2019 Career Resolutions for 2019 for Technologists

2019 Career Resolutions for 2019 for Technologists A couple of weeks ago I was interviewed by a dice.com writer, asking what my recommendations for career resolutions could be for technologists. I had three things I shared that I thought were pretty darn good. You can see her article here: Career Resolutions Every Tech Pro Needs to Make for 2019 First, and I think the most important bit of advice, is to work on your soft skills.   I was not the only one surprised by the results of Googles study of what made their top workers so successful, where the FIRST seven of ten things were soft skills. Isnt that mind-boggling? The top seven most important characteristics of successful Google employees do not include technology skills!   Im still shocked. But Im not surprised. Soft skills are so critical in todays world, especially where there is a certain assumption of technical abilities. I have 30 (and counting) Pluralsight courses that you can access that will help you with soft skills. You can see my soft skills courses on Pluralsight here. While the primary audience of Pluralsight has been programmers, my soft skill courses are applicable to anyone. Want to become a better listener? Want to learn about leadership, management, even career management (of course)? I have that, and more. I can offer you a 30 day pass on Pluralsight. Just get a JibberJobber account and then use the contact us to ask for more information. Pluralsight costs around $300 a year, which is a steal considering what it would take to, for example, go to school or sign up for a boot camp. Many professionals around the world use Pluralsight to keep their skills up-to-date.   Sometimes they have special offers My main point is, for your career growth, work on your soft skills! Second, help others. When you help others, whether you need help as a desperate job seeker or you are totally comfortable in your day job, you are creating great value in your network. I told the author of the dice article about an opportunity that I had what would have been a sure job offer through the brother of a close friend. It would have been awesome. I was at a networking event a few days earlier and met someone who would have been the perfect hire. In my conversation with the hiring manager I said that Id be happy to pursue this, but they really should have the other guy come in, too. Long story short: the other guy was offered the job. And I felt awesome, for the small part I had in his success. Helping others can be as dramatic as that, or it can be as simple as saying yes, I would be happy to meet with you for 30 minutes. Helping others means you make introductions, or make calls on behalf of the other person. It means you remember someones name, or just greet someone kindly. It means you speak kindly of others. There are hundreds of ways you can help others. I hope that this can be a career goal for you in 2019 and for years to come. Third, do The Thing you know you need to do. When the writer of that article asked me (in an email) what every technology professional should have as a career resolution in 2019, the first and second things mentioned above came to mind first. As we were talking, I had another idea. Its hard to say all technologists should do this. Were talking about tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people. My idea was the one at the bottom of the article, the one where I was cited. It was that you already know what you should do. There is, Im sure, at least one thing that you should work on. Im not sure if its to get better at a certain hard skill, or to expand your network, or to get ready for a a leadership role or to branch out as an entrepreneur I dont know. But I bet you know. So my suggestion is to work on the thing that you know to do. I dont have a silver bullet answer for you you already have the answer. So work on that. Happy 2019! 2019 Career Resolutions for 2019 for Technologists A couple of weeks ago I was interviewed by a dice.com writer, asking what my recommendations for career resolutions could be for technologists. I had three things I shared that I thought were pretty darn good. You can see her article here: Career Resolutions Every Tech Pro Needs to Make for 2019 First, and I think the most important bit of advice, is to work on your soft skills.   I was not the only one surprised by the results of Googles study of what made their top workers so successful, where the FIRST seven of ten things were soft skills. Isnt that mind-boggling? The top seven most important characteristics of successful Google employees do not include technology skills!   Im still shocked. But Im not surprised. Soft skills are so critical in todays world, especially where there is a certain assumption of technical abilities. I have 30 (and counting) Pluralsight courses that you can access that will help you with soft skills. You can see my soft skills courses on Pluralsight here. While the primary audience of Pluralsight has been programmers, my soft skill courses are applicable to anyone. Want to become a better listener? Want to learn about leadership, management, even career management (of course)? I have that, and more. I can offer you a 30 day pass on Pluralsight. Just get a JibberJobber account and then use the contact us to ask for more information. Pluralsight costs around $300 a year, which is a steal considering what it would take to, for example, go to school or sign up for a boot camp. Many professionals around the world use Pluralsight to keep their skills up-to-date.   Sometimes they have special offers My main point is, for your career growth, work on your soft skills! Second, help others. When you help others, whether you need help as a desperate job seeker or you are totally comfortable in your day job, you are creating great value in your network. I told the author of the dice article about an opportunity that I had what would have been a sure job offer through the brother of a close friend. It would have been awesome. I was at a networking event a few days earlier and met someone who would have been the perfect hire. In my conversation with the hiring manager I said that Id be happy to pursue this, but they really should have the other guy come in, too. Long story short: the other guy was offered the job. And I felt awesome, for the small part I had in his success. Helping others can be as dramatic as that, or it can be as simple as saying yes, I would be happy to meet with you for 30 minutes. Helping others means you make introductions, or make calls on behalf of the other person. It means you remember someones name, or just greet someone kindly. It means you speak kindly of others. There are hundreds of ways you can help others. I hope that this can be a career goal for you in 2019 and for years to come. Third, do The Thing you know you need to do. When the writer of that article asked me (in an email) what every technology professional should have as a career resolution in 2019, the first and second things mentioned above came to mind first. As we were talking, I had another idea. Its hard to say all technologists should do this. Were talking about tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people. My idea was the one at the bottom of the article, the one where I was cited. It was that you already know what you should do. There is, Im sure, at least one thing that you should work on. Im not sure if its to get better at a certain hard skill, or to expand your network, or to get ready for a a leadership role or to branch out as an entrepreneur I dont know. But I bet you know. So my suggestion is to work on the thing that you know to do. I dont have a silver bullet answer for you you already have the answer. So work on that. Happy 2019!

Office Frenemies

Office Frenemies Remember in high school when you ate lunch everyday with your best friends: your old faithful confidants who would save a seat for you if you were late to class, defend you against the mean girls and the bullies, and even try out for the team with you even though they had no skills just to support your grand delusions of becoming a soccer star? Ah yes, blissful memories of innocent times. Fast forward a few years, what happened? High school is now the workplace. If you’re late, someone will just happen to mention it to the boss. Instead of a couple of besties who have your back, you’re surrounded by the mean girls and the bullies. And no one is sacrificing a perfectly manicured fingernail to help you with anything, much less to help you become any type of star unless we’re talking about a fallen star. Then yes, they’ll stampede to be first in line for that. The craziest part? Now you have to eat lunch with them, and maybe even share office space. Yep. Welcome to a life with office frenemies. Upon first glance, the office frenemy looks, walks and talks like a normal person. However, underneath it all, you know she is plotting your downfall. Don’t expect any seat-saving activities here, no, she’ll take your spot in the blink of an eye, because everyone knows you are the rising star and everyone wants to be you. If your pen goes missing, you will already know who took it. It’s the oldest sabotage trick in the book. She may smile when you walk into the room, but, was that a spontaneous eye-color change you just saw? From brown to a monstrous yellow? It’s a good thing you’ve rehearsed your survival strategy. Let’s rehash: Do not make direct eye contact. Smile at her nose. That will make her feel insecure and weaken her resolve to get you fired. Don’t get too familiar. Just talk about the weather or the seasons. This is certain to not offend her, decreasing the chances she’ll go to the boss and complain. Text your real friends often, updating them on the meanies you got stuck working with. Laughing about it will put you in a good mood, plus she can’t chat to you if you’re obviously busy with your phone. And finally, Pack your things well in advance so that as soon as the bell rings, I mean, the clock strikes 5 p.m., you can blast out of there as fast as you ran on that soccer field so long ago. Check, check, check, and check. After more than a few encounters with these office frenemies, I had my survival strategy down to a science. I was invincible. I could smell an OF from a mile away. I could discern the special tap tap of her stilettos as she made her way to my office for another battle round. Even though we never actually had a battle, I have played the whole thing out in my mind many times before, just in case. I would NOT be ambushed. Nope, not me. Oh no, is she coming to me? Well, she’s looking right at me. Groooan, she’s definitely coming to me, smiling with her yellow eyes. What now? She opens her mouth. Then this comes out “Hey girl, want to meet up with a few of us after work for a drink?” What. System overload. No immediate response for this. All defenses stand down. I take a deep breath. Smile sheepishly. Is that joy that I feel? I’m so happy I could cry.  She’s so nice, I love her! So I muster up as much coolness as possible from every corner of my being and squeak “Sure, thank you.” OF responds, “Great”, smiles and walks away. Note to self, text  real  friends and tell them we need a new strategy, possible office friend found. This experience completely changed my work-life. I realized that I was  allowing  a few bad  experiences from my past to set the tone for everything to come. This made me distrustful  and in many ways unproductive. I had excluded the possibility of making office allies and even of making a real office friend. Let this be a lesson to all of us career girls. Although your main priority at work is to bring value to the company and to advance your professional life, always be open-minded with your co-workers and give yourself the chance to form a real relationship.  The  relationships which are limited to the office will be successful once youve established mutual trust and respect, making you more productive at work. As a bonus, you may end up forming a bond which extends beyond the office. Try it, lets break the office frenemy curse and become something much more valuable.

Invest in Your Employees for a Successful Business - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Invest in Your Employees for a Successful Business - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career If you want your business to be successful, it is essential to invest in your employees. When people feel being valued, they work harder and generally, do the best they can. Otherwise, the turnover rate increases, the productivity of your business drops and as a result, the costs increases faster. Therefore, if you want your business to be prosperous, below are some hints to keep your employees motivated and advance their skills. Give them autonomy and responsibility: Promote employee empowerment in your company. Let them be accountable for the tasks they work on. Also, if you give them more responsibility, this gives them a reason to learn more and move forward in their careers. When your employees accomplish their responsibilities, take the time to appreciate them. You can write an email or a personal thank you note for their accomplishments. Encourage Training: Encourage your employees to learn new skills and go to training sessions. Provide a company-wide training program. E-learning programs are very popular nowadays and it gives the freedom to listen to the training whenever you want. Also, motivate your employees to get professional certifications that will be helpful for their job. Set Goals and Provide a Career Path: Employees want to advance in their careers. Therefore, a career path will motivate and help them set goals for promotion. As a business owner or an executive, it is your job to explain them their duties within the organization. Clearly explain what is expected from them and how they can climb the career ladder. This will help the employees have a clear understanding of their role within the company and motivate them to move forward. Coach Your Employees: Feedback is great for motivating your employees. Nobody likes to be micro-managed. Instead they prefer someone who will motivate them and lead them towards a goal. If you notice that the performance of one of your employees is weaker than others, give him/her constructive feedback so s/he can also improve her/himself. Let your employees know that you care for them. Invest in Technology: You need to give the right tools to your employees if you want them to do their job properly. For example, if you have a sales person who makes presentations in your clients’ offices, then you need to provide him with a tablet or a laptop. If you have a graphic designer, you need to buy him/her the right software programs to do design.

How to Use Twitter to Source Candidates by Location

How to Use Twitter to Source Candidates by Location Perhaps you are a business developer or simply a networker Do you use Twitter to find stuff or do you just bleet??  Do you want to be able to find people to do business with or  research  what your competitors are up to? Heres one tip for you to help with this. Find prospects on Twitter You can search Twitter to find Tweets sent to specific people you can find leads, candidates, contacts you can even find tweets sent within a certain radius, for example: Tweets with Java developer sent within 25 miles of Manchester Tweets with recruiting sent by someone within 75 miles of York etc Looking for tweets like this could really help you: develop more leads find out who your competition is and what they are tweeting about develop new contacts in your sector find candidates How do you do this? Go  into  Twitter and find your  Advanced Search wheel  (or just go to:  https://twitter.com/#!/search-advanced).  Add your usual search criteria and then add a location to  Near this place   and add a radius eg. 15 miles. This will hunt for tweets sent within a radius, of say Leeds. This will help more than simply searching for Sales Manager AND Leeds as the result of this type of search will only find tweets where the word Leeds is mentioned, as opposed to near to Leeds. Happy hunting! Related: Top 5 Twitter Apps for Recruitment.

How Many LinkedIn Connections are Enough Connections - Career Pivot

How Many LinkedIn Connections are Enough Connections - Career Pivot Enough LinkedIn Connections? How many LinkedIn connections do you need to make the magic happen? The answer is … it depends. It depends on how many people are in your niche. If you are in a highly specialized niche then less may be better. It depends on the size of the networks of your 1st-degree connections. If everyone in your network has a small network (less than 10 connections) then you will need more. If your prospective client base or the industry you work in is large you will need more. It all depends on the size of your total network.LinkedIn used to tell you the size of your total network. With the latest version, you can only see how many 1st degree connections you have, which for me is 4,604. Specialized Niche I recently was working with a gentleman who was looking to move into a very specialized niche of mathematical modeling. Searching LinkedIn using 3-4 keyword phrases we found almost 3,000 profiles. We then started to find the influencers in the industry and connected with them. Next, we found people who were working in the industry and had a similar background. We sought out people who looked, smelled and tasted like our client. Check out my post on this topic titled Finding People Who Look, Taste and Smell Like You. The third step was critical, connecting with recruiters at target companies. Recruiters have large networks, and if they are recruiting in a specialized niche, they will be connected to many in the niche. When accepting LinkedIn connections, you can be selective on which ones you accept. My guess and it is only a guess if you reach 200 connections you probably have enough LinkedIn connections to get the magic to happen. Listen to the most recent episode Skilled Professional in a Well-Defined Industry Let’s say you are a marketing professional in a well-defined industry like financial services. 200 connections will not be enough to get you to the level of visibility needed to manage your career. How many? Well, definitely more than 500 which LinkedIn defines as the limit it will display. I recommend you follow the same process as someone in a niche industry: Find influencers and connect Look for people who look, taste and smell like you and connect Locate recruiters at your target companies and connect You will need to be more aggressive in finding and connecting with people. You may also want to be less selective in accepting invitations. My guess, and it is only a guess, is that if you reach 500-600 connections you probably have enough LinkedIn connections to get the magic to happen. Freelancer, Consultant, Coach, … People like myself who work with a worldwide audience need a much broader network that is not easy to define. This is why I have over 4,500 connections. A good example of this is theLinkedIn Profinder function. It wants to match clients with service providers via your LinkedIn network. As a service provider, the larger my network becomes the more people who will be matched with my services. I send very few LinkedIn connections except when it will benefit a client or promotes my business. On the other hand, I receive many LinkedIn connection requests. Last week, I was a sponsor of Product Camp of Austin unconference. I gave a presentation based on my blog post Why Are You Not Being Found? Try Thinking Like a Recruiter. I told everyone who attended my presentation to feel free to send me a connection request but asked them to tell me that they had attended my session in their connection request. About a dozen connection requests have been received. I also asked them tolikemy FaceBook page because it was lonely. When I receive a LinkedIn connection request, I make a quick assessment as to whether it is someone who is real (not spam) and with whom it makes sense for me to connect. I accept their request and send them a LinkedIn message: Dear [first name], I just accepted your LinkedIn connection request. How did you find me? Marc Miller Believe or not, most people do reply. I get a significant number of people who found me from a LifeHack.org article titled50 Great People To Follow On LinkedIn, No Matter Your Industry. My guess, and it is only a guess, is that if you reach 1000+connections you probably have enough LinkedIn connections to get the magic to happen. What About You? How many LinkedIn connections are enough connections for your success? There is no simple answer. Marc Miller Like what you just read? Share it with your friends using the buttons above. Like What You Read? Get Career Pivot Insights! Check out the Repurpose Your Career Podcast Do You Need Help With ...

Career Options For People Who Want To Make A Difference - Margaret Buj - Interview Coach

Career Options For People Who Want To Make A Difference Are the kind of person who dreams about making a difference in the world? You don’t necessarily have to do this with your career. You can make a huge difference in the world by lending a sympathetic ear, smiling, and donating to charity. However, many people want to make it their career. They feel it’ll help to bring more meaning into their lives. Here are some career options if you’d love to make a difference. You’ll definitely have more job satisfaction! Life Coach If you decide to be a life coach, you could help people in a variety of ways. You can specialise in one area if you like, such as romantic relationships or even health. Or, you could be a general life coach and help people in all areas of their lives. Your role will be to guide them. You’ll help to come up with a plan for them and steps to follow through with their actions. You can do this face to face in an office, or remotely. If you love giving others advice and helping them reach their goals, this could be for you! Personal Trainer If your goal is to help the people of the world get fit and healthy, becoming a personal trainer could be for you. Obviously it helps if you are fit yourself and have an interest in this industry. You could work in a gym or for yourself. There are many personal trainers, but not all are created equally. If you think you’d be good at this, the industry is crying out for you! You could create a healthier future. Nurse Nursing is a high profile career with plenty of job satisfaction. Your role is to make patients feel comfortable and keep a close eye on their condition. You will need to work alongside other healthcare professionals to provide the best level of care. It can take a long time to become a  registered nurse, but if you suit this role it will be worth it. Care Worker You could be a care worker in the community, home, or a hospital. You will have similar duties to that of other healthcare professionals, but in some cases your role may just be to take out patients and keep them happy. Social Worker As a social worker, you can help families and individuals cope with problems. You may work with families, drug abuses, the elderly, etc. You have a lot of responsibility in this role. It’s all about helping people to get back on their feet. Therapist There are many different types of therapists. You may use alternative therapies to improve conditions and lives. You may be a therapist that offers treatment for injuries and other problems. Your job will be to help people feel good about themselves again. You’ll give them their confidence back! Vet Working with animals can make a difference too. They don’t have a voice, so many people are becoming their voice for them! How will you make a difference?

The Three Top Tips to Write a Resume Objective As an Entry Level Candidate

The Three Top Tips to Write a Resume Objective As an Entry Level CandidateWriting a resume objective as an entry-level candidate is not that difficult to do. It will not only help you to show potential employers that you are a good and suitable candidate, but it will also help you to show potential employers that you have potential and that you can be of use in their organization. One of the things you should keep in mind while preparing your resume objective is to let it be something that will make employers know your worth to them and to do so within the constraints of what they want to see in a candidate.When you write a resume objective as an entry-level candidate, you should keep in mind that there are certain points that you can include, while avoiding others. They are:A: You should include your name, organization, position, and date of birth in your resume objective as an entry level candidate. This will allow employers to see that you are a person with qualities, that you can be depended on. When you do this, you will also be ensuring that they will want to hire you. When they hire you, you will most likely be able to prove that they did it because they saw something in you.B: You should include some information about yourself, and your history as an employee at your present or former company. This will give employers something to know and they can see that you can be trusted. Even though it is important to say that you will also show them that you are dependable, you should also say this in your resume objective as an entry level candidate.C: Describe the job and the duties that you have performed as a duty-related position in the organization. This will let employers know that you are responsible enough to do a job that is given to you. You should also tell employers that you can also do a task that is not mentioned in the job description. This will help to show that you are responsible enough to handle a different job.D: You should include some infor mation about your accomplishments and the position you have held. The point of this objective is to let employers know that you are willing to learn, adapt, and eventually improve.In order to write a resume objective as an entry-level candidate, you should try to cover all of the things that you should include in a resume objective. The above tips will help you get your objective ready as soon as possible and will make it appear professional and interesting to the employers.