Stop using a cell phone for 6 hours! I asked my students to do this as an experiment. Just don’t use your cell phone for anything for six waking hours. You wouldn’t have believed the complaints I heard and the expletives I overheard.

And so they did. No phones for 6 hours. I heard interesting comments. There were some withdrawl comments.
“I picked up my phone and didn’t realize I didn’t even have a call to make.” “I needed to check my email.”
“I was going to be late to day care.” “I have to check next week assignments for your class.” (Make an exception for this class, that would only take a few minutes.”
“I keep missing calls.”
And on and on.

The lesson is clear. We have become dependent on cell phones as a way of life. My life too. I am not the innocent here.

A few weeks ago, a member of my family had to have a medical procedure done at the hospital. While I waited, I texted and emailed to keep up with my mailbox. It was simple, quiet, and allowed me to think about something other than the immediate concern.

When the procedure was over and he was safely recovering. I sent an email to several friends and relatives telling them all was well. It was very handy. No long phone conversations repeating the same thing several times, just one simple email sent to 10 people giving the most immediate news. Quiet? Yes. Convenient? Yes. Informative? Yes. Timely? Yes. Personal? No. This is another one of life’s tradeoffs.

It was a wonderful convenience and served the best purpose. There are huge benefits to being able “to always be in touch.”

The same thing works with your job search. You can immediately jump on a job lead or do a follow up check at Starbucks having a nice cup while you chat. Check for the email response at the same time. Or finally get the call you have been waiting for wherever you are. There is no doubt the cell phone has changed our lives and mostly for the good.

Years ago, you sent a resume via Uncle Sam, waited, called to follow up, waited, called sent another letter waited and then finally get the call, you are out picking up the kids, they leave a message, you call back, you miss the caller, they call back, and you finally get the interview.

Now you send an email, it gets there in seconds, you wait, you call to follow up, no call back, you send another email, it gets there in seconds, you finally get the call when you are driving, you can’t write, (and you don’t try, do you?). You have to call back, you miss the caller, they call you, you are sitting in Starbucks, and you talk and finally get the interview.

How much has changed, really?

We talk a lot about cell phones, email, and texting in our book. Learn more in A Taste for Work now available on Amazon.

Job hunting can be a long and arduous process. Even though the recession seems to be winding down we must keep the motto, “always looking for a job!”  A job search can be described as an emotional roller coaster from “the highest highs” to “the lowest lows.” One must stand ready to continue to look for the next golden path.  It is easy to get discouraged and stalled in the job search process.

Career transition may be the answer to a stalled job search.  The question then becomes:  what kind of job do I want to transition into too?  Can I continue with what I have been doing? Or, do I need to completely reinvent myself?  At any given time, the job market is competitive with more applicants than jobs. Whole industries have disappeared and new ones have sprung to life.  The market of the last five years has proven that it is constantly changing. How do you change with it?

Although, every job hunt is different and should be geared towards you individually, a typical transition can often be predictable. There are some definite steps that each person should consider to successfully negotiate a career transition.

First, you must assess yourself. What skills do you have?  Of those skills, which do you value the most?  What environment do you want to see yourself in everyday?  Did your last position answer any of these questions satisfactorily?  Your individual assessment can help you determine what motivates you to be successful; what defines your personality style; and where your interests lie.

There are many tools available for assessment. For little or no cost, it is possible to take a battery of tests or surveys that will help you determine the direction you should consider taking in your career.  Many community colleges offer help with career testing.  As well, they offer individual assessment with trained personnel to assist you in making a good decision.  Knowing yourself will help you determine a clear direction.

 The next step is to explore your range of options. In this step it is important to remove your “blinders” and clearly review your interests. This step requires some creativity and courage as it will take you into places you may have avoided in the past. Since, at this point in your career transition, you are not just looking for a job; you are looking for information to make a good decision.  Therefore, your networking should be more informational. Consider your efforts to be a field research exercise.  Use your network to gather information to help you determine your career goals.

The third step is to determine the “what and why” of your plan.  What specific career goals have you selected?  The more specific you are the better. Use your field research information, and your personal assessments to “name” yourself. It is important at this point to identify the “why”.  Why is this career goal the best option for you?  Challenge yourself to find clear and compelling evidence that shows why a change to this career path works for you.  Consider how this fits with your values and motivation.

The fourth step is perhaps the most time consuming and maybe even frustrating. You must develop a plan to achieve your goal.  How will you get there?  When will each step occur?  Who else needs to be involved in your plan?

Once you have gone through this process and have successfully answered the questions of what, why, how, when, and who; then you are ready to move ahead with your plan and make a successful career transition.

March 18, 2010
Earlier this week, I spent several hours teaching a workshop to help clients answer interview questions. We went through all the techniques; we worked on the answering the ten most asked interview questions and we talked about the meaning of body language.

Then we rehearsed and rehearsed. Something seemed flat; I was vaguely uncomfortable about the session but couldn’t put my head around what it was. Then we took a break and went for coffee. Of the 15 in my workshop, seven people immediately got on the phone and began calls or started texting.

I looked around the Starbucks, there were people sitting with other people, both were on the phone or texting.

We are in constant communication with our thumbs. We have stopped talking to each other. This is evident everywhere, this is what I noticed when I was working with interviewing skills.

In a culture where we are always talking about being authentic, how do you know who is real and who isn’t? Well, it certainly not by evaluating a conversation that takes place in restaurant between courses and is conducted largely with rapid digital movement.

I believe email and texting are both wonderful ways to stay in communication with day care, school and work. It is also in the grocery store, bathroom, cars, (scary) sporting events, even walking outdoors and the beach? No kidding. Most recently, I witnessed somebody getting a call in church. I wonder who was calling, God?

Most of this is good; the other way to look at it is to accept the bad of it. We all know the good, life saving emergencies, time saved, talking to somebody when you have to wait at the car wash, or please pick up some milk on your way home from work.

To get back to my point, interviews. We are losing the skill of talking to each other face to face without our fingers or something stuck in our ear. We listen but ignore questions we don’t want to answer and we have learned to dodge these questions so often, some of us declare it a benefit of email or of being a politician.

We have lost the warmth of a smile, the quizzical glance, the enthusiasm in our voice and face when talking about a job we love. Have we lost our ability to convey meaning to what we say? Is this is what is trickling down to the inability to communicate in an interview? It is not so much what we say but how we say it. Have we lost our human regard?

I went back to the workshop and talked a little about what I noticed. We went back to the agenda, I felt better drawing attention to the observation, sometimes heightening the awareness is the first step to making a change.

My assignment to each participant in this workshop was to stop using the cell phone for anything other than emergencies for 6 hours. I will get feedback next week to see how it worked.

If our fingers are doing the talking, who is listening?

I get a lot of jokes via email. Most people who spend time on the computer get them. If the joke is a good one, my criteria for forwarding is: it must make me laugh out loud. If it does, I forward it to a select few who appreciate my quirky sense of humor. Most jokes, I just delete. I rarely respond unless it is especially bad, then I comment on that quality, mostly I roll my eyes, delete it, and do not respond.

There is one friend however, that is my exception. His name is Eddie. His jokes are usually pretty good and today, his message resonated with me enough to blog about it. Today’s email was one of those message emails that talk about friendship. It was vaguely corny however; there was an addendum that prompts me to write about it today.

The following was the last few lines of the fairly bad story. I have omitted the story but here are the last few lines of the email.

“Sometimes, we wonder why friends keep forwarding jokes to us without writing a word.

Maybe this will explain.

When you are very busy, but still want to keep in touch, guess what you do? You forward jokes.

When you have nothing to say, but still want to keep contact, you forward jokes.

When you have something to say, but don’t know what, and don’t know how, you forward jokes.

Also to let you know that you are still remembered, you are still important, you are still loved, you are still cared for, guess what you get? A forwarded joke.

So, next time if you get a joke, don’t think that you’ve been sent just another forwarded joke, but that you’ve been thought of today and your friend on the other end of your computer wanted to send you a smile.”

As somebody who believes strongly in the power of networking but is a hopeless introvert; each networking event I attend is anxiety producing. I have to tell you this thought struck a chord. What if at the beginning of each joke you forward you simply said, thought you would get a kick out of this? Or thought of you when I read this, bet you laugh too-a short one-liner that personalized the email a little.

It might be easier to stay connected rather than writing a lengthy email, or meeting face to face and it can keep the relationship alive.

So, the next time you get a forwarded joke, know that someone thought of you as a person who might appreciate the humor, who thought of you enough to send a smile along, who thought of you and wanted to let you know she wanted to keep the relationship alive.

Networking is all about relationships and keeping them nourished and nurtured to keep them alive. Relationships take the time most of us don’t have. Everybody is busy, just ask people if they have time and they will tell you they don’t.

Here is a simple way to keep a relationship alive, to communicate briefly. Sometimes that is all you really need to do. Remember when you are looking for a job, a referral or simply a connection and you need a relationship it is usually too late to build one.

Keep building your relationships in ways that can work for you, this is just one way.

You have a job, lucky you.

Did you ever have a job where you liked every single thing you had to do? I mean every single thing? Probably not, neither have I.

Aren’t some of the things you have to do de-motivating? Like all that paper work? How many times have you heard I love the customers, people I work with, the place I work, but the paperwork can make me nuts!

Well, you get the idea. Is what you hate doing in your job right enough to make you quit? Is finding a new job the answer? In this economy quitting is very risky business. And you will never find a job, where you love every single thing about it. Here is what you have to do…….Figure out a way to tackle what you hate doing, the work you would do anything to avoid, stop avoiding it and try these simple tricks.

Think this way, this is a self-talk exercise. Instead of saying to yourself, I hate doing it, I can’t. Say I can do it. Your motivation will rise and doing the task won’t seem so bad.

Be realistic, have realistic expectations for yourself. If you have low motivation, you will not enjoy the task, you will use more energy, it will take you longer, and somebody who loves exactly what you hate will do it faster. Don’t compare your productivity to someone else.

Again, being realistic. Is competent good enough for you? Do you want to be competent or superior? Do you hate the task enough not to get additional training or more supervision to become a superior performer?
If you feel strongly enough, this may be compromising your next review, do you hate it that much?

Can you reassign this task? Give it to somebody who likes doing it? Can you trade tasks with him? Probably not but it’s a thought.

What about partnering with a co-worker, doing something she hates so she’ll do something you hate. Also an option but probably unlikely to happen.

Create a system or use a tool to make the job at hand a little easier. We have a client who is very creative but, like most people, hates the paper work and writing down his good ideas. Now he carries a pocket tape recorder. When he has a good idea, he just talks about and figures out how to use it or not, later.

And of course, you can always ask for a re-assignment. One of our clients, a successful project manager, was floundering in his new role leading a project for new products in a startup company. Our client needed structure and methodical procedures. Start-ups are notorious for a lack of structure and organization. This was simply not a good mix. Fortunately, he was a contract employee who worked for a project management company. He got the re-assignment.

Just remember, very few people love everything they do and are motivated by all the tasks of the job. Most aren’t. However, acknowledging you may not be as motivated to do one thing, as you are to do something else, is the first step in figuring out a way to get all your work done the best way you know how. It is the first step to a superior performance review and to being successful in the job you have. Again, lucky you, you are working.

My partners and I have looked forward to blogging as a means of regular communication with you for some time, but as with a lot of things, life got in the way of our progress.

But no more, thanks to a diligent partner and an efficient web site designer the new site and blog became a reality. So thanks to Sally who wanted the web site changes and Rich who implemented them.

And, I am grateful it has fallen to me, to put up the first Career Partner blog. I am an official blogger, not to be confused with Blago, please.

Since we are about careers, that’s what the blog will be about. Careers, work, jobs, trends, observations, and about anything else we think may appeal to our readers or maybe not. Sometimes the blog will be about something you may not want to read about.

Like today……..I want to talk about social networking on the Internet. I do it, you do it, almost everybody does it.

I suppose nearly every company has discovered this issue as part of the workplace today. Most people network at work, whether that in itself is right or wrong is not the issue here. Let’s just assume you network at work.

Be careful.

Not only are you walking on very thin ice within your company should you say something less than flattering about the company, your boss, etc…you could be fired. It is as simple as that. Social networking is addressed in most large corporate employee handbooks now. Make sure you know your company’s policy. But here is something you may not know.

Prospective employers now do searches on job candidates. So, you not only have to think about your current employer, but also consider your future jobs. If you post silly or inappropriate pictures or make silly or inappropriate comments, they will come back to haunt when you are in a job search. My favorite recruiter tells me, he always does searches on his job candidates. Why? Because he knows if he doesn’t, the client he is recruiting for will. As a good recruiter, he wants to serve his client well, so he does what he knows the customer would want. And the client will probably do his own search anyway.

This is double jeopardy for the job seeker.

Say something rude, racist, sexist, suggestive or politically incorrect, well you are in for it, even in a joking way, even you’re talking to your best friend who says something equally inappropriate back. Doesn’t matter. Even if it is not about work, but about your kids, doesn’t matter.

What matters here is saying the wrong thing speaks to your general judgment in things like this, if you do it in your personal life, what could or would you do in business? Hmmmmmm.

So, next time you tweet or poke somebody on Face book, think about what your mother told you when you were a little kid, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”

As I write this, I am thinking what I have said is generational. The younger you are, the freer you are with your comments. The older you are, the more you become your own censor.

We discuss social networking in greater detail in our book, A Taste for Work available now on Amazon.