper. And then make another list of your closest confidants -- your spouse, your golf buddy, your walking partner, and resolve to set aside some time to share with them those feelings that you might be trying to ignore away, feelings that maybe you think might put you in a bad light. Take that risk.

You know you would want your friends to do the same with you, if they were wrestling with a life change challenge. You would want to be there for them. And, I'm willing to bet, once you show them how to open up, they just might give you that chance themselves!

Rebound!!! The Book is Out!!!

2009-02-03T06:51:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone:

I'm so excited to see that Rebound is now available online and in bookstores! I just had to tell you!

For those of you who have been following me over the last couple of years, and then wondered why I disappeared in November, this is the reason why! I was busy writing the book I hope will give a lot of comfort and perspective to people who are facing the prospect of being laid off.

I write about career, legal, financial, family, personal emotional issues. And there are three aspects I'm especially proud of in this book:

1. I interviewed the top experts in their fields to bring the absolute best possible advice together in one volume.

2. Rebound features a collection of first-person stories of people who have been laid off, the lessons they learned along the way, and how they landed happily in their new careers.

3. Each chapter concludes with three quick action items: The best thing you can do; the worst thing you can do; and the first thing you should do.

I hope you and the people you love aren't facing this crisis right now. But who doesn't know someone who is going through a layoff? Here's hoping that Rebound will give them what they need to come out the other side stronger than before!

Are Your Friends and Family Inspiring You? Or Retiring You?

2009-01-24T15:54:00.000-08:00

I must be on a real cleaning jag. Last week I did the dishes. And just now I spent a couple of hours in the garage, cleaning out one side of it, channeling Peter Walsh. While pushing broom and trying not to breathe in mouse dust (don’t judge, I live in the desert), I listened to the audio version of Change or Die by Alan Deutschman. This is the book in which he uses very inspiring examples to illustrate his formula of igniting lasting change.

One of his essential keys is the importance of being surrounded by role models – people who are not so different from you that they seem to have come from a different planet, but people just like you who personify the changes you want to make. In his own personal situation, he uses the example of Claudia Berman, a San Francisco-based trainer who inspired him to finally jettison 40 pounds.

At first I started thinking of a friend of mine who is still having the devil of a time finding and keeping a job with an organization who treats her with the respect she deserves. On a particularly low evening a few months ago, she told me that it’s hopeless to find a job in a respectful organization. That all businesses are hell holes and that I’m unrealistic to constantly be banging the gong in favor of emotionally healthy workplaces where people are happy and businesses are profitable.

It’s all a lie, she said. Of course she’s right, she says, referencing a good friend of hers and acquaintance of mine who told her so. And I’m just being delusional. Okay then. I guess that gives her all the permission she needs to stop trying. In the ensuing months, she’s had three jobs, and quit two of them. Yesterday I found out that she was fired by the third. So she must be right. Right?

I’m not blaming my friend for her terrible luck, but it sure isn’t helping her prospects any to be hanging out with people who will spend perfectly good social time complaining about the nature of work. And agreeing with each other about how lousy their bosses are, etc.

And then I started thinking about myself. And how I’ve been surrounded by people who would far rather talk about how awful things are than brainstorm about ways to make them better. Or just focus on elevating aspects of life in general. I remember a time about 10 years ago in Annapolis, I was sitting in the livingroom of some friends who spent the entire time complaining about their boss. Sitting there just listening to these coworkers, the thought struck me, “this is the most boring conversation I’ve ever heard.” So much to talk about: politics (we lived only 45 minutes away from Washington); art; music; literature; navel lint. But no, we indulged in the hurts-so-good outrages of a narcissistic control fiend (which, I grant you, she most certainly was, but who wants to talk about that on a Saturday night?).

I don’t know who said it, but you’ve probably also heard the truism that “we see things not as they are but as we are.” (Somebody please write in and tell me who said it!) And that is consistent with what Deutschman was saying about “frames.” We see and believe things according to elements we already believe to be legitimate truths in life.

So. If you think all workplaces are Dickensian workhouses, that’s probably all you’re going to find, because you don’t have the faith, vision, or expectation of finding anything better for yourself. And if you are surrounded by friends who firmly believe the same, you’re at a huge disadvantage even if you do aspire for better for yourself. You’re going to be constantly surrounded by debilitating messages that your dreams for something better are pointless. So, from their perspective, you might as well take what you get and suck it up. That’s reality, sweetie. Deal with it. Really? I beg to differ.

It’s not just friends telling you discouraging things about the world. It could be family members telling you discouraging things about yourself. This is especially common in families with neglectful, abusive, substance-abusing parents. Children of these households very commonly take on unconsciously assigned roles like the Scapegoat, the Troublemaker, the Over-Achiever, the Good One. If that’s the case with you, and you’re trying to thrive in a world of your own making, hoping for a better life in a healthier world, you could be upsetting the rest of the family. You’re breaking the rules, getting a little “full of yourself,” or “too big for your britches.” And someone is going to want to remind you – often forcefully – that it’s futile to aspire for anything better. And heaven help you if you actually reach for a way to love yourself.

Sometimes, as Mark Twain would have said, you just have to light out for the territories. Breaking away from the old ways is going to upset people who don’t want to try that for themselves – consequently having a vested interest in holding you back as well. So you may have to break away from people as well. Maybe not forever, but at least until you've gained solid footing on the new world that is closer to your vision of what is happily and healthily possible.

If you truly want a happier life, with a better job, working for and with people who respect and value you, go for it. It’s out there for you. The name of the game is to find people who agree with your vision of life as it can be, and who model for you every day the choices and behaviors that make that dream come true.

Find those people who see things the way they are – hopeful, empowered, mutually kind, respectful, high performing, rewarding, positive. You’ll get there faster that way.

Don't Get Sad, Get Bad

2009-01-22T12:46:00.000-08:00

All morning long, while doing the semi-annual dishes (Question: What’s the difference between Martha Finney and Martha Stewart? Answer: Just look in the kitchen.), I’ve been wracking my brain trying to remember who told me about Timothy Ferriss’s fantastic book, The 4-Hour Work Week. I was down to the lasagna pan when I remembered: It was “Anna,” one of the “voices of experience” I interviewed for Rebound. Ah yes, now that I’ve read the Ferriss book on her recommendation, I can see how it all fits.

Ferriss is one bad boy. I like him. While I don’t necessarily approve of all of his tactics (some of them are a little duplicitous for my taste), I love his attitude. Which is basically: Your life is your own and you have every right (in fact, responsibility) to lead it exactly as you want to. And…by the way…you can. You just have to be bad enough to break out of the box that someone else shoved you in. Which totally fits with what Anna was telling me about her experience. So let me tell you about her first.

The brief version of the whole story, which you can read in Rebound, is this: She was a hugely successful salesperson in one of the top ranking companies in her industry. She helped the founders grow it to the point that it could be sold to a public company and walk away millionaires many times over. She’s glad for them. They deserved the rewards of their hard work, she says. So far so good.

But then she watches the new owners run the company into the ground partying like it was 1999. And she’s getting both angry and worried. What to do? Management tells her: Nothing! Everything is groovy, no worries. Her plan was to move to California – a more happening market for her merchandise – but that would require buying a hugely expensive house in an insane market. So she double-checks with her manager. Are you sure it’s a wise personal risk for me to take right now? Absolutely! Go for it! Enjoy the beach, he says.

Within days of her closing on her house, the word comes down that the new owners were shutting the company down. Why wasn’t this the absolute worst news ever? Anna had been a very “bad” girl. She had chosen not to fully believe her boss and had seized control of her own life and future. So, by the time the news hit her, she already had two job offers in her back pocket – offers from her employer’s direct competitors, no less. She seamlessly went from one company to the next, taking her value with her.

Make no mistake. All is not totally hunky dory. She still grieves the destruction of the company that she helped raise from its infancy, not to mention the anguish of her former colleagues, who she keeps track of on Yahoo blogs. But she is in a job she loves, with people who are smart, cutting edge, and totally committed to the smart, ego-free management of the business. (No champagne-saturated helicopter rides for this executive team, nosireebob.) Her former coworkers, who had been "good" and obeyed their management's instructions to be loyal and faithful, are out of work en masse, now competing with each other in a dwindling job market.

When I say “bad,” I’m talking about an internal shift toward the direction of self-respect and self-sovereignty. I don’t mean that you should consider doing anything that will result in a regrettable firing or even a court case. I don’t want to find myself on Nancy Grace trying to explain your “Martha told me to do it” defense. This is about arriving to the realization that you are 100% responsible and in control of your career and life. And if something in your company isn’t passing the smell test, don’t be “good” and believe everything that’s being handed to you. Be “bad” and take action on your own behalf, for the sake of your own future.

If you think that one of the best ways to keep your job may be to be eager to please, you could actually be taking the front spot in the bye-bye line. When the executive team is sitting around the table thinking about who to lay off and who to keep, no one is going to say, “Well, you know, James is always so good about taking his lunch leftovers home on Friday nights. Let’s keep him.”

You know how annoying some over-pleasing, obsequious people are. You don’t know what they have to offer you and your life. All you know is that just being around them makes you really peevish for some reason. They’re the first ones you want out of your life.

So what do I mean about being bad? That all depends on how your particular brand of being good is screwing you up.

Are you inclined to believe management when it’s telling you that you’re safe, even though people are disappearing right and left? Does blindly believing management feel like you’re being “good” like you were when you were blindly believing the parents? And that you will somehow be rewarded for your loyalty? Time to get bad.

Does taking action on your own behalf feel oddly disloyal or disobedient? Time to get bad.

Do you find yourself taking on really crappy assignments that no one else would be caught dead with? And that you wouldn’t do either if you weren’t afraid of getting fired? Time to get bad.

Are people all around you getting promoted, even though you are doing the lion’s share of the work? Time to get bad.

Are people taking credit for your work? Time to get bad.

Do you suspect that people are just looking for an excuse to fire you? Time to get bad.

Have you been the object of an ambush? Time to get bad.

Do you feel that normal actions that reflect self-respect are being received as insubordination? Time to get bad.

I wish I knew how to help you specifically get bad. All I know is how to tell when you’re on the right track. You’re acting reasonably, responsibly, like the adult with healthy self-esteem. And then someone (some, uh, jerk) says to you, “Hey! Who the hell do you think you are?”

And you can mentally respond with, “My own bad self.”

How to Get Your Foot in the Door Part 3: You May Be Interviewing For A Job Without Even Knowing It

2009-01-20T07:13:00.001-08:00

If you had an especially caring (or controlling) mom, she probably told you that you should never forget that you're being watched, and maybe even judged, all the time. Her initial purpose for telling you this was probably something about making sure your hair is combed and that there's no spinach in your teeth (not to mention never forgetting "please" and "thank you"). And her advice might have been tinged with a bit of warning around it. As in: Keep your nose clean of cave bats, someone's noticing.

But this is also good nose, I mean news. When you're shining and performing at your best, someone may be noticing. And, while it may not be today, tomorrow, or next month, they just might offer you a job.

Last week I interviewed Scott Seaton, who works for SRI (a little known research firm in Palo Alto, CA, that invented things we use every day, like the mouse and the desktop computer). I asked him how he got his job. And he said that when he was in the Navy, he was stationed as a special electronics projects officer in Iceland (brrrrrr). And he was in charge of some visiting scientists from SRI. He was so impressed by how mission-driven and committed these people were -- so willing to tromp across the tundra in all hours of day/night, to work on some kind of whiz bang antennae. Why? Because they loved their work!

And they were obviously impressed with him! So when Scott decided that it was time for him to leave the Navy and rejoin the civilian world, he grabbed a transport from Iceland to California (how's that for a climate change?), interviewed with the folks at SRI and was offered a job.

You just never know when you're going to meet your future. You may be standing on top of the world on an ice floe. And some guy in mukluks emerges from the mist. "Hello, I'm from your future. And guess what? That future has palm trees."

So. Keep your hair combed, your teeth spinach-free and your nose clean! Someone may be noticing, taking mental notes and smiling to themselves as they think about what a great fit you would be for their organization.

The Most Important Thing to Do When You're Laid Off

2009-01-18T13:12:00.000-08:00

Getting laid off is a crappy happening in so many ways, it’s hard to pick just one. But I will anyway. Not to discount all the other ways you’re taking it on the chin, today I’m focusing on the hit your self-esteem is taking. And what you can do about it.

When you’re laid off, you’re out of work. That’s bad enough. But, precisely because you’re out of work you have all this time to worry about. And brood about it. And obsess about it. And on top of that, you have to do it all by yourself. Why? Because everyone you know is busy at work. Or, if they’re not, they’re probably laid off too. And you really don’t want to be around worrying, brooding, obsessing people – especially when they’re negatively focused on the same thing you are.

Okay, granted, you have your career to be worrying about – not to mention such incidentals as mortgage, health insurance, kids’ education, etc. But you also have something else much more close to home than that you need to ferociously protect right now – your confidence, self-respect, your faith in yourself and your future. In other words – self-esteem.

Self-esteem protection has got to be Job #1 right now, even outclassing the job of finding a job. The good news here is that this is one aspect of your life you have complete control over (although it may not seem to be the case at the moment). So I’ve outlined a few steps you can take to create a cone of esteem protection around your head and heart as you move proudly toward an uncertain future.

Give yourself the time you need to grieve and then recover. You wouldn’t take a cast off before a broken bone was healed, would you? You wouldn’t force a child with a 104 degree fever to go to school, would you? (The correct answer is: No.) Don’t rush yourself to “get over” the emotions around your feelings of betrayal, shock, even rage. Even if you have to get a new job instantaneously, don’t think you “should be over this by now.” You’ll be over it when you’re over it.

Be a rainmaker for other people. Wealth comes in so many forms, and your network is one of them. While you may be thinking that your set of personal contacts is completely useless in helping you find your new job (you’re probably wrong, by the way), you can open up your address book to help your friends find the job of their dreams. It is beyond words how rewarding it is to be able to make a real difference in someone else’s life, especially when you’re spending your days trying to renegotiate interest rates and minimum payments.

Be your own champion. Remember how I said that it’s your job to ferociously protect your self-esteem? Well, that begins with the kinds of thoughts you fill your mind with. If you’re prone to criticizing or second guessing or psychoanalyzing yourself (even a little bit), knock it off. You can always come back to that self-talk when you’re on steadier ground. Don’t worry, you’re in no danger of getting a “big head” in the meantime if you let up on yourself. Reality will keep you humble. Stay away from so-called friends who make you feel uncertain or bad about yourself. Even the ones who you think might be smarter than you about these things. You know in your heart what’s what. If someone else wants to castigate you for some perceived failings, just think to yourself, “projecting!” (like Jon Lovitz’s Master Thespian character announcing, “acting!”) and lose their contact information for awhile (I mean, forever).

Be someone else’s hero. Confession: I like Mariah Carey’s music. And I’ll never forget the time I first heard her song, “Hero.” I was on my way to the dentist to get a root canal. Talk about having something imprinted on your brain. I was especially receptive to the message of that song that morning. There is always something you can do to relieve the pain or restore the hope of someone else. It’s especially good if you’re able to use your professional skill set to make that happen. You need to remind your heart and brain that you still have a role in the marketplace – even if it’s volunteer for the moment. It won’t be for long. (Although it would be excellent if you continued to volunteer after you landed your next great job.)

Give yourself a success project. One of the messages your hammered self-esteem may be telling you right now is that you are powerless to make an impact. Give yourself real and current evidence to the contrary. Assign yourself a series of projects that you have total control over and can see to completion. Cleaning out the garage. Cutting out sugar. Taking the car in to get serviced. Little projects. Big projects. Whatever. Just make sure that you can see that light at the end of that project tunnel. And that you are in total control over a successful completion. (The down side of this advice, of course, is that if you fail you will have only yourself to blame. So. Don’t fail.)

Don’t believe everything you think. You’ve been wrong before. You know how it feels. You might have been one of those people who thought getting laid off would never happen to them. Surprise! Personally I’m big into believing everything I feel (I usually come to regret ignoring my intuition). But believing everything I think is another matter altogether. It’s really easy to get into the habit of drawing sweeping negative conclusions about the way of the world, and our personal success prospects, when nothing is going right. Just remember to constantly ask yourself, “where’s the evidence?” And if you see that you’re compiling a dangerous amount of evidence to support your negative assumptions, load up on those success projects.

What Will 2009 Mean to You in the Long Run? You Decide

2009-01-16T05:03:00.000-08:00

You may not be able to control all the events of 2009 as they seem to be lining up just beyond the horizon – like storms in the Pacific, or planes lining up to land at SFO. But you have absolute control over what they will mean to you in big picture scheme of things. Will 2009 be remembered as the year of despair and anxiety? Or the year of absolute amazement, miracles and inspiration to last a lifetime? Same year. Same events. Two different interpretations. You get to choose which one will best carry you and your family into the future.

The other night I was listening to a lecture in which Jack Canfield was talking about how one year he and his wife decided to assign a theme to that year – in his case it was The Year of the Family. And so for those ensuing 12 months, the two of them took on specific projects to help them appreciate their children more and to more intentionally set their kids up for their own future.

The theme itself isn’t as important as the intentionality of focus that is assigned for that year. So that got me to thinking…the way we’re going right now as a nation (probably even the entire world) the year 2009 could be the Year of The Financial Fecal Matter Hitting The Proverbial Fan.

But that doesn’t have to be the theme of 2009 for you. However the financial events unfold, that train, as they’ve been saying on TV, has left the station. In the big picture scheme of things, we as individuals have no control over the macro-economic state of affairs -- or even the Madoff-economic state of affairs.

I recognize that most of us have lost a lot of money. And some of us have lost our jobs, or are having a harder time finding work. And I don’t mean to make light of very serious events in our lives right now. We’re all suffering to some degree.

But even though the financial aspect of the 2009 story may be out of our individual control, this is a great opportunity for us to remember that the story of our life is more than a financial, material, or even a professional one. Let other people assign financial dominance over the way the story of 2009 will be told. But we can choose a much better story to tell of who we will become as individuals during this time. That’s within our control.

Here are some ideas for 2009:

The Year of Relying on Our Own Judgment. Personally, I made some really stupid financial decisions over the last couple of years, because I listened to the wrong people. I figured that the experts knew more about these things than I did and I should just follow their lead. So I ignored what my heart was telling me and chose to do the “smart” thing. Well. That didn’t turn out so well, did it? A few years into my regrettable commitment I read something in an Oprah magazine that hit me between the eyes: “When in doubt, don’t.” That’s my new mantra from now on. Well, at least one of them.

The Year of Recreational Frugality. This past summer a client of mine took her family on vacation to the United Kingdom. Her teen-age daughter was appalled that a hamburger in a London McDonald’s was over $8 and challenged her mother to a game of, “let’s see how cheaply we can live while we’re here.” What could have been a fretting endurance trial of watching money slip through their fingers (totally spoiling a trip that should only have good memories), her daughter turned it into a fun game and source of pride. How inspiring! How cheaply can we live while the financial situation shakes itself out? It could be fun to find out. We can turn that into a game, if we wanted. And, in the end, it could be a great source of pride for everyone because this is a game in which no one loses.

The Year of Using What We Have. We all have stuff we don’t use. When it comes to books, I’m a huge snob. And over the years I have looked down my nose at poseurs who filled shelves with books they would never read. Somehow, “I bought it but haven’t read it,” didn’t translate in my mind as someone who was actually well-read. Well-bought, maybe, but not well-read. But over those same years I discovered that I was getting into the habit of saying the same thing. My problem: I’d buy a book that I discovered, regardless of whether I had the time to read it right then and there, because I didn’t want to forget about it later. Now I’ve got tons of great books in stacks, shelves and piles, all of which are squeaking, “read me!” I could actually go a whole year without buying another book (heaven forbid!), and still have plenty to read. What do you have that you don’t use to its full potential?

The Year of Turning What We Have into Cash. Everyone’s looking for a bargain these days, and those bargains often come in the form of used stuff. Where does that used stuff come from? Well, from us, of course. A friend of mine routinely makes as much as $600 holding periodic garage sales. I wonder if I can make so much selling some of my books – the ones I’ve read, of course.

The Year of Strengthening Our Faith in Whatever. God? Humanity? The Laws of Attraction? Karma? The Way the Cosmic Cookie Crumbles? Our own resourcefulness? I’m not so sure about the power of positive vibrations. But one thing I do know is that a negative mindset is completely self-destructive. It shuts you off from innovative thinking, appreciating the good things in life, connecting with other people, and seeing opportunities when they come flying at you. Personally I’m fond of deus ex machina stories – those stories of God coming out of nowhere and pulling my personal fat out of the fire, just in the nick of time. I’ve got tons of those. They make me feel better and strengthen my faith.

The Year of Recognizing When We’re Being Emotionally Hijacked. One of the books I haven’t read yet (but I’ve got!) is Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence. But I think I understand his concept of emotional hijacking. That’s when someone else manipulates you (intentionally or not) into an emotional frenzy about something that really isn’t about you and then causes you to make choices and decisions that may not necessarily be in your best interest. When you think about TV and other vehicles of advertising and news delivery, that’s a model of emotional hijacking. We’re in a heightened state of anxiety by the time the commercials come on. That makes us more inclined to buy things we wouldn’t otherwise even consider. Or our friends give us well-intentioned, but emotionally charged, advice, causing us to go against our best judgment.

The Year of the Pleasant Conversation. I know things are pretty crappy right now, but there’s always something crappy to talk about…even in the so called “good days.” And it’s just not healthy to dwell on that stuff. As Nigella Lawson said when she was criticized for throwing lavish parties and hosting a silly cooking show while her husband was dying of throat cancer: “You just can’t live in that lane all the time.”

I know I’m not alone in the general yearning for “can’t we just talk about something pleasant for a change?” I’m not so much of a control freak as to try to dictate what gets talked about in social gatherings. But I have learned to keep my mouth shut more often than not.

Some friends of mine are throwing their annual gumbo party in a couple of weeks. And the hostess has said, “Yeah! Only pleasant talk this year!” I hope she’ll be able to pull it off!

The Year of Learning New Skills. Pleasant conversation, for one example, is a skill. How much easier it is to succumb to the gravitational pull of complaining and bad news. Learn a new language. Learn how to cook. Learn how to break 400 in Scrabble. Learn all the ins and outs of Microsoft Office. If we’re going to be stuck at home, we might as well make good use of that time.

The Year of Caring About Something That Has Absolutely Nothing to Do With Me. There is plenty in this world to get excited about that doesn’t affect our economic state or job status -- things we can actually do something about regardless of our political affiliations or financial security. Isn’t it true that we really appreciate our own situation when we roll up our sleeves and help someone else out in theirs? Which leads me to…

The Year of Helping Each Other Out Just Because We Can. We all have strengths, skills, networks, areas of expertise that ease the burden of life for our friends and neighbors. How rich it makes us feel to know that we can help someone in a really important way just by coming over, picking up the telephone, giving some advice (good advice), sending an email. It costs us nothing but it’s worth the world to the people we help. And, of course, vice versa.

Whether or not you will end up saying, “That was a very good year,” depends on the vision you make for 2009 right now. And that’s entirely within your control. You still hold the power in your life.

Freelancing Can Be a Great Option -- Especially When You're Between Jobs

2009-01-15T05:47:00.000-08:00

(Do you know anyone who needs help, advice, inspiration, and hope after being laid off? Please send them to my new blog, Rebound Your Career! It's based on my new book entitled, amazingly enough: Rebound: A Proven Plan For Starting Over After Job Loss, which will be available online and in bookstores everywhere on February 9! Hey! That's one month away! Yay!)

Have you given any thought to freelancing? Almost anything that can be done full-time can be translated into freelance gigs. And, according to CNN.com's news crawl yesterday, more and more companies are turning to freelancers to get their work done project by project, instead of full-time job by full-time job.

Now, I know that most of us aren't cut out for freelancing as a lifelong career. So I'm not suggesting that everyone rush right out and hang out their shingles. But if you're not working right now anyway, it beats the heck out of sitting in your socks soaking up the soaps all afternoon. Believe me, I tried that. Freelancing is a much better way to go.

Here's what freelancing can do for you:

You keep your resume fresh with recent projects and accomplishments. Recruiters want to know what you've been doing "all this time." Taking on freelance assignments while you're looking for a new job gives you the chance to keep your resume up-to-the-minute with fascinating stories of achievement, learning, completion. Plus, you get to have a whole new set of people who will give you references.

It keeps you in touch with your former employers, who were really sorry to have to let you go, by the way. I have one friend who actually was able to hire back a fantastic employee as a freelancer after she was forced to shut down her department. And, she was able to pay him more money because she had a lavish freelance budget. Which is kind of weird, but there's no arguing with reality. (And, if CNN is right, more companies will have more money in their freelance budgets. So why not claim some of that for your own?)

Freelancing makes you the head cheese. As a freelancer you get to pick which assignments you're willing to take on. As an employee, you pretty much have to say yes to everything that crosses your desk. Of course, to be realistic, when wolves are beginning to gather at your door, you still have to say yes to most assignments that come your way. (Especially in the beginning when you're just building your practice.) But it's still very nice to know you can still say no...any time. Really. It's allowed.

You can actually fire clients! In fact, if you were feeling especially spiteful -- and your former employer completely deserves it -- you can turn right around and fire the guy who fired you! Just make sure you have plenty of money in the bank and a line of clamoring clients waiting for your attention, like the rope line outside of NY's most happening nightclub. Again, it's just nice to know you can.

You can write some really cool stuff off. See your tax guy about this. But, just so you know, I've been able to write off a scuba diving trip to Bonaire. My groovy new Mac? Deductible. That video camera I want to buy? Deductible. All that chocolate I eat when I'm writing under deadline? Not deductible. Can't have everything.

You can grow much faster as a freelancer. By which I don't mean chocolate-eating, although that is also a guaranteed growth strategy.

What I do mean is that as a freelancer, you can go after potential clients in companies you would love to work for. You learn about the latest, greatest developments in your field, and you can, if you so choose, hang out with the leaders and role models of your profession. One of my most favorite assignments was helping Intuit write a white paper about their employee engagement initiative. Of all the books I've written, the cool places I've traveled to, the amazing people I've interviewed, I have to say that spending a couple of months working with Intuit's director of workforce research taught me so much...and even made me want to leap back into the workaday world.Just for a minute, there.

You have the satisfaction of actually completing projects. You know that sense of "ah, done!" As a full-time employee, you don't always get to feel that feeling. But as a freelancer, you do, because there is a definite "done" time, and that's when you get paid the second half of your fee (the first half comes when you say yes to the assignment at the beginning of the project).

You get to meet a heckuvalot more people as a freelancer. If you're stuck in your cube all day, bent over the same keyboard, staring into the same screen, day in and day out, you know what that makes you? A full-time employee.

As a freelancer, you get to wake up exactly when you want to (in my case, it's 3:30 am...so no slug-a-bed visions of sloth, please, thank you very much). You get to pad around the house in your jammies until you're ready to put on shoes to go out and get the newspaper. Then you get to decide whether or not you want to haul on go-to-meeting clothes and attend a top-notch, cutting-edge lunch meeting with the leaders of your community and industry. You get to sit in big round tables, asking "is this your bread plate or mine?," of people whose business cards represent the best of the best in your profession. You get to make friends with these people. Why? Because you're the head cheese of your own operation. You're not buried deep inside a corporate org chart, which, by the way, is just about to be thrown up into the air like pick-up-sticks. The reorg will be announced next week, time to tidy up your desk.

Now, if you were a freelancer, first of all you wouldn't be worried about being laid off. Secondly, you'd have all these fab business cards of people you've met in business/social functions who will help you. The successful freelancer's network is something to envy, that's for sure.

You get to learn new skills and even heal old self-esteem wounds. First of all the new skills: Marketing yourself (by which I mean, "marketing your brains out"); new technical skills that will expand your marketability and competitiveness; negotiation skills; productivity skills; time management skills; public speaking skills; making new friends skills; getting-out-of-the-house skills.

As for the self-esteem healing part: I just find that people who are self-employed have a greater sense of purpose and potential than they did when they had a full-time job (and when I say "people," I mean "me"). When you are a freelancer, companies don't care whether you are too fat (heck! it's not their health insurance rates at risk here; but really, just stay away from the fridge at home) or too old. They just want to know if you can do the job, and what will it cost them. And how your talents and skills will help them achieve their own objectives.

Which brings me to the next self-esteem sticking point. You discover very quickly how closely linked your self-esteem is to the money you make. You build a lot of confidence landing gigs, successfully completing them to the point where you're like the Lone Ranger and your clients want to know when they're going to see you again. And pretty soon you can start asking for more money. And then more money. And then more, as your value goes up and your name gets around. It's really good for your self-esteem, let me tell you.

Freelancing isn't easy. But it sure can be fun. And, if you've been laid off, you're not doing much right now anyway, except banging your head against the wall, perhaps looking for jobs that may or may not be there (but the work still needs to get done!). Present yourself as a freelancer, and it's quite possible the more doors will swing open for you.

At least, that's what CNN.com said yesterday. And that's what I've been saying for the last 20 years.

Twitter alert! Don't forget to "follow" me on www.twitter.com/marthafinney

Wouldn't It Be Great to Be Able to Look Under Your Prospective Boss's Hood?

2009-01-07T05:09:00.001-08:00

Okay, so I have a quick question for you. Are you a nut? If I gave you this cup right here, would you be able to confidently take it into the bathroom, knowing that the results wouldn’t hurt your chances of a job? How do you blow off steam when you’re tense? If you found a wallet on the sidewalk, what would you do with it? If I called one of those background checkers on you right now, what would they find on you? Do you have multiple cats and have a tendency to leave newspapers all over the floor and dishes in the sink? (No, wait, that’s me.) Are you the kind of person who promises only one question but really asks, let’s see, one, two, three, four, five, six questions?

Prospective employers want to know these things about you (except, probably, not so much the thing about the cats; they would probably prefer not to know about the cats). And they have ways of finding these things out: experts in background checks, personality tests, aptitude tests, the cup in the bathroom deal. They can really peer under your hood and find out all sorts of things about you, maybe even stuff that you didn’t know yourself. Surprise!

It sure would be nice to have the same advantages when you are considering prospective bosses, wouldn’t it? While you can’t exactly hand them a cup, nor get their social security number for your own rap sheet research, or ask them to fill out this quick personality screening test, it seems like it would only be fair play. I mean, you have every reason to need to predict whether these people will go all nut-bag on you, just as much as they need to know about you. You’d think that they had already passed those emotional-health gates by now. After all, they were once candidates for the jobs they have. But there sure are a lot of wackoids (that’s a clinical term) out there who are in charge of other peoples’ careers and peace of mind.

We’ve all heard of bully bosses, for example. And I’d venture a guess that most of us have personal experience with at least one or two people who were just flat-out not very nice. To put it mildly. As it turns out, it may not be that these people are mean to the bone. It could be that certain parts of their brains are over-active. And it sure would be nice to know which parts are on overdrive before we accept the job offer, wouldn’t it?

Over this past weekend I found myself lost in a fantastic book by Daniel Amen, MD, called Change Your Brain, Change Your Life. (On Saturday morning I promised myself just one chapter, but before I knew it the weekend was gone at precisely the moment I turned the last page of the book. I’m a slow reader, plus I underlined a lot.)

A blog posting is not the place to go into total details about the book. But let’s just say that he has a scientific process, much like an MRI, that can read what components of a person’s brain are bouncing off the proverbial wall (another clinical term). And this way he’s able to show why the person is behaving so badly. Negative thinking, procrastination, emotional control, rage, violence, ability to control anxiety, ability to organize, capacity for empathy, tendency to worry, tendency to hold grudges, etc., (perhaps even the proclivity to write long sentences) are all seated in certain parts of the brain: the deep limbic system; the basal ganglia; the prefrontal cortex; the cingulate system; and the temporal lobes.

All very interesting. But the thought that kept occurring to me (in what part of my brain I wonder) was this: Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just inject our interviewers with isotope, make them lie down on a drawer, and slide them under one of those thingamabobs to find out exactly what’s going on with their noodle? As Eliza Doolittle says in My Fair Lady: “Wouldn’t it be loverly?”

Since you can’t, you really have to play super-detective when you go into interviews. And you have to have the nerve to see things for exactly how they are and make the decision whether you actually would want to work there. Here are some ideas:

Take a look around the department and the office: It seems that nowadays offices all look alike. Modular, cubicle. That’s okay for some, but that would just suck the life out of me. (I mean, what’s a workspace without newspapers all over the floor? I ask you.) But that’s just me. What you want to be looking for is an indication of whether you would be comfortable there. If everything looks so tidy that it appears that the staff is under direct orders to hide all the evidence, someone might be a little controlling at the top. Or if things look so sterile that a phone swab wouldn’t register a single microbe, could you possibly have a latter-day Howard Hughes on your hands? Maybe, maybe not. Just take notes.

Or does the office look like a teenager works there? Gum wrappers strewn everywhere? Candy spilling out of the drawers? Bent, empty soft drink cans standing forgotten on any available surface? Posters of some gawd-awful rock band on the walls? Files on the floor? Any kind of evidence of hyper energy and perhaps attention deficit disorder? Does the staff look crazed and on edge? Welcome to your future. You might want to google “twinkie defense,” before saying yes to the job offer.

Conduct a little behavioral-interviewing of your own: Personally, I think there’s nothing worse than being on the hotseat and having an interviewer ask me a question that starts with “Tell me about a time when….” I even draw a blank when someone asks me, “Do you have any questions for us?” My eyes roll back and all I can squeak out is “hummuna hummuna hummana.” Not very professional, is it? And I talk to people for a living. So if your interviewer is asking you to tell stories, ask a few back – most especially if the interviewer is your prospective boss.

The questions I really like are: “How do you like to work under pressure? Can you tell me of a time when you and your team pulled together under a really hard deadline? How did you rally the troops? What was the secret to your team success? How did you celebrate afterwards?” (Notice the positive orientation here?)

Another one: “What signs do you look for in a new employee’s performance that tell you that this is a successful hire?” Here you look like you’re gathering data on what the boss considers to be successful work habits. But what you’re actually getting is a solid idea as to whether the boss is a positive-thinker who has tons of stories of how much he or she appreciates the staff. Positive thinkers always have great anecdotes at their fingertips about how wonderful their people are. Word to wise: If you hear, “our people are our most valuable assets,” make a note of that and circle it in red. Danger! Danger!

Ask your prospective boss about the person who previously had the job. Why is it now vacated? Hopefully because the person was promoted from within or has gone on to a stellar career elsewhere. How long did the person have the job? What did he or she like best about it? What was it about that person that the boss especially appreciated? Listen for how the boss talks about your predecessor. Is he or she happy for that person’s ongoing success? Or resentful that that person has moved on? I actually heard one boss call a departed employee a bad word that is brought to you by the letters A and H. Hmmm. An unresolved issue there, I’d say.

Is the prospective boss polite to you? If you’re a candidate, you’re in the category of “guest,” not “slave begging for work.” So you should be treated like a guest. The interview should be on time. And if out-of-control circumstances make the boss late, someone should let you know. If the tardiness is more than a half hour, you should be given the opportunity to reschedule if you want to.

You may be actually be the one who was there first, with a new boss coming in to take over the department. How does that person treat the new staff? With humility and receptivity as befits a newbie? Or someone who is over-compensating for his or her discomfort? What language does that person use?

I was at a client’s office once when a new department head passed by me at the soft drink machine. While I had worked for the client for many years, both as a staffer and then as a consultant, this guy was totally new. When he saw me, he said, “Skulking around here, trying to scrounge up work?” Huh. That was weird. But everyone is a little weird when they start a new job. So I gave it a pass.

But then he hired a new direct report, who said to me, “If you intend to keep working for us, just know that I’m going to hold your feet to the fire.” Alrighty then. Given the choice (not to mention self-respect), I regretfully scratched that client off my list. That was that. The end of a great run.

I recognize that in these tough times, it’s hard to be too choosy when it comes to landing a great job with a mentally healthy boss. I mean, everyone is just a little bit nuts. But go into these interviews with your eyes, ears and intuition on full receptivity mode. The realities of food-in-mouth, roof-over-head may force you to accept the job as it’s offered to you.

But you will know that, with that peek under your boss’s hood, you should probably keep your resume current and in circulation. You’ll also know not to take any weirdness personally. It’s just them and that hot spot firing off in their brain.

How to Land the Leadership Job of Your Dreams

2009-01-06T10:34:00.000-08:00

With the jobs picture swinging away from your favor, we know that there are more qualified and talented people competing for fewer jobs. So once you and your fellow candidates are matched for skills and number of years of experience, you have to find other ways to set yourself apart and shine brighter than your competition. You can compete by being the cheapest to hire – but that would be a bummer. (And who wants to work for a cheapskate company anyway?)

Here’s a better way to stand out and get paid what you deserve: Show your interviewer that you have the heart and smarts to hire, inspire, lead and keep great people…in a way that’s consistent with the company’s culture. Think of it as a management version of plug-and-play.

Employee engagement and company values and culture are still important to corporate life – at least to the companies that are good enough for you. Regardless of what the economy is doing, first-rate companies haven’t forgotten that creating and sustaining an engaged workforce continues to be the secret to their competitive edge. And they want managers who will help them make that happen.

And for good reason. Top-drawer employees throughout the ranks are expensive to hire. They’re expensive to lose, and even more expensive to replace. Passionate people volunteer their discretionary efforts and genius above and beyond the call of duty. They say good things about their company and the company’s products. They recommend their company as a great place to work. And they’re more likely to stick around, even if someone else offers them brand, spanking new jobs, even at better pay.

Who makes these golden employees feel all these warm and fuzzy feelings? Why, their bosses do, of course. And that would mean you. You’ve probably heard this principle before: People don’t quit their companies, they quit their bosses. (Which, unless you were laid off, could be a reason why you are on the job market yourself, come to think of it.) Top-notch employers have been recognizing this fact for years now, which is why millions of dollars are spent every year measuring an employee’s engagement factor on the job. The results of these surveys are usually interpreted mainly as, “Okay, how’s the boss treating you?” If you’re the boss, and you’ve been treating your people shabbily, it’s going to show up as low engagement scores. If you have been treating your people brilliantly, that’s going to show up as high engagement scores for you as well. And you should be able to leverage that happy track record in your own search for a new job.

So, how can you use this in your job search? Simple: Recognize the fact that if you’re interviewing for a leadership position, companies want to know more than whether you can do the job. They want to know that you can inspire your team to do their jobs as well…and not leave a trail of offended and bruised feelings in your path. It’s a scary thing for companies to hire managers from without. They know that managers come to them with many habits already set – carved, most likely, by the culture of their previous employers.

Bear in mind that while recruiters and interview panels are considering your resume, they are also silently pleading with you, “We’re tempted to hire you because you’re obviously a star in your field…but please oh please oh please don’t screw up our culture!”

The way to land the leadership job of your dreams is to be sensitive to the fact that a culture- and values-driven company is hiring you to do more than just carry out your responsibilities. It is also entrusting you with the thing it cherishes most – the trust and good will of its employees. So while all those other candidates are yammering on and on and on about their technical skills and years of experience, set yourself apart by talking a little bit about your journey to becoming an engaging manager.

Here are some of the questions you should be prepared to answer:

* What would you say are the characteristics of leader who keeps his/her team motivated and focused on the goal?
* As a manager, what do you consider to be your primary responsibility?
* Tell me about a time when you led your team through an extraordinary project or accomplishment.
* If you’ve been a manager before, talk about a time when you saved an otherwise great employee whose recent performance put him in danger of losing his job?
* What characteristics do you look for when interviewing people for jobs?
* What do you do when you see a high-potential employee’s performance begin to fail?
* What are your opinions about annual performance reviews?
* Let’s say you have to implement a major change inside your department. What steps would you take to get your team to help you make that change?
* Tell me about a time when you learned something about yourself when dealing with a challenging employee situation.
* Who was your most influential boss so far and what did you learn from that person?
* How did you grow as a result of your last job?

As a seasoned manager, or someone who is ready for that next step, you should be ready to have answers to these questions. Even if you haven’t been a manager yet, you should be thinking about these things now.

Don’t wait to be asked those questions…it could be that your interviewer may not be savvy enough to ask. But, if you volunteer a few well-thought out comments that demonstrate that you’re a sensitive, thoughtful, wise people leader – one who is also humble enough to know you have lots to learn from your own direct reports – you will send the hiring company the signal that there’s just something about you that they must have on their team.

Amazing Stories: Get Your Foot in the Door Part 2

2009-01-02T08:01:00.000-08:00

A few months ago, a brand new client of mine was flying me to their Connecticut HQ from Albuquerque. On the ABQ to DFW leg of the trip, I sit next a guy who is flipping through the pictures in his digital camera. And being a chatty kinda gal who also happens to live in one of the nation’s top vacation destinations, I ask him, “Going home after a vacation to Santa Fe?” Nope. Wrongo. Come to find out his wife and children live in Albuquerque but he works in Tennessee. “Oh? Doing what?” He gives me one of those highly technical, exotic foreign answers that would make anyone say blankly, “ohhhhh, how nice for you…say where is that beverage cart anyway?”

Turns out, it wasn’t so nice for him. Every time he went home for a visit, it meant that he would have to wrench himself away from his family, and his heart would be going crack, crack, crack, all the way back to his dismal bachelor life back in Tennessee. He was leaving Albuquerque this time freshly determined to find a job within a pillow’s throw of his cherished wife and two adoring sons. And so he told me all about it.

Now remember: His expertise is highly specialized, highly technical, and to make matters worse, highly manufacturing. The kind of job that would make elicit the response, “Well, good luck with that.” But not me, codependent me. Oh no. I said, “Send me your resume and I’ll see what I can do.” Not like I know anything or anyone in manufacturing. But, hey, you never know, right?

Long to short: He started his new job in Albuquerque three weeks later. And now his two sons quite rightly think: “Dad has the coolest job in town.” And he really does. And it’s in town!

Here’s a quick summary of what happened between then and tomorrow: That night I got to my hotel room in Stamford. And there was his resume emailed to me. I was a) tired; b) on major chocolate withdrawal and c) thinking, “what are the chances of anything coming this? What’s on tv?” But that darn inner voice chimed in, “Larry King can wait. You promised, now get cracking.” Yeah, but I promised then. This is now. I’m tired. And besides what are the odds that anything could come of this?

Now there were only two companies that came to mind as possible employers for this guy. But really, what could possibly be the chances that they would have an opening that would exactly fit his skills? I looked up the first company, and discovered that they are hiring out of San Carlos, CA, and looking for a svp/hr. So I figured they probably wouldn’t be hiring someone like this guy right now. I totally didn’t even bother with them.

Then I looked at the other company, found the svp/hr, figured out what her email address would probably be, and sent her an email saying, “You don’t know me but there’s this guy I met on the plane today who….” I attached his resume, detaching myself from any residual interest in the outcome. And then went about scaring up some chocolate and finding CNN on the tube. I spent the next several days working with this new client and thinking only about myself.

Back in New Mexico, this lovely svp/hr took the time to open an email from a stranger, opened the attachment, and discovered a possible match for a position long open and needing attention pretty darn quick. (I just love email, don’t you?)

Next thing I hear: The guy comes back to Albuquerque upon their invitation, surprises his sons by picking them up unexpectedly at school, goes to a series of interviews at this company the next day, is offered the job of his dreams before he even gets home. (I just love cell phones, don’t you?)

Life is full of happenstance matches that make for happy career stories. So for me, it’s a nifty story that makes me smile.

It is actually his doing that makes this a story with a happy ending. He was willing to talk to a stranger. So there’s a tip for you: Talk to strangers; tell anyone who will listen who you are and what you want.

It will improve the odds.

Could You Be Shooting Yourself in the Foot? 5 Super Easy Things For You to Fix Right Now

2009-01-01T16:23:00.000-08:00

Finding a new job is terribly daunting. I get that. So much is on the line, that’s for sure. Your financial security. Your self-esteem. The health and happiness of your family. The roof over your head. Your dignity. Your faith in the basic law of life that if you behave yourself, you won’t be punished. Yet, here you are: Looking for a new job. Maybe because you were laid off. And how hard is it to project a “can do” attitude when the last thing you heard from your employer was “we don’t want you anymore?” Still. You gotta get out there, slap on that confident smile, thrust your hand forward to shake, and say to the umpteenth interviewer, “pleased to meetcha.” Puh-leeze. It gets pretty old after a while, doesn’t it?

It could be that you might be making it harder on yourself than is necessary. (Not laying any blame here, I’m just saying.) As I’ve been researching Rebound, and dealing with emails that my blog readers send me, I’m noticing some super easy fixes you can make right this very minute that will open up roads and doors for you that might otherwise be closed. Want to know what they are? Here goes:

Watch your grammar and spelling. I can hear you now: “What, that again?” In a word: Yes. Some of the emails I get are so bad that they make my eyes cross. I can only assume that they come from people whose first language is not English (again, no judgment here, I’m just saying). If that’s the case, good for you! If you think that the United States is still the land of opportunity, welcome aboard. But have a native English speaker (one who is, by the way, uh, smart) double-check your writing, typing and spelling for you. I’m not one of those people who believe that students deserve to have professional editors help them with term papers. But I do believe that now you’re an adult and out there in the big wide world, if you can get help getting your authentic, sincere message across, get it.

Don’t get too familiar. I know there are some who believe that it’s acceptable to be sloppy in emails. And maybe it is with emails between friends. There was one email I sent just a couple of days ago via my PDA that was all lower-case because I was just too darn lazy, and frankly too peevish, to care about my capital letters. And I was writing to a friend (at least I hope he’s still my friend). Similarly, I’ve made my share of mistakes with text messages. We won’t go into that.

My point here is that when you’re writing to strangers, especially strangers who are in the position to hire you or help you, pay attention to the simple fundamentals of good English. I received an email a couple of weeks ago that broke almost every rule I can think of. Starting with addressing me by name. What’s wrong with that? He used a lower-case “m.” Uh. Hello? Isn’t that just a little bit insulting? If you don’t care enough about demonstrating your respect for me to go the slightest effort of pressing the shift key while typing “m,” why should I take my valuable time to give you supremely valuable advice?

Here’s the kicker: He didn’t even call me “martha.” He called me “mary.” About seven times. Which brings me to another point, beside the obvious one. Don’t use the recipient’s name so often. It feels creepy and manipulative. You only want to use a name that frequently when you’re trying to convince a puppy what his new name is. (And maybe not even then, unless you don’t mind cleaning up puppy yak.) The other time: You’re trying to seduce a woman into ignoring her survival instincts. Really. The last time I saw a person’s name used so much within such a short conversation was when Scott Peterson was calling Amber Frey from Paris, I mean his murdered wife’s vigil in Modesto. Really, it’s a very creepy thing to do. It doesn’t feel good to see my name repeated so often, even when it’s “martha” and not “mary.” It makes the hairs on my neck stand up.

When I wrote back to the guy simply pointing out that my name is Martha (with, by the way, a capital M), his response was this: “You’re such a scholar.” If you demonstrate through your words and actions that you consider that taking the time to get a name right is a feat reserved only for the ivory-tower intelligentsia, knock yourself out. You’ll be saving recruiters a ton of time. But wasting yours. And I’m here for you, not them.

Don’t sound as though you’re taking dictation for Charles Dickens: It’s one thing to write a dignified email to a stranger asking for assistance (or even better, “help”). It’s another thing to sound so formal that you completely date yourself – which translates into “outdate” yourself. The era of formal business correspondence is pretty much over, except for legal correspondence – which, here let me save some time for you, uses all its flowery language to sweeten the threat of “if you don’t comply, we’re going to sue your ass.” Other than that, business has gone beyond formal, flowery language (except for maybe Spain, and I’m not even sure about that anymore).

Not sure where to draw the line between falling-down sloppy and stuffed-shirt stuffy? You want to sound friendly but not presumptuous. The best examples I can think of are the anchors on the local news or the network morning shows. They’re smart (relatively speaking), congenial (absolutely), conversational (essential). And they use eeny bitty teeny tiny words. Copy them. Pretend you’re one of them talking to one of their smart friends – their social equals. If you get too strangely formal in your language, you’re going to sound as pitiful as David Copperfield holding up his bowl. That packages you as workhouse material, not bright, shining career, oh-my-god-you’re-just-what-this-company-needs material.

Focus your message on your dreams, not your saga of frustration and woe: I know it really helps to vent. But people – especially strangers -- are inspired by dreamers, not by woe-is-me’ers. As I’ve said before, if anyone wants to hire you because they take pity on you, run. They want you for all the wrong reasons.

When you talk to people, especially strangers like me, talk about what you want to do, not the long road of hell you’ve just walked down. In the listener’s ear, there’s a very short cognitive distance between, “so what do you want to do,” and “how can you do what you want to do for me or people I know?”

I had a very interesting email today from someone in Tucson. And I’d love to help him out (even though I really, really, really, really don’t do individual counseling; I pass those requests on to others). But even after reading his message, I really don’t know what he wants to do for an actual job.

Make it easy for people to get back to you. So here’s what happened, which pretty much prompted this whole posting. I wrote back to the guy, posing a question for him to consider and then get back to me on. My email to him bounced back to me with a request from some sort of automated spam blocker to type into a little window an absurdly scrambled set of letters. You know, that’s just really annoying.

I get spam, and I know how irritating it is. So I understand. But when you’re in the job market, appealing to the kindness of strangers, as well as the earnest interest of potential employers, don’t treat them like deadbeats. If your email service provider can’t skim the crap off the top before delivering your email to you, switch email service providers. My service provider has something called “spam assassin,” which works about 92% of the time. A few nasty emails slip through, and a few precious emails get caught up in the net (which I can always recover in my spam folder). But at least I don’t have to worry about a respected (or cherished) correspondent being made to empty his pockets and take off his shoes before being allowed through my security checkpoint.

These are really very easy changes to make in your project of finding new work! They don’t ask you to change who you are, they’re designed to help you take the best of who you are and put that front and center.

Amazing Stories: Get Your Foot in the Door Part 1

2009-01-01T05:07:00.000-08:00

I used to have a friend who was what anyone would call a late bloomer. Always brilliant, always smart and sensitive, blessed with a voracious curiosity, a killer sense of humor, he was also a child of the 60s. It wasn’t until he was in his 40s that he got around to finishing college. The academic discipline he chose required that he learn Chinese. And so at night he studied his brains out surrounded by the delightful demands of three adorable daughters ranging from newborn to 8-ish – each one with the same lively, curious, busy (read: demanding) intellect of their parents.

So here was my brilliant friend, fully and formally educated, and newly equipped with Chinese. Only problem: What the heck was he going to do with this liberal arts degree with so extraordinary an emphasis? It beat the heck out of all of us, including him. He knew what he didn’t want to do with this education, and that pretty much cut out all possibility of most of the obvious answers – like work for a company doing business in China.

One day, around about this time of year, he’s getting ready for his last round of finals, and we’re all still wondering how the heck is he going to cash in on his passion, brilliance and hard work. At just about then, he comes across a newspaper article about an organization that completely represented everything he cared deeply about. And so he wrote the executive director what can only be called a fan letter. Within a couple of days, the phone rings in his wife's kitchen: “Hello, is this where….lives?” Oh my gosh. It’s them!

He was employed before he had even reached out to accept his diploma among the thousands of others in his class in the gigantic auditorium. Fast forward 9 years: He’s still there, blissfully employed, deeply appreciated and that impressive noggin of his used to almost its capacity. It’s probably the only organization on the planet he would ever consider working for (or pretty much close to it), and this organization totally gets him.

So what’s the lesson here? Don’t be shy. Let the spirit of your passion move you. Write fan letters, true, sincere, well-composed, flattering (but not fawning), smart and specific.

Start building up a fluency in your own passion and possibilities. You don’t have to be PollyAnna, but just start building up a clipping file or data base of organizations that really turn you on for whatever reason. And start writing fan letters. Write a bunch of them, so there’s no pressure on any one of them to produce a job.

Get in the habit of kvelling (I’m not Jewish, but I sure do love that word, and I hope I spelled it right). Do it enough and soon the sheer weight of all that positivity is going to shift the luck balance in your direction. You’ll become more familiar with what brings you joy, what kinds of companies or organizations are most likely to be the right fit, and you’ll be able to speak their language.

And start hammering out those letters. Be sincere. Be specific. Be informed. Be enthusiastic...for reasons you can identify in your letter. Be personal -- make sure the letter is addressed to an individual, the higher up the better.

Then one of these days, your phone will ring.

Rebound: Your Most Important New Year Resolution If You're Laid Off

2008-12-29T09:42:00.000-08:00

(This is the first posting in a series based on everything I’ve been learning since I wrote Rebound: A Proven Plan for Starting Over After Job Loss, which will be published in February. But you can order it now on Amazon and get a special pre-pub price.)

If you’re one of the roughly bajillion people who have seen, read, bought The Secret, you know about the Law of Attraction. Personally I’ve got mixed feelings about the Law of Attraction (even though it did seem to work pretty well for Oprah…she made out okay). Apply just a little bit of pressure on me (like, say, a gun to my head, my hand on the Bible or my face on TV), and I just can’t step forward and say “thoughts become things.” Matching vibrational intention with the universe strikes me as being a healthy helping of what I uncharitably refer to as “oogy boogy,” an attitude that makes me pretty unpopular here in New Age Santa Fe. (My neighbor, just for an instance, buried a crystal in our dirt road to ward off the evil spirits emanating from the south – which is basically where you will find Albuquerque.)

All this being said, I have to cop to a confession: When I first saw The Secret, I immediately bought at least 10 copies and sent them to all my friends (well, most of them; there was one absolutely absurd segment about a woman laughing her way through breast cancer, and I just couldn’t send the dvd to my friend who survived breast cancer with the help of a knowledgeable oncologist, a scalpel and massive doses of radiation). Why? Because the film made me happy just to look at it. And I wanted to share that feel-good with the people I love. And on top of that, there’s a fantastic five-minute video available for free through their website that is designed specifically to help you start your day with a song in your heart and wings on your spirit. I watch it as often as I can – without wearing down its inspiring effects – and it gets me every time. Makes me so glad to be a human being on this wacky, rocky, wonderful, nerve-wracked planet.

And my starting the morning with an upbeat frame of mind just stacks the odds in my favor that I’m going to have a productive, creative, innovative day with at least one or two happy surprises by the time I turn off the light at night. It’s not a metaphysical thing. It takes no leap of faith or suspension of belief. It’s just the way things are.

It’s an actual scientific fact that people who are of a positive frame of mind are most likely to find creative solutions to thorny problems, bounce back from setbacks, appeal to other positive people who actually work for great companies that treat them well and that are hiring. This isn’t about the Law of Attraction, it’s about the fact that people who are happy are generally fun to be with. And people who are fun to be with attract other people who are fun and happy. You know, it’s a birds-of-a-feather kind of thing.

When you are happy, you’re more receptive to the idea of having fun (not to mention to fact that you’re more likely to be invited to do fun stuff with other fun people). And, a Harvard study actually proved that nose-to-the-grindstone types had more difficulty finding creative solutions to a work problem than people who reported having fun the day before.

So what’s the most essential resolution for you in 2009 if you were laid off in 2008 (or if you think that you might see the dreaded pink slip in 2009)? I will build my happiness muscle and protect it at all costs.

Ugh. How can anyone expect to be happy in these times, especially when they’re out of work? Reasonable question. But by giving into the assumption that happiness is more easily had in an environment of employment stability and financial security, you’re depriving yourself of what could be your most valuable tool for resilience, possibility and success that will see you toward a brighter, more fulfilling future.

In case you find yourself giving over to the dark side, here are a few notes on happiness that might help you stay committed to the brighter side:

Happiness is free. Yeah, yeah, I know. Cliché. But you know how clichés become clichés? Because they’re true.

Happy people attract happy people. And, as I’ve said before, lots of happy people have jobs and they’re happy to share inside info on what openings there might be. Happy people are more likely to share just about everything they’ve got – even if it’s their last packet of ramen noodles – because they’re pretty sure that a very cool surprise, or lucky break, is on its way to them. Any day now.

Happy people notice those lucky breaks and then take advantage of them. A few years ago Richard Wiseman wrote the book The Luck Factor, in which he outlines four “essential principles” for being lucky. Principle Three is “Expect Good Fortune.” Just knowing that it’s on its way can’t help but lift your spirits. And when it finally comes, guess what. You’ll notice it. And it will make you happy.

Hiring managers don’t offer jobs to people who bum them out. I was a very lucky girl the day I happened to turn on Oprah and she had Randy Pausch as her main guest. (If you know The Secret, you probably also know The Last Lecture. I vote for The Last Lecture.) In their interview he said that we have a choice in life: We can be the mopey, grumpy Eyore. Or we can be Tigger, who revels in all things and finds joy everywhere. (A friend of mine has a sign on her fridge, featuring Tigger, with the words, “no bouncing before breakfast.” Makes me smile every time I think about it.)

The thing is, said Pausch, people love to hang out with Tiggers. And that includes employers. If you insist on being an Eyore and you find someone to hire you because he or she just so relates to your many melancholy moods, run as fast as you can in the other direction. Better yet, bounce.

Happy people have great stories to tell. Have you ever noticed how unhappy people tell bummer stories? I noticed that about myself a few years ago when I was indulging in a bummer litany during my daily emails with my oldest friend across the country. I was complaining about this and that, thinking that each anecdote was riveting. After all, Nora Ephron’s mother said that anything bad that happens to a writer is just material. I discovered that I was really boring myself with this brand of material. And I resolved to stop gathering that brand of material. So the minute I realize that a relationship or circumstance is about to give me material, I get out of that situation pronto. (Except for customer-service horror stories; my friend and I still love to trade those hurts-so-good tales from our cross-country lives. Actually we love to wallow in them, like long hot baths, until we get all pruny.)

The resolution to sustain a happy outlook comes bundled with a whole new set of stories that will be made available to you. Your radar is adjusted, and you start picking up signals that you might otherwise be missing. Examples, for instance, of kind people doing good things for each other. Or great deus ex machina stories of people landing amazing jobs that are perfect for them. And, back to the attraction thing, as you start telling those stories more and more, a happier breed of person will be joining your audience – while the sad sacks slink out of your life.

You’ll be setting a good example to all those who take their clues about life by watching you. If you have kids, you’re teaching them how to relate to uncertainty. Uncertainty is part of their destiny – that’s one of the few things I can tell you right now with any certainty. Handling uncertainty with confidence and optimism is a skill set that they’re going to need more than any generation before them. It’s up to you to show them how it’s done. Do you tell the dread stories of woe, horror and outrage? Or do you focus on what’s good, hopeful, positive and happy-making? To borrow from David Bowie: Let’s bounce.

If you have to wait a while for your next job or lucky break to catch up with you, you might as well have fun doing it. Punishing yourself isn’t going to shorten your sentence of languishing between jobs. You don’t earn your chance at good luck by beating yourself up or denying yourself the pleasures of each day. The days are really all we have, as Pausch, I’m sure would tell you…if he could. So love each one and love your life within those hours.

Happy New Year. By which I mean, happy New Year.