Career Opportunities

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Here is part 2 of my interview with George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster from the Bigg Success Show.

The Need to Lead – Part 2

Posted on February 18th, 2009 by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster

On The Bigg Success Show today, we continued our discussion with Douglas E. Welch, host of the popular Career Opportunities, podcast. Last time, we discussed why Douglas has declared 2009 the “Year of the Leader.” Let’s get back to the conversation …

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Last week I was interviewed by George and Mary-Lynn over at The Bigg Success Show and we talked about my declaration of 2009 as The Year of Leadership. Check out both Part 1 and Part 2 (Coming Wednesday.

Douglas

The Need to Lead – Part 1

Posted on February 17th, 2009 by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster

We are thrilled today to talk with Douglas E. Welch on The Bigg Success Show. Douglas is the host of Career Opportunities, a fantastic podcast where he helps people build the career they deserve. He is also a writer and computer consultant with articles published in Wired, MacWorld, and the Los Angeles Times. As if that’s not enough, he also conducts seminars on podcasting for schools and businesses.

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Don’t lose your way on the road to a great career

Losing your way
By Douglas E. Welch

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Among all the side effects of losing your job, the feeling of losing your way is probably the worst. Many of us have allowed our work to become the sole defining aspect of our lives. In the worst cases, we lose our individuality. We become a cog in the machine instead of a unique and human individual. Even if you haven’t lost your job recently, you can probably imagine the immense distress such a situation might cause. Still, many of us are in direct danger of losing our way, but there are methods to define yourself as “containing multitudes” and avoid some of the dangers. This is as equally important when your are in a stable job as when you find yourself on the receiving end of a layoff notice.

Who are you?

No matter how much time you might spend at work, there are still parts of you — parts of your life — that exist outside your office. If you are a severe workaholic, these might be difficult to locate, but I can assure you they are there. Like me, you may be a husband, father, son, nephew, sports player, musician, etc. How are these roles different from your work persona? How are they similar? How can you start to pay more attention to these other roles? How can you use them to define yourself beyond xxx worker in yyy department at zzz company for 27 years?

More importantly, why do you need this differentiation? I believe that to truly build the career you deserve, you need to see your career as “yours.” You need to own it, manage it and build it. Too often we abdicate all responsibility for our career to our employer. They decide how we are challenged and how we grow. Unfortunately, they can also trap us in one role, one place for much too long when we become overly critical to some process. Like most things in life, our work and career requires a balance to be mutually beneficial to everyone involved. Allowing one part of our lives to dominate quickly throws off everything around it.

What’s the problem?

I bring up the issue of losing your way for one important reason. Often, we don’t recognize the fact when times are good. We are working hard, getting paid and in a stable environment. Life looks good. What we may not recognize, though, is that we could be at a dead end. It might appear to be a beautiful glade at the end of a garden path, but it is a dead end all the same. This beautiful place can turn dark and dangerous if something happens to our company or the economy as a whole. Suddenly, we are kicked out of our beautiful place with no warning and little recourse. Only then do we realize where we were and what was happening. Even worse, the longer we stay in this environment, the more painful it will be when we leave.

You can probably recognize this situation if you ever been laid off yourself or as something that comes up in your discussions with friends and family who have gone through the experience. They can look bereft, out of sorts and, worst of all, lost. They can’t understand how the world has changed so dramatically. While we can typically recover from such a large change in our life, we can often lose days or weeks trying to figure out our lives and put our career back on the right track. Wouldn’t it be better to have a deeper understanding of our work and career before being forced to reevaluate everything?

It is easy to lose our way, in good times and bad. If we don’t keep a clear perspective on our work and career as it moves along, stability can lull us into a false sense of security. No matter what our situation, we always need to be observing, directing and managing our career. In this way, you can more easily weather troubled periods since you have a clear understanding of your work and your life. The world may change around you, but you will already have a clear sense of direction and where you want to go. Losing your way is never enjoyable, so do all you can to prepare ahead of any eventuality.

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Join the new Career Opportunities Community site!

Follow Douglas on FriendFeed | Follow Douglas on Twitter | Douglas on MySpace | Douglas on Facebook | Douglas on LinkedIn

Become a Facebook Fan of Career Opportunities

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Reader/Listener Line @ 818-804-5049

Since the CareerCamp Online idea is a bit of a new concept, there is still a but of confusion about the who, what, why, where and how? In that light, I am going to try and explain things a bit further. I hope that many of you will attend and also present at CareerCamp Online. I think we all have something to share and learn from the experience.

Ok, here goes. If there are still questions, please drop me a line and I will answer any that you have. Better still, visit the web site (http://careercommunity.welchwrite.com) and ask your question there, so everyone can benefit!

Price: FREE! FREE! FREE! (SMILE)

Where: Online at http://careercommunity.welchwrite.com

When: Feb 21, 2009 – Mar 1, 2009 (I made it an entire week to give as many people as possible the chance to participate)

Why:

How to attend:

How to present:

Again, let me know if you have any further questions. I want everyone to be a part of CareerCamp Online 2009. I am looking forward to some amazing presentations and discussions.

Douglas

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(This podcast is pulled “from the archives” and presented here as a service to more recent listeners — Douglas)

The beginning of a New Year is always a time of retrospection, thinking back on all that has occurred — the good, the bad, the indifferent. While reviewing the past can be helpful in some ways, it is by looking out into to the next year that you can develop some dramatic benefits for yourself, your career and your company. Take some time this week to really think about what is coming in the next 12 months. There will be some obvious events to place on this list, but you should dig deeper to discover the projects, and maybe even the crises, that you will be facing this year.

Calendar Items

Start your plans by marking all the upcoming conferences, conventions, training, sales meetings, etc that you might be involved in on the biggest year-at-a-glance calendar you can find to facilitate this process. Since these events usually occur at the same time each year, you probably already have hard dates for each of them. These dates represent certain defined milestones in your year. It is very likely that most of your energy is going towards these specific dates on your calendar. There is absolutely no excuse for letting important deadlines sneak up on you. You already know they are coming.

Next, think of all the important projects that are specific to your company. When does accounting close the books each quarter? When is the end of the fiscal year? When are budgets due? When do new stores open – or the new factory – or the new headquarters building? What promotions are happening when? What holidays stress your systems the most? When are the dead times where you can schedule maintenance and repairs? Get these events into your calendar now because your next job is to think about each item and develop an action plan.

Take Action Now

Now that you have a wide variety of events plugged into your calendar you need to do something with this information. First, look at the largest projects and figure out how much lead-time you will need to prepare for them. Will it take a month to install the new servers you will need? Should you be ordering that equipment today or should you postpone that until you are sure you have a place to store the boxes? Think backwards from these big events and you will start to develop to-do items and other calendar events that relate to these larger projects. Before you know it, your year-at-a-glance calendar will start to fill up with all sorts of important dates and tasks.

Continue breaking down events into smaller and smaller tasks and mini-projects until you feel that you have some basic understanding of what the coming year holds. Then, keep this calendar visible and available to everyone on your staff, in your department and even everyone in your company. Big picture views such as this keep everyone focused on what needs to get done, even if their day-to-day work is chaotic. It is too easy to “forget” about big projects until the last minute when you are buried in the minutia of a typical high-tech job.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

I consider a year-at-a-glance review as a bare minimum for most businesses that want to get a handle on their work. In reality, though, this should be an on-going process. As one month passes and another begins, you should already be planning for next year. When the fiscal year ends, you should be planning for the same event 12 months out.

If fact, there are additional benefits to doing this. As you engage in each project, you are sure to discover issues and new methods of improving the project. Immediately note these issues and work-arounds on next year’s calendar. Capture this information now, so that you won’t have try to remember how you did it last time. Turn this yearly process in to a rolling planning session, planning next January as soon as this one is completed.

I am applying these concepts of year-end planning to every aspect of my work this year and I hope you will do the same. I am already recognizing some major benefits from the process and expect to see even more as the year continues. Think of your coming year now, keep your head up and watching the horizon and you can do great things in your high-tech career.

Taking a cue from Phil McKinney’s Killer Innovations podcast (http://killerinnovations.com) , where he presents a “killer question of the week”, I will be including a “Career-Op” question each week to get you thinking. If you would like to join a discussion of Career-Op questions, visit the Career Opportunities forums at http://forums.friendsintech.com/. You can also find a complete column archive and the Career-Op podcast at: http://welchwrite.com/career/

Question of the Week: What large issues or projects should you be thinking about today?

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Join us for CareerCamp Online 2009 – Feb 21 – Mar 1, 2009 on the Career Opportunities Community site.

Register for Free Today!

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Join together to build your career

Start a Career Club today
By Douglas E. Welch

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Article after article, both online and in the traditional media recount the story of the thousands of unemployed Americans visiting their local employment office, only to be faced with long lines, long waits and hundreds of people in competition for each listed job. While these services are important and welcome, it strikes me that your local employment office might be one of the worst places to look for a job. While I don’t suggest you stop visiting the office and looking for opportunities, I would also suggest you try some less traditional methods of finding your next job. What I’m suggesting is that you band together with both employed and unemployed neighbors to combine your job-hunting efforts on a regular basis.

At first it might seem odd to encourage you to come together on your own, after all this is basically what the employment office does. Instead, though, I want you to come together for your own specific interests and needs. The jobs listed at the employment office are well publicized, perhaps even largely advertised in newspapers and online. A career club, though, can turn up lesser known opportunities passed by word of mouth. They can turn up opportunities that might not be an actual job today, but could turn into one with a little effort.

A career club can also offer additional advantages. First, it provides a time and place for you to share information, information that can go far beyond job opportunities. It is also a place for you to talk about work and develop some sense of managing your career, rather than simply letting it happen. Speaking with experienced people can offer lessons that would be painful to learn on your own. You can also share skills and training among you.

One of the biggest needs today for most workers is a deeper understanding of computers, how they work and how they are necessary for almost any position. Even though computers are everywhere, many of us have never had the need to learn about them very deeply. Then, during the already stressful time of a layoff, we are confronted with the limitations of our technology education. Every career group needs someone knowledgeable in technology. Find them. Cultivate them. Become one yourself. Then spread this knowledge throughout the entire group. As members of your group gain knowledge, help them to share it with others. Raise everyone to a base level of technology knowledge and you all will surely benefit.

Next, cultivate a base level of business knowledge as well. The sad fact is, you are likely to find many people with deep business knowledge at the employment office. During extreme downturns, layoffs often take the good with the bad, the experienced with the beginner. They cut large swathes across a company with little regard to the quality of their work. For your career group, this can work to your advantage. There is a tremendous amount of talent looking for help and an outlet for their talents. Seek it out. Regardless of the job or career you are seeking, business knowledge is critical.

So, what would a typical meeting your career club look like? First, meet as often as you feel necessary. This might be weekly or monthly, depending on the members of your group. Meet in a public space so that people can grab a coffee or even a meal, but don’t make people feel that they have to spend money to attend.

Understand at the beginning that members might be applying for the same job. Members must understand this and be willing to cooperate in spite of their competition. Everyone benefits when a member gets a position. They become an important resource within a given company and become even more valuable to their fellow members. Celebrate them, rather than falling victim to envy.

Finally, consider an online resource for your local career group. This allows you to stay in contact regardless of your differing schedules. It also allows you to quickly share information so you can act on it immediately. If you would like to set up an online presence, the Career Opportunities Community site provides a “Groups” area where you can have your own community within the larger one. Email me at career@welchwrite.com if you would like to set up a free online group for your career club.

The size of your city or your career club matters little. In fact, in smaller towns, your career club could become a significant resource where other employment assistance is limited. The best possibility is that your work in your local career group might directly lead to a job for you or your members. Wouldn’t that be an amazing result?

A career club is one way you can participate in our “Year of Leadership” as I outlined in the first column of 2009. Leadership starts locally and cultivates a pattern of leadership upwards. Take the reins of your own career, share your skills and leadership with others. Help those around you to succeed and you will succeed as well. This is a natural way to build the career that you deserve.

Join me on these networks

Join the new Career Opportunities Community site!

Follow Douglas on FriendFeed | Follow Douglas on Twitter | Douglas on MySpace | Douglas on Facebook | Douglas on LinkedIn

Become a Facebook Fan of Career Opportunities

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Support Career Opportunities:

iTunes Review | Career-Op Forums | Digg.com | Podcast Alley

Reader/Listener Line @ 818-804-5049

Aaron Brazell (@technosailor) points out that Twitter is being used to collect and publicize job openings. You can search for hashtag #rtjobs or simply check his #rtjobs web site, which aggregates all the listings into a page. It is great to see such efforts and I am happy to be able to spread the world

Twitter Helping Twitter Find Jobs

from Technosailor

Late last night, the #rtjobs hashtag showed up on my radar over on Twitter. It was being championed by @You2Gov as a mechanism to help connect those looking to fill positions with those looking for work. Naturally, I fall into this last group but I often hear about jobs that I am not able to consider, whether because of skill set or geography.

So while the #rtjobs project is developing over on Twitter, I slapped up a site that would help organize that information. Using WordPress and the Twitter Search API, I put together a site that I hope is both useful and productive.

It’s all about helping people find open opportunities and get placed. If you are on Twitter, you can help by passing along any info on open opportunities. Use the hashtag #rtjobs. If you have a position open, post it to Twitter using the same hashtag.

And of course, we could use some publicity on this. It’s only as good as the number of people who are aware. So if you’re a blogger, blog it. If you use social tools like Digg, StumbleUpon or Facebook, share this post with your network of people. Let the good karma flow in this really bad economy.

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(This podcast is pulled “from the archives” and presented here as a service to more recent listeners — Douglas)

On our worst days, we can sometimes stop caring about our work. We can get so beaten down and tired that the only thing we look forward to is the end of the day. The truly frightening part, though, is that it doesn’t take a horrible day to put your career, or even your entire company at risk. Instead, it is the small problems – the ignored update, the unfixed bug, the “I’ll get to that later” attitude – that brings failure. If you want to have a long career, at a number of profitable companies, you need to worry most about the “one little bug” that could bring everything crashing down.

Too often, I hear high-tech workers dismissing their own importance. They seem to think that since others don’t think they are important, then their work doesn’t matter. In fact, your work, even the smallest, seemingly least consequential part, relates directly to the success or failure of your career. The effects are far reaching.
Imagine statistics, a spreadsheet or program algorithm that everyone in your company relies upon. They might use these tools for short-range planning, making assumptions about the future or determining what happens, when and to whom. Now, imagine the damage that can be caused when one small error creeps into such a critical system. Garbage in. Garbage out…or more appropriately, Garbage in. Failure out. Are you still thinking your work doesn’t matter?

A recent story from Australia demonstrates the consequences of one small bug. Prisoners in one jail system were being released early due to a flaw in the software that tracked their incarceration. Even though the problem was eventually discovered, prison officials were unsure how many people had been effected. Other news stories show how companies have had to restate earnings, refund money or otherwise make amends when flaws were discovered in internal software programs. Some software firms have found themselves filing for bankruptcy when uncorrected bugs in their software led to the failure of the company.

Remaining vigilant about small problems can be difficult. Larger issues draw your focus away and management can sometimes be unresponsive to your warnings. Time for quality assurance can be eaten up with simple maintenance of the system. There are a hundred excuses why small problems cause such trouble, but all of them will be cold comfort when a major failure is discovered.

Being constantly vigilant about the small problems can be extremely difficult, but it is infinitely more important than anything else you do. If you want to shine in your career, you need to pay attention to the details. You need to be able to root out the missing semicolon, the flawed formula, the incorrect configuration file. It is here that your career will be made. Big flashy projects will gain you recognition, but solving the small problems will prove your worth again and again.

As you might imagine, practicing the constant vigilance that this requires is difficult, if not impossible if you are in the wrong job, or even worse, the wrong career. There are a host of reasons why you should always seek out the job that is right for you, but this is one of the most important. You can work as hard as possible, at a job that isn’t right for you, but it won’t make a bit of difference. It is like trying to climb a mountain with 100lbs of extra weight on your back. You might make it part of the way up the mountain, but the extra burden will always be holding you back. You cannot, and will not, excel in a job or career that is wrong for you. You won’t have the attention, time or energy to focus on the small problems if you are unhappy in your job.

Keep your eyes open, every day, for the one little bug that can bring infinite amounts of trouble to your career. Hunt them down and kill them off wherever and whenever possible. Don’t let supposedly “big issues” distract your attention. As the famous architect Mies van der Rohe once said, “God is in the details.” You can say the very same about your high-tech career.

Career Opportunities got a nice “shout out” from Mack Beckwith this week in his post entitled, “There are jobs out there”

In another resource, Career Opportunities, a blog and podcast by Douglas E. Welch he offers practical tips to improve your career and your search. Douglas’s work shows that there is great value in always working to “sharpen the saw”.

Thanks Matt! Your attention and links are always appreciated.