12-point plan for job hunting

This is definitely one of the most complete processes that I have found so far to prepare yourself for job-hunting. I specially like the focus on your personal aspirations and the tricks given to identify them.

Full article by Liz Ryan at Forbes.

1. Decide what you want to do next, after you leave this job. You don’t have to look for a new job that’s just like the old one. You get to decide. Maybe it’s time for a big career shift!
2. Now, brand yourself for the job you want (not the job you’ve got)! Begin your branding exercise by writing about yourself (not for publication —  just for you). In your new job, what sort of work will you do? Write your bio as though you’re writing about yourself working at your new job, six months from now. You’ve already had experience in a lot of different subject matters, whether you’ve held the job title or not. Use the bio-creation exercise to reclaim those experiences and get them into your branding!
3. Will you update your LinkedIn profile? You’re in a stealth job search now, so you don’t want to raise alarms. You can set your Notifications to “off” so that your LinkedIn contacts don’t get notified about your profile updates, or you can live with the LinkedIn profile you’ve got throughout your job search.
4. Determine your salary requirement and your other requirements for your job search. Write about your ideal job. What is your target salary level, position title, daily commute, amount of travel per month, and so on? Write your expectations out on paper and talk about them with someone close to you. Determine your floor in each category. What is the lowest salary you would accept — and what would make that low salary worthwhile to you? Know what you want so the universe can bring it to you.
5. Write your Human-Voiced Resume to bring your new branding into clear focus for the benefit of hiring managers who don’t already know you. Remember — you don’t need permission to change careers. You need to give yourself permission!
6. Create a Target Employer List. You may already have target employers in mind, or you might decide to browse LinkedIn profiles to spot employers who are struggling with the very same kind of Business Pain you solve.
7. Learn about Pain Letters and then research and compose a Pain Letter to a particular hiring manager you’d like to start a conversation with.
8. Send your hard copy Pain Letter, attached with one staple in the upper left corner to your hard copy Human-Voiced Resume, directly to the first hiring manager on your Target Employer List, by post.
9. Activate your network. Check in with old friends and new acquaintances to begin expanding your sphere of influence.
10. Get some consulting business cards and begin passing them out to people you know (instead of the business cards your employer gave you).
11. If you are planning to use a Third Party Search channel in your job search (that is, to partner with one or more recruiters whose clients may be looking for someone like you), reach out to one or two trusted recruiters or friend-of-your-friend recruiters to talk through your resume with them. Your Human-Voiced Resume will probably not be your recruiter’s favorite, so you’ll need a traditional resume for recruiters as well as your Human-Voiced Resume to send to hiring managers directly.
12. Get a journal and begin writing in it every day or every other day. Write about your job search. Write about your ideas, dreams and feelings. You are growing new muscles. Hats off to you!

.

Leave Early

Next time you go to a party. Maybe even it’s a political party. Or a charity event. Or a dinner. Or a conference call. Or a sales meeting.

Do this:

Find the most valuable, fun, creative thing you can learn as quickly as you can. The one thing that will add value to your life. Hone in on it FAST. Learn something.

Then leave.

Even in a sales meeting: if you learn from the customer, the customer will buy from you.

Even on a first date. Get the kiss. Leave early. It gets better later if you leave early today.

Someone said to the great pianist, Artur Rubinsteain, «I love the way you play the notes!»

Artur Rubinstein said, «Ahh, the secret is how I play the silences between the notes.»

The real you is the silences between the notes.

Not the you in the meetings. The talking you. The worrying you. The you trying to please the date or the boss or the trolls. The you that HAS to respond!

I try (sometimes not so successfully. Sometimes horribly) to play the silences in between the notes.

How many things can you leave early today? Be honest about it. This is the only gift we were given when we were born. The ability to leave things early.

Without the silence, we would never know how to distinguish a beautiful sound.

By James Altucher, influencer in LinkedIn.

Deal with laziness

Warning! I’m about to speak in code. We like to think of ourselves as:

• “Not interested in making big money”
• “Not overly ambitious”
• “Focused more on life than work”

Code for all these excuses is “I’m lazy.”

Being lazy is something we don’t like to admit to ourselves, much less to our own mother (who will love us no matter what, except when being lazy). We will substitute other words and rationalization for our behavior. You think we can’t tell, but we can. You’re lazy, and second to bad body odor, no one really wants to be around that, even if you’re charming. (OK, maybe if you’re charming, but only then.)

If you’re in the ranks of people of whom I’m describing, you need to pay attention to what I’m about to share. Someone needs to give it to you on the chin.

You may have reached a point in your adult life where you realized you don’t care if you get ahead, excel on the job, get a promotion, or even much of a salary. Lazy is about effort, and you discovered you simply didn’t want to put in any. You were willing to forego these things as a trade off.

As a lazy person, you have learned to do things to try to hide the blatant truth about yourself. You have tried to look like you didn’t care if others passed you by. Perhaps you even attempted to look like those things were too materialistic. The great thing about rationalization is that it seems to sound good and even logical to some extent. To you perhaps.

I’m here to expose your ugly truth. We really can tell. As much as lazy people think they’ve hidden the truth about themselves, at some level the rest of us know. We pretty much let you keep thinking that we can’t see what you’re all about. You didn’t ask “does this rationalization make me look lazy?”

Here is some of the other code this signifies. It says that while you might truly just not want to do anything, it says you haven’t checked in to life. You don’t get it. We’re at our best when we are productive and contributing.  We’re even better when we’re so passionate about our work that we can’t wait to get to it again.

It says you might be afraid to try or might not be able to stand the failure that comes with striving. What you’re missing is that it will make you feel great about yourself. Not because you kept up with other people or met some type of social standard. You would feel great because you had something you strived to achieve and did it.

As a co-worker, you aren’t our first pick to work with. You can’t be trusted. If I know you’re lazy, I’m not sure what you will or won’t do. Many times, in your attempt to look like something you aren’t, you may inflate what you know or will do.

Most of the time you don’t know what you will or won’t do. Your rationalizations are filed under “Ignore.” You’ve preordained your outcome because of your “lazy-speak.” We can all see through this and because, even if you’re charming, what good is working with someone you can’t trust? The best people I’ve had a chance to work with are generally running faster than I am.

Where does this leave us? If you’re lazy, you’re missing out on a big chunk of life. I recognize some people think there is a magical dividing line between work and life, but I’m here to say the line doesn’t exist.

This is your life or at least a big part of it. Stop trying to fool yourself. The effort you think will be so painful will be the best time of your life, if you just let it. Try some career management. Fall in love with your work.
Read more at http://www.careerealism.com/career-management-lazy/#D4Lh5UYC8TGkWrMy.99

Dos pequeños consejos.

Hoy ha venido a claseun doctorado de mi Escuela que desarrolla programas lineales para ayudar a la toma de decisiones objetivas a empresas y que con ello ha fundado una pequeña empresa bajo un programa de emprendedores que tiene la UPM. Además de contarnos cómo es su trabajo, nos ha dado dos consejos:

1. Utilizar la aplicación Yast para medir nuestra dedicación a las tareas que realizamos, para valorar nuestro tiempo y ser capaces de estimar cuanto nos van a durar futuras tareas que nos propongamos.

2. Aprovechar los recursos que ofrece la universidad mientras estás estudiando en ella.