Career Opportunities with Douglas E. Welch

Slow and Steady: Monitor the trend line to make your progress visible

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While it may seem that everything is hurry, rush, go, go go in today’s world, life still moves along at a very steady, slow pace. In our careers and in our lives, we can push, we can press, but both often unroll at a rather unhurried pace. Sure we can push for that new job, that new promotion, that new house, but we can only hurry life along so much. At these times it is always wise to remember the old cliche that “slow and steady wins the race.” It is through constant, on-going action that we change our lives and careers. Sure, there will be dramatic shifts in our lives, but these dramatic shifts are often underpinned by weeks, months and years of steady preparation and progress.

Read Slow and Steady: Monitor the trend line to make your progress visible

Build the Career You Deserve with these books

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* 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!
† Available from the LA Public Library

In Praise of Praise from the Career Opportunities Podcast

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Now that you have this image in mind, how do you think others feel when you praise them. If, like most human beings, they have a similar reaction, wouldn’t you like to be the cause of those same feelings in others? The sad truth, though, is that while we love to receive praise ourselves, most of us are absolutely lousy at giving it to others. Blame it on the American work or life ethic of rugged individualism, the harsh nature of work today, or simple inattention, but far too often we err on the side of criticism when a little praise might be just what we — and those around us — need.

Read In Praise of Praise from the Career Opportunities Podcast

Build the Career You Deserve with these books

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* 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!
† Available from the LA Public Library

Breaking the negativity cycle from the Career Opportunities Podcast

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As we all know, it is easy to carried away with the emotion of a crowd. Whether it is cheering at a football game, singing along at a great concert or crying along with the audience at a movie or play, we can experience great uplifting emotion. While we can get carried away with good emotions, it is even easier — and I think, greatly damaging — when we are carried away with the negative emotions of a crowd. When we ride the downward spiral of negative emotions, we can reach depths we never could have imagined. Often in our careers and in our lives, we can be faced with overwhelming negative emotions from groups both large and small. For our own, personal, self preservation, though, we need to to break the negativity cycle when it occurs.

 

Read Breaking the negativity cycle from the Career Opportunities Podcast

Build the Career You Deserve with these books

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* 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!
† Available from the LA Public Library

High school is the time to think about your career, but not to decide it from the Career Opportunities Podcast

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When I was going to high school — back in the Dark Ages of the 1970’s — teachers and counselors would talk about possible careers,  but unless you were moving into a vocational education program, no one expected you to decide on a career right then.  College was meant to the be place where you ‘found yourself’.  Today, though, we have magnet schools — for junior high aged children — dedicated to zoology, journalism, science, arts, performing arts, math, engineering and more. It seems to me that, more and more, we are asking children to decide on their carers earlier and earlier. As someone who has yet to decide “What I want to be when I grow up”, I find this a bit troubling. For me, childhood is about discovering what you might want to do with the rest of your life, not deciding.

Read High school is the time to think about your career, but not to decide it from the Career Opportunities Podcast

Build the Career You Deserve with these books

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* 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!
† Available from the LA Public Library

A Year of Self Preservation from the Career Opportunities Podcast

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As I have done for the past several years, 2013 starts with a word or phrase that I will focus on throughout the year. It is always my hope that you will find this focus just as useful. For 2013, I am declaring A Year of Self Preservation. A year of taking care of yourself so that you can help take care of others.

When we had our son nearly 15 years ago, our pediatrician passed on an important piece of advice — one that I share with almost everyone I meet at some point. “Rested Parents are Good Parents!” It is so easy, as a new parent to dedicate yourself so completely to your child that everything else in your life suffers. Your sleep suffers, of course, but also your relationship with your spouse and family, your relationship with friends and even your relationship with yourself. Your work and career can suffer, as well.

Read A Year of Self Preservation from the Career Opportunities Podcast

Build the Career You Deserve with these books

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* 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!
† Available from the LA Public Library

I’ve said much the same thing that Seth is saying here (see below) in past columns (Economic downturns makes career planning even more important
October 3rd, 2008) and I wanted to reinforce those words with his analysis here. Profit gained by extorting, abusing and defrauding others is anathema to our society and — I believe — not required for a decent (sometimes astronomical) profit. Still people will cut corners, lie, cheat and steal while all the while proclaiming “It’s not my fault! I did nothing wrong! It is all the company’s fault!”

Companies, by their very nature, cannot have consciences. They can’t distinguish between right and wrong. Only the employees of a company have that power, but they abdicate it in some false sense of righteousness that they were only “doing their job!” 

Avoid those whose only motive us profit. You will not be above their abuse. You’re only seen as another mark to be conned — another sheep to be fleeced.

Nearly fifty years ago, Milton Friedman published a polemic, an article that altered the way many people think about corporations and their role in society. Countless writers have explained why it’s poorly reasoned, dangerous and wrong. (Including business school deans, Harvard Business Review and Fortune).

The simple message of the simple article was: “there is one and only one social responsibility of business – to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits…”

Friedman does add a parenthetical, “so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud,” but it’s clear that his emphasis is on the first part.

Read Off the hook with Milton Friedman via Seth Godin’s Blog

Start the New Year without a plan From the Career Opportunities Podcast

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In the past, I have written columns on starting the New Year off right in terms of your career. I have told you “Don’t make resolutions, make action items.” (2010) I have said “Get a plan” (2006) and encouraged you to “Start a Journal for the New Year.” This year, however, I have decided to do the opposite. I think 2013 is the year you just might want to begin WITHOUT a plan. After almost 30 years of creating a career, I have seen how plans, dreams and resolutions can often go awry — not because they were bad, but simply because they were inflexible. When the realities of life meet the complexities and chaos of your career, things can fly apart. Rather than fly apart with them, I’m urging you to build some flexibility into your New Year.

Read Start the New Year without a plan From the Career Opportunities Podcast

Build the Career You Deserve with these books

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* 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!
† Available from the LA Public Library

Halfway out of the dark from the Career Opportunities Podcast

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“…wherever people are, in the deepest part of the winter, at the exact mid-point, everybody stops and turns and hugs. As if to say, “Well done. Well done, everyone! We’re halfway out of the dark.” — Doctor Who, A Christmas Carol

As in the quote above, we are very close to our own moment of the year where we are “halfway out of the dark.” The Winter Solstice has passed and the days get longer – second by second, minute by minute – with each passing day. In our careers, it is important to remember this endless cycles that has gone on for millions of years. The darkness comes, the darkness abates and then it all starts over again.

Of course the same cycle can be said to occur in our lives and in our careers. There are boom times, there are bust times and there is everything in between. No one knows exactly what life will bring, but I find myself more and more assured each day, that the cycles will continue to oscillate back and forth for as long as we – and the planet – exist. Cycles are a fundamental part of our world. Look to any science – physics, chemistry, biology – and you will see them represented. It only makes sense that cycles occur over and over in our lives as well.

Read Halfway out of the dark from the Career Opportunities Podcast

Build the Career You Deserve with these books

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* 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!
† Available from the LA Public Library

Tips for the long-term unemployed from the Career Opportunities Podcast

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Throughout my life, both offline and online, I meet many people who — for lack of a better term — find themselves among the long-term unemployed. They might be working in some capacity, as a freelancer, for example, but they would much rather re-join the ranks of full-time employees. They can find themselves in this situation due to a layoff, recovery from health problems or because they followed a career path that has not worked out. Regardless of the reasons, there are several tips that can help the long-term unemployed get back to work full-time.

Read Tips for the long-term unemployed from the Career Opportunities Podcast

Build the Career You Deserve with these books

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* 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!
† Available from the LA Public Library

What You Need: Presenting Yourself Well from the Career Opportunities Podcast

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With this column I am starting an ongoing series entitled, “What You Need.” These columns will highlight what I consider the fundamental foundations of any career. These foundations often deal with the, so-called, “softer” side of jobs, work and careers, but I have always considered this the most important part of any career. These foundations are the underpinnings of everything else that you do in your career and without tending to them you put yourself at a severe disadvantage.

Read What You Need: Presenting Yourself Well from the Career Opportunities Podcast

Build the Career You Deserve with these books

†††

* 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!
† Available from the LA Public Library