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1ST STEPS IN THE HUNT
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Reasess Your Skills
August 05, 1999
It's easy for Jobhunters to get depressed during their
Jobsearch. The steady stream of rejection letters (or out and out
deafening silence) from prospective Employers leaves Jobhunters with the
feeling that we are worthless. In economic
terms, your net worth is your assets minus your liabilities. This tidy sum never reflects your intrinsic
worth as a friend or human being. The same thing happens during the process of selling
yourself to Hiring Managers - it feels like you have no value because no one's
buying at the moment. But you are more
than a commodity in the Labor market, and it is necessary to focus on the many
skills you have to offer Employers in addition to the hundreds of good qualities
you have that make you a valuable person. Richard Bolles, of What
Color Is Your Parachute? Fame, recommends the following exercise:
categorize your skills into verbs, nouns, and adjectives. Skills that can be turned into verbs are your functional skills. Closely akin to innate skills, they are
probably things like planning, mediating, researching, analyzing, calculating,
manipulating, etc. You can train to get
better at these skills. Employers look
for these kinds of skills because they have crossover properties, i.e. they can
be transferred from one field to another.
For example, a Copywriter for a print newspaper might be able to
transfer their writing abilities over to a Job in Marketing. Nouns best describe
knowledge skills. Computers,
Languages, Geography, Mathematics, Graphic Arts, and Music all describe fields
that you might know a great deal about.
These subjects are familiar to you because you have previously shown
some expertise in them. Generally our
school days have prepared us in many of these subject fields, and we know where
our strengths and weaknesses are.
Internships focus on increasing our pre-existing knowledge base of
skills. Personality trait
skills are best described as adjectives.
We use these when describing ourselves to friends; e.g. 'I am manic,
creative, methodical, creative, lazy'.
You might describe your skills this way - 'I am a methodical planner,'
or 'I am an extensive and creative planner.'
These adjectives represent your evolving style, and your personality
traits modify your functional skills. By the time you get done with this exercise in reassessing
your skills, you'll have a much better feeling about yourself and the number
& quality of skills that you have to offer Employers. You have value. The trick is in getting the Hiring Manager to see how your value
will fit into their company in a way that is mutually beneficial.
Laugh It Off
August 03, 1999
For some workers, the only thing that gets them through the
day is their sense of humor. Well, that
and their paycheck at the end of the week. I was reminded of this earlier in the week when a friend
told me about another annoying incident of office politics at her dreaded place
of Employment (or as she calls it, 'Blechk').
Going postal is only likely to earn you a trip to your supervisor's
office for a warning and possible counseling.
Or even worse, it can get you canned at an inappropriate time, like
three days before your next rent payment.
It is hard to swallow your anger when your defense mechanisms have been
triggered, but it is usually the wisest course of action. Let's say you're on the lookout for a better Job (which any
worker in their right mind ought to be doing every week), and the 'office thorn
in everyone's side' decides that today is your day to be picked on. If you actually took the time to think out
reasonable responses, you'd find that blowing your stack isn't one of them. Deflecting a coworker's pettiness with a
deft use of humor can effectively get your point across without leaving a
bitter aftertaste around your workplace. Better to laugh it off then to get laid off. Make Dilbert, Calvin & Hobbes,
and compilations
of Gary Larson's The Far Side
regular haunts on your weekly web surfing.
These sites (and the daily Internet Joke sites as well) can do much more
than merely allow you to avoid work. They are a daily diversion from the
insanity that work can become. Work is
an unnatural state, and anyone that tries to convince you otherwise is either a
management type, crazy, or - well, I'm repeating myself. Spending your life's blood toiling for forty hours every
week, fifty weeks every year is a pitiful answer to the question 'What is my
purpose here?' But as long as we have
to toil away, we might as well make the best of the situation, laugh, and bring
Joy to those around us. If you can't laugh at the ridiculous and inane antics in
your workplace anymore, then you'd better accelerate your Jobsearch because you
won't be there much longer.
Conflicts
August 02, 1999
We all know that Jobhunting is the pits, except for those rare circumstances when you are offered a new Job with better benefits and a higher salary shortly after starting your Jobsearch.
Which is a good thing to keep in mind during your Jobsearch - odds are about 10-1 in your favor that you'll land a better paying Job, unless you're switching careers and have little experience in your new field. And pay is not the only factor to consider in Jobhopping, you'll need to think about crucial matters like location and work environment.
If you like the area you live in, you may not like the fact that the Job offers you are getting require a long commute or change in address. How will your personal relationships stand up to the combined stress of a new Job, new living arrangements, and possibly long distance communication? What kind of people will there be at your new Job? Will they be friendly and welcoming, or will they have well established cliques that are standoffish?
Most people leave their current Jobs (or are relieved of their current Jobs!) due to personality conflicts rather than inability to do the tasks that the Job requires. The last thing you want to have happen during your Jobsearch is to lose the Job you already have before you're ready to leave. If you are having difficulty maintaining your composure at work, now is a good time to practice the art of seeing the lighter side of work.
Getting along at work requires gaining a perspective on what is going on around you. If someone just yelled at you, it may be because someone just yelled at them. They may have had to take their car back to the service station for the same problem three times in the last week. Or they may have recently found out that a friend has cancer. People rarely do things to intentionally annoy others, unless they are already good friends and are playing a game.
The next time you want to blow up and attack someone at work, take a deep breath and think of a funny way to defuse (rather than escalate) the situation. Trust me - coworkers and supervisors alike will value your ability to lessen the office tension. You can be the grease that keeps the work gears spinning smoothly. When you jump ship ex-colleagues will say how much they miss you, rather than 'good riddance'. For perspective, keep copies of Dilbert and The Far Side at your workstation.
If you can keep your perspective, then you are more likely to control events than to have them control you.
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Materials written by John Sumser © TwoColorHat. All Rights Reserved.