Job Search Advice Archives - Page 12 of 14

Setting Goals and Changing Habits

After we have spent some time answering questions, reflecting on the answers and as I suggested in the last post doing some decluttering, it’s time to begin making changes to your lifestyle. Let’s take a look at some habits that you may want to embrace, and offer some goal-setting tips to help you get started.

Gratitude

One of the habits that will help you avoid focusing on buying new things, and instead support you to focus on enjoying what you have, is the gratitude habit. You can embrace gratitude in many different ways. You can start each day by thinking about all of the wonderful things you’re grateful for.

You can start a gratitude journal and write in it every day or if like me you already maintain a reflective journal then add some gratitude reflections. You can also start saying thanks in a sincere way to people you encounter during the day.

Replace Your Shopping Habit

How often do you find yourself shopping online? How many times do you buy something on a whim? For many, shopping is a habit and it leads to a home full of unwanted stuff. This is stuff that costs money and gets in the way of you living your ideal life.

There are several ways to become more aware of your spending habits. One of them is to simply stop shopping. Ban or block shopping sites on your computer. You can also find hobbies and activities that replace your shopping habit.

For example, instead of shopping on the weekends or surfing the net while sitting on the couch, start knitting, build a dresser, or join a local sports club. Keep busy so you’re not tempted to shop and spend.

DIY

If it’s broken, you throw it away, right? Not anymore. Instead of replacing items in your home and life that are in need of a little TLC, why not get creative and flex your skills.

DIY is a nice way to add some personality to your home, to provide you with a sense of satisfaction, and to keep items that you love in your possession. Of course, if you’re not handy, then by all means consider having the item repaired instead of throwing it away.

Finally, find and focus on your passions. Find activities and pursuits that make you feel happy and joyful. It can be anything from Genealogy/Family History Research, making homemade wine to writing travel books to building websites – and everything in between.

Living well with what you have isn’t just focused on clearing out material items; it’s also about clearing away the pursuits and tasks that don’t bring you joy. Sure, no day is without some menial tasks. However, if the bulk of your life is spent on pursuits that make you smile, then you’re living well.
Moving Forward

Once you’ve begun to envision a simpler life – one that is full of meaning and is defined by you as good living – then it’s time to start taking steps toward that vision. The first step is to commit to your path. If you want to live well with what you have, then you have to commit to it.

That may mean different things for different people. On a fundamental level it means not adding more clutter and distractions to your life. It may also mean making major changes to your life. For example, you might decide to downsize your home and/or move towns. Or start a new job.

Committing to changing your life is the first step, so what’s the second? It’s to start setting small goals to help you transition toward that life. Small goals might be anything, such as cleaning out your closet and only keeping clothes that you wear and love. It might mean taking a class that will help you start a new career. Start setting those goals and create a plan to follow through.

Finally, the third step is to begin living your life right now as if you’re already successful. You’ve envisioned your ideal day. You’ve made a list of the things and people that support you as well as lists about your strengths, weaknesses, and the things that don’t support you. You have a good idea about how you want to live your life.

Start living as if you’ve already achieved your goals. This is important because it causes a shift in your mindset. Instead of saying that you’re trying to live well with what you have, say that you are living well with what you have. Instead of saying that you want to write a mystery book, say that you are writing a mystery book. See the difference?

Approaching your life as if you’re already achieved your goals empowers you to actually take steps each day to make it true. When you cut down to the “essentials” and what’s most important to you in your life, you may be surprised at what it takes to make you truly happy.

3 Tips To Improve Your Self-Esteem

I have written quite a lot over the years about self-esteem and this post compliments a post I recently added to LinkedIn looking at What Is Self-Esteem? Here, I want to take a look at how to improve your self-esteem.

Our self-esteem, or how we feel about your worth, impacts our daily life. Admittedly, our self-esteem can change from day to day. Some days you may wake up feeling great about yourself and the world. Other days, you might feel like nothing you do or say matters.

Think about those days for a second – the down days when your self-esteem isn’t so great. How effective and productive were you? How well were you able to communicate with others? Chances are, when your self-esteem has taken a hit, you aren’t able to function on a high level. Your personal and professional life can suffer.

The good news is that there are simple tips you can embrace today to help turn those bad days around.

1. Find the Why

Why has your self-esteem taken a hit? What’s impacting how you feel about yourself? It can be anything from a bad night’s sleep, to a mistake, to criticism from someone. When you can identify your reason for low self-esteem, you can approach the solution logically.

2. One Positive Thought

You have a choice here. When you’re feeling down you can stop, take a deep breath, and identify one positive thought about yourself. Alternatively, you can keep a positive thought in your back pocket.

For example, when someone criticizes you at work, you can pull out your positive thought and read it. It can be anything that makes you feel better about yourself. For example, you might pull out a statement that says, “I am a kind and loving person who always does their best.”

The benefit of writing down a statement and keeping it with you is that sometimes when you’re having a particularly difficult day, it can be hard to think something positive.

3. A Little TLC

On the difficult days it’s always a good idea to pamper yourself a little. Identify one small thing that can have a big impact. For example, you might give yourself a facial, read a book on the patio, or go for a jog in the park. Whatever small self-care step that you can take, do it. It will make a significant difference on how you feel and how you feel about yourself.

Becoming aware of your self-esteem and noting when and why it may suffer can help you make a change. Treat yourself well and remember what makes you wonderful.

Using Twitter for Networking

Several years back, networking required a great deal of work. People had to attend events and memorise other people’s numbers. It had to involve a degree of proximity. Luckily, times have changed and networking has become easier than ever before. Millions of people have embraced social media platforms like Twitter.

It has a simple, streamlined approach that facilitates fast, informal conversations. Its real-time communication capabilities make it a great platform for you to expand your network. As you will soon come to learn, there are many easy ways to use Twitter for networking.

1. Finding The Right People To Follow

The starting point for great networking is finding the right people. There are many tools that you can use to do this. Twitter Search lets you use search operators to search for specific keywords and people. You can therefore use it to search for influencers in your market or people talking about your field of expertise. In the “Who to Follow” tab, Twitter offers a directory of people that you might be interested in following. The suggested accounts are based on who you follow already. Some of the people you find and follow will return the favor and follow you too. Therefore, the more users you follow, the more users you will attract as followers.

2. Show Your Followers Your Personal Brand

Once you have searched for and connected with the right people in your niche by following them, you will have to ensure that your profile markets your personal brand. Details in your profile such as your bio and avatar determine what people think of you. A killer bio can get you more targeted followers. Your bio space has a 160-character limit meaning you will have to make the most out of every word you use. You should get your priorities sorted and start by including the most important information that you would like to get across to your targeted followers.

For example, if you are a graphic designer, start by providing this information other than writing about your addiction to football and golf. You may therefore have to exclude some hobbies. You should also include relevant keywords to enable people to find you during searches. For your avatar, you should use a recent photo of your face. For an organization with an account managed by many people, the logo should be used as the avatar.

3. Tweet Consistently With Your Followers In Mind

Your followers need to hear from you on a regular basis throughout the day and week. You therefore need to maintain an online presence by tweeting consistently. You should however take their interests into consideration. Ask yourself whether your tweeting is too much to the extent that you are filling up their feed with irrelevant tweets. In such a case, they will most likely ignore or block you.

The content you tweet should show others your interests. You can share current issues on your field of expertise, share advice, ask questions, solicit for opinions or post links to interesting articles related to your niche. In that way, you’ll have people reach out to you with comments or ideas of their own. This gives you an opportunity to add value by demonstrating your knowledge of your field as you also gain knowledge from the other users. This adds value and helps you attract even more followers.

All of your tweets will have an impact on your network. Think about how your tweets will be perceived by others. Make sure they don’t come off as being too sales-oriented or pushy. There is no harm in tweeting about what you are doing once in a while. Just make it fun and interesting, and don’t overdo it to the point that a visitor to your profile sees no relation between the information on your bio and the content in majority of your tweets.

4. Show Interest In Other People’s Tweets

You cannot successfully use Twitter for networking without showing interest in other people’s tweets. You need to respond to other peoples’ comments and questions. This can be done by typing @ along with their Twitter handle orby clicking the arrow button. Give a feedback or comment on others’ tweets. If the tweets contain a link to an article, give your opinion or whether you agree or disagree with the article and the reason for your decision.

A great way to show interest is by retweeting. Retweeting someone shows that you are paying attention to what they are saying and find them to be interesting. It is a way of showing interest in networking with someone without being too pushy. If you add some personal comments to the retweet, they’ll find out a bit about your personality before beginning more one-on-one networking.

5. Create A List of Influencers – Your Personal Learning Network

With Twitter, you can create lists of people you think are worth paying special attention to. This feature enables you to quickly read tweets from a certain list. Other people can also follow your list if they have an interest in the same subject. The list can be an important source of information. Create a public list of influencers in your industry and let each one of them know that they have been added to your list. As you come across people to add to your list, inform them that you have added them to show your recognition.

6. Share Your Network

As you continue to meet people on Twitter, you’ll come across people who have a lot in common. You should take the initiative and introduce such people. This will strengthen your network. The people you share contacts with will most likely do the same with you.

Does it start and end on Twitter?

After you successfully use Twitter for networking, you can go the extra mile. Spend time networking beyond Twitter. You can exchange phone numbers and talk over the phone or even chat on Skype.

Twitter is a great networking tool. Unfortunately, few people utilize it for this purpose. Make Twitter one of the important tools in your overall business networking plan and reap the benefit of establishing unlimited and valuable connections.

Are You A FED-Up Job Seeker?

Are you fed up of Job Search? Yes it can be frustrating when you are trying to find a new job and you just want it to come to an end and for someone to offer you are a job can’t it! Well I want you to be really FED up! But not in the way you might think and not that I am wishing you more weeks and months of job search. But I want to suggest that you look at your job search in perhaps a different way.

This morning I had a telephone conversation with Steve Radcliffe which came about purely by chance. For those of you who may not recognise the name he is the author of Leadership Plain and Simple which for me is probably the best book I have ever read on Leadership.

I had a job interview around lunchtime today with an organisation that has taken on board Steve Radcliffe’s Leadership model. I had therefore taken the opportunity to re-read his book to refresh my memory on some aspects of the approach. Having done so I dropped Steve a line thanking him for re-inspiring me about something I am passionate about as a Learning and Development Professional which is keeping things simple!

I was pleasantly surprised to get a message from him asking if I would like a discussion about his Leadership Model before my interview. Of course I was delighted to accept and we had a really excellent discussion. So what’s all this got to do with job search and being truly FED up?

Well, if you are not familiar with Steve’s Leadership Model it is Future, Engage, Deliver (FED) and is a model which can be applied to so many people at every level of an organisation but equally to individuals who are not “leading” anyone.

In summary the model is based around the idea that effective leaders need to do three things:

Future – The Leader needs to have a clear vision that they can articulate about where the organisation is going. Or to put it another way they are “up to something” that they really care passionately about.
Engage – The Leader needs to be able to engage others, bring them onboard and get them moving towards that future vision.
Deliver – The Leader needs to be able to make things happen.

I love the simplicity of the model but equally the depth of insight it offers into the role of Leaders. If you want to explore it in a little more detail then I highly recommend getting yourself a copy of Leadership – Plain and Simple and like me you might find your views on leadership changing. Because as Steve shows leadership isn’t that complex!

During our conversation this morning Steve asked me how I was applying FED (Future, Engage, Deliver) right now. I didn’t really need to think about it because having been re-engaged with the concepts through reading the book again it is something I have been thinking about. As a Job Seeker I am “up to something” that I care passionately about. I have a clear understanding of the type of role I want to be doing and the type of organisation I want to work with. I am Engaging people through networking in many different ways, doing work on making relevant people aware of my personal brand and continuing to interact with people across social media. Then we come to “Deliver” and that of course is about ensuring that I am taking the actions required and getting others to take action for and with me to ensure that I can create the “Future” that I want.

I appreciate that at times it can seem a lonely, heartless task searching for a new job. However, if we think about it in terms of the leadership skills we can and are demonstrating it can make it a much more focused activity. Equally next time you are at an interview and you are asked when did you last demonstrate real leadership skills you can talk about your job search and you can also demonstrate your awareness of Future, Engage Deliver which makes leadership simple, understandable and effective.

As I said earlier I would highly recommend you getting hold of a copy of Leadership – Plain and Simple (UK) and if you are reading this in the US then you can get it here.

Do You Need To Lighten Up?

No this isn’t a call to suddenly become full of the joys of spring whilst you are searching for a new job. However, the results are in and it would appear that I definitely need to Lighten Up and you may well do too.

Let me explain. Various people of late have been talking about a website where you can upload your profile photograph(s) and get feedback from others on your picture against three criteria:

Competence – do you look like a competent individual?
Likeability – do you looking friendly?
Influential – do you give off an air of authority?

The prevailing wisdom, supported by some research, is that we are more likely to feel drawn to people who are likeable rather than those we necessarily see as competent or influential. So what does this mean for the job seeker? Given that our online profiles, whether they are on LinkedIn, Twitter or anywhere else that we open to the general public, are now seen as a key part of the complete job search campaign, then I think we need to be very aware of it. The research shows that when people are skimming through lists of people who are returned as matching their keyword searches (think recruiters searching LinkedIn) they are more likely to click on those that they perceive as “Likeable.”

Personally I hadn’t given it very much thought and had always gone for a serious looking (professional?) image to use on my profiles albeit that I had long since forsaken the collar and tie look! However, I asked someone whose opinion I value to review my LinkedIn profile recently (you can see it here Paul Duxbury) from top to bottom.

Their feedback was invaluable in terms of many areas of the profile but there was one thing that they commented on above all else. You guessed it! My profile picture! Their comment was that they thought that I looked “seriously, seriously serious” and that I was bordering on looking a little intimidating! Not quite the image that I wanted to project but given that I don’t especially like pictures of me smiling I had decided to go with a serious looking one from the professional photo shoot rather than the more relaxed looking picture.

With that feedback and after a little thought I decided that I would change my profile image to one with a hint of a smile and uploaded it to LinkedIn and the various other social media sites thereby ensuring a consistent personal brand.

I then decided to upload my original profile picture and my new picture to the site I mentioned at the start of this post which is PhotoFeeler which is free to use and you gain credits to have your photo voted on by voting on others. There is also an option, which I haven’t used, to buy credits so that you can get quicker results.

I was not too surprised, given the feedback I had received, that my original image was perceived as competent and influential but didn’t score too well on the likeable scale. However, what did throw me was that my new image was not scoring much better. Now fortunately one of the options on the site when you are scoring/voting on pictures is that you can leave a comment. When it came to my new picture there were quite a few comments that it was far too dark. Easily solved! Open the picture editor and lighten the picture, which is exactly what I did.

I then uploaded the new “lightened up” image to PhotoFeeler and waited for the scores to come in. A dramatic improvement with the feedback being that I look competent, influential and likeable!

It may only seem like a small thing but given the increased use of visual marketing in so many areas getting our online profile picture right when we are looking for a job is crucial. So many decisions can be made on the basis of a cursory glance and whether we like it or not we have to deal with it. Friends and family might tell us that they love our profile image and think it really captures us. But what about people we don’t know which for the most part is the group that recruiters belong to?

Therefore given that it’s free to use, in exchange for helping a few others, what have you got to lose. Check out what people you don’t know think of your profile picture by trying out PhotoFeeler.