Career Opportunities with Douglas E. Welch

Photo: Danielle MacInnes via Unsplash

COVID-19 and Your Job: Tips and Actions to Consider via Indeed

COVID-19 continues to dominate the news cycle and raise important questions around health care and prevention. The spread of the virus has more recently caused the cancelation of many events and conferences, and many employers have asked their workforce to work from home.

In this article, we offer actionable steps you can take to position yourself for success during an unpredictable and challenging season.

Staying productive during COVID-19

Depending on your situation, there are a number of steps you can take to be proactive when it comes to supporting yourself and your loved ones and being content at work. Here are tips by circumstance:

Read COVID-19 and Your Job: Tips and Actions to Consider via Indeed

Transition as the New Normal with Douglas E. Welch at Tuesdays with Transitioners

Douglas E. Welch presents to Tuesdays with Transitioners in Northridge, California on “Transition as the New Normal” on July 14 2014.

While we all might like to think that transition is a short term process, it is not a fleeting process we fall into and out of. Rather, life is truly nothing but one long transition — a state of constant flux. We might have dreams and desires for stability, but in a world that is constantly changing, stability is only an illusion and a temporary one at that.

Transition is the New Normal. It is a constant part of our lives and careers and if we understand that, we can use it to our advantage.

When you first realize that you are always in transition, it can seem a bit frightening. It can feel like you are the mercy of the time and tides, being buffeted about without any ability to control what is happening around you. You do have some control, but it requires that you pay deep attention to your life, your thoughts, and your actions. Yes, if you let the world push you around, it will gladly (and easily) do so. If you, instead, take your life directly into your own hands, you can ride the waves of change and transition in ways that best benefit you.

Douglas is writer and host of Career Opportunities, a long running column and podcast dedicated to “Helping to Build the Career You Deserve!” Career Opportunities began in 1997 as a magazine column and expanded to a podcast in 2004. Douglas is also a New Media Consultant, Technology and Career Consultant with over 30 years experience in high-tech. You can find all of Douglas’ work at DouglasEWelch.com.

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Audio: Transition as the New Normal with Douglas E. Welch at OPEN Ventura County (47 min)

Douglas E. Welch presents “Transition as the New Normal” to OPEN (Outstanding Professionals Employment Network) Ventura County in Simi Valley, CA on February 27 2015.

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Also mentioned in this talk is “Career Compass: Finding Your Career North”, an Amazon Kindle booklet

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The secret to career change is doing something — from the Career Opportunities Podcast

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When you are in the midst of a career change you can become overwhelmed with all the busy work involved. You spend your days scanning advertisements, preparing cover letters and resumes, making phone calls and more. While these activities are certainly important to your job search, I want you to look beyond them to something even more important. After the envelopes are in the mail and the calls returned and the advertisements reviewed I want you to get out and actually “Do” something. I want you to move outside these internal tasks and take some time to engage with the world around you.

Read The secret to career change is doing something — from the Career Opportunities Podcast

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Share your work philosophy — from the Career Opportunities Podcast

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As I have often said in past columns and speaking engagements, telling people “what you do and how well you do it” is of the utmost importance in any career today. Even so, we can all have difficulty in finding ways to share this message with those around us. You might wonder what you can and should be saying about your work and career. In an effort to move you forward in promoting your own work, here are a few example methods for sharing your work and gaining larger benefits from your skills and knowledge.

Read Share your work philosophy — from the Career Opportunities Podcast

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Make it clearer, not more confusing — from the Career Opportunities Podcast

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As someone who has spent their life working to support, train and educate people, I have learned again and again how important it is to be able to explain difficult concepts quickly and clearly. A good explanation can help everyone involved leap forward in their understanding and productivity. There are few tools as powerful as a good explanation to help people work to their highest potential, but there is a bit of an art to creating and delivering great explanations and answers to tough questions. Here are a few guidelines I have developed over the years to help me be better at explaining and always work towards making concepts and ideas clearer, not more confusing.

Read Make it clearer, not more confusing — from the Career Opportunities Podcast

* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
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The Client Dance — from the Career Opportunities Podcast

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Working with any client is a dance — or at least it should be. Dancing partners have to learn a lot about each other — how they move, where they move, how they communicate their moves — and working with any freelance client is much the same. Just as when you are learning to dance, there will be mistakes, missteps and a few toes are sure to be stepped upon. It is part of the nature of learning and developing any relationship.

 

Read The Client Dance — from the Career Opportunities Podcast

* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out! 

Projects should have an end, not just fade away — from the Career Opportunities Podcast

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It is the nature of life , business and career that you will start many more projects than you complete. Needs change. Specifications change. Business climates change. Projects once thought new and innovative are superseded by those even newer and more innovative. In this hyperactive world of change, we can forget that sometimes the best beginnings are actually good endings.

Too often in life and work, we simply let projects, ideas and initiatives fade away instead of bringing them to a useful, definitive end. Equipment is left to slowly die in a corner or closet. Books sit unread and unwanted on employee bookshelves, budgets for one project slowly get absorbed by departments. While this slow fading of, usually failed, projects might be easier on our ego, it saps the energy and attention we need to focus on the new, even better, projects to come.

Read Projects should have an end, not just fade away — from the Career Opportunities Podcast

* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out! 

Always in transition — from the Career Opportunities Podcast

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I frequently find myself speaking to careerists who are in transition from one job to another or one career to another. I have also been involved in my own career transition over the last year or so. While we all might like to think that transition is a short term process, I have discovered, looking back over the past year and my whole life, that transition is not a fleeting process we fall into and out of. Rather, life is truly nothing but one long transition — a state of constant flux. We might have dreams and desires for stability, but in a world that is constantly changing, stability is only an illusion and a temporary one at that.

 

Read Always in transition — from the Career Opportunities Podcast

* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out! 

Combine all aspects of your life into your career — from the Career Opportunities Podcast

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Each and every one of us is a unique combination of knowledge, temperament and experience. We all have different wants, needs and desires.  It is this very uniqueness that can bring us great success in our careers, if we use it to its full potential. If you can find ways to bring all your experiences, all your desires and all your knowledge to bear on your career, you will find many opportunities to find work and do great work.

Read Combine all aspects of your life into your career — from the Career Opportunities Podcast

* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!