Be on fire about your career

The news this week  had a story of not one, but two couch fires in the Chicagoland area. Holy smokes, how much time does someone have to sit on the couch to get it to combust? I actually don’t know the cause of the fires in the stories, but I hope these fires did not cause any additional financial burden for anyone suffering from job loss.

Activity in the job search means that you are out and about, talking and networking with people. Actually the job seeker needs to be on fire about finding a job. Meaning, you need to have a passion about your career, the opportunities and the abilities you bring to the job market.

After a job seeker has many weeks of looking for work under her belt, she starts to lose the expectation that she’ll find a job soon. Doubt starts to insert itself into the job seeker’s consciousness. Doubt can lead to negative thoughts and negative self-talk which start to feed on themselves and the job seeker can soon lose hope of ever finding gainful employment.

Back in 2009 I told the story of being as enthusiastic as a puppy dog when the doorbell rings. <Link> Keeping a positive attitude isn’t easy especially in a job search that seems to go on and on. But, I believe that one of the things that allows doubts to grow into depression is inactivity. Being a couch potato is one of the best ways to kill a job search. Focused activity leads to proficiency of your job search skills,  which leads to more network meetings, which leads to interviews, which leads to job offers.

Note the terminology focused activity: what do I mean by “focused activity?” Not all activity is productive and sometimes can be distracting the job seeker from meeting job search goals.  So, activity for activity’s sake can be counter productive and even destructive. When your activity is focused, it clearly enables you to achieve a short-term or long-term goal... getting you that much closer to landing the job.  

Be on fire about your job search, passionate about your next job and the future you’ll have. Don’t, however, let you the couch suck you into killing your job search and burn up your dreams.

Success Stories: GMA & Diane Sawyer

This past week Diane Sawyer left ABC’s Good Morning America to take over the World News anchor seat. You could say that Ms. Sawyer is in transition. I point this out because of what the Diane Sawyer and staff put together for the last show on GMA. They developed a montage titled: “My Time on ‘GMA’” which included interviews with heads of state, US Presidents, celebrities and just regular folk. It displayed major stories she covered as well as cute and clever incidents that happened to her while on the show.

 

In essence, it was five minutes of video success stories. While she already has her next job and doesn’t need to use her success stories to help sell herself to a new boss, it is clear there is a great deal she has to feel proud about.

 

One of the positive things about being in transition that my clients have point out to me is realizing that they were really good at what they did on the job. If you haven’t done so, take an hour or so and write a history of your work experience. Highlight events that you are most proud of. Get a hold of co-workers, bosses and employees and ask for stories they remember. Also refer back to past performance evaluations and draw out different accomplishment, successes and lessons learned from your career.

 

All this will serve you well in your job search and especially as you prepare for your interviews. You will realize that you are the star of your show and just like Diane Sawyer, co-workers that you have left behind do miss you. Plus, the people you’ll work with in the future cannot wait to hear your stories about how you’re going to be successful with them.

 

We’ll talk more later about the psychology behind success stories and how to use the success story in an interview.