My Favorite Posts
“By the time they reach an age to think about what they’d like to do, most kids have been thoroughly misled about the idea of loving one’s work. School has trained them to regard work as an unpleasant duty. Having a job is said to be even more onerous than schoolwork. And yet all the adults claim to like what they do. You can’t blame kids for thinking ‘I am not like these people; I am not suited to this world.’”
This wonderful post by Paul Graham takes a very insightful look into why we pursue certain careers and why we avoid others. Loving what you do is not something that many people have the luxury of saying, or doing. I’ve always believed that a true test of career love is if you’d do it for free. Graham says,
“To be happy I think you have to be doing something you not only enjoy, but admire. You have to be able to say, at the end, wow, that’s pretty cool.”
Graham goes on to say that many people tend to select professions not based on what they love deep down inside, but based on a direction in which their parents steer them, or worse yet, based on the prestige of a particular career. He says,
“Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not on what you like, but what you’d like to like.”
Loving what you do comes from keep yourself disciplined. Do well at whatever it is that you’re doing, even if you’re not ‘in love’ with it yet. Always be a producer, and understand that knowing what you like to work on doesn’t always mean that you’ll get to work on it. Know proper timing for working on pet projects and working on things that are required. You’ll respect yourself, and your peers will respect you. The love will come eventually.
Graham described two routes that will lead to loving what you do:
- The organic route, which is essentially gaining experience and gradually increasing the amount of time you spend in your job on the elements you enjoy vs. those things you don’t, and
- The two-job route, which is working a ‘day job’ to pay the bills and pursuing your love in your spare time.
He says more people tend to work the organic route, because the two-job route requires a deliberate choice. However, my personal feeling is that with the state of the job market today, we will see an uptick in the number of people working a job that simply pays the bills in the daylight hours while pursuing a hobby, or another degree, in the evenings or in their spare time, with the ultimate goal of doing something they love.
A tip to college students: you don’t need to know exactly what you want to do with the rest of your life! From Graham:
“A friend of mine who is a quite successful doctor complains constantly about her job. When people applying to medical school ask her for advice, she wants to shake them and yell ‘Don’t do it!’ (But she never does.) How did she get into this fix? In high school she already wanted to be a doctor. And she is so ambitious and determined that she overcame every obstacle along the way—including, unfortunately, not liking it. Now she has a life chosen for her by a high-school kid.”
Want to love what you do? Explore many options before making a definite decision. Don’t lock yourself into one niche before you’ve tested out a couple of others. In my own experience, I discovered within the last three months of college that I HATED what I had been pursuing. Thankfully I was able to find a career path shortly after graduating that I’ve fallen in love with.
Finally, don’t let money be the center of your decision-making. Taking care of your financial needs should certainly be a deciding factor for sure, but would you sell your soul for a price tag? “Much as everyone thinks they want financial security, the happiest people are not those who have it, but those who like what they do. So a plan that promises freedom at the expense of knowing what to do with it may not be as good as it seems.” My advice – work hard at what you love to make yourself worthy of a higher salary. Pay your dues. You’ll appreciate what you earn more when you’ve had to work hard for it.
The takeaway here is this: take some time to figure out what you love. Don’t rush it! Sometimes it may show up nice and subtle, but it might just smack you in the face too. Be open to whatever it is – the old saying goes, “If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.”
Be sure to read Paul Graham’s complete article, “How To Do What You Love”.
This will be a very brief Cool Tool Alert, but a really awesome one. We’re all interested in finding better ways to pare down all the information we receive on a daily basis, and TweetChat allows you to stay focused on one hashtag at a time. In their own words:
“TweetChat helps put your blinders on to the Twitter-sphere while you monitor and chat about one topic.”
There are several super cool things about TweetChat:
- You can only focus on one hashtag at a time. So for anyone who is a notorious multi-tasker like me, this really helps you to stay focused on one thing.
- Auto-refresh. Twitter Search lets you track hashtags too, but you have to keep clicking refresh to keep up with new messages. TweetChat automatically refreshes for you, plus you can adjust the frequency of refreshing – from 5 seconds all the way up to 1 minute.
- You can feature or block certain users who are using your hashtag. So, if you want to highlight either a topic moderator or someone who is offering particularly helpful advice you can do so. As well, if someone is abusing the hashtag, you can block them from showing up on your room feed.
- When you tweet a message while monitoring a room, it automatically adds your hashtag at the end of your message. So no need to try to remember which one you’re monitoring. Plus, it also gives you the number of characters you have left after accounting for the hashtag. For example – I will be using the hashtag “#VegasRG” for my upcoming trip to Las Vegas in June for the Fordyce Forum, so I can monitor that hashtag, as seen here (notice the 131 in the upper right-hand corner):
By the way, TweetChat looks great on mobile devices as well.
What makes this better than, say, TweetDeck? Well, the refresh rate is much faster, plus you won’t be distracted by the chirping noise and all the other columns you may have already set up. I still use TweetDeck for daily monitoring, but TweetChat has proven to be a great resource for focused following.
I highly recommend using it for following weekly online discussions such as #journchat and #blogchat as well as for following a networking event or a conference, such as #w2e or #CincySMB. I personally will be using TweetChat to tweet from and monitor #VegasRG during my presentation at the Fordyce Forum coming up in June.
Filed under: Networking/Social Media
I’m in a line of work where it is essential to build networks. Without networks, I would not have resources from which to source potential future employees. Today, more than ever, it is important to network and make connections with others – if for no other reason than to prepare for your career rug to possibly be pulled out from under you.
There are tons of people giving advice on how to network, when to network, where to network, etc. But who is giving advice on what to do with your network? Once you bring someone into your network, what do you do with them?
Some would say to use your network to promote your business or your service. Some say to ask them for assistance with your job search, or ask them to help spread the word about something you’re doing.
What is the common ground for each of these items? They are all for YOUR benefit. Not necessarily the benefit of your new connection. I know it’s cliché, but there’s an old saying that goes, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
So, here’s what I think you should do with your new networked connections: GIVE FIRST. Which leads me to my point – there is a difference between building your network and building relationships.
When I was laid off at the end of February, an individual reached out to me for the first time (or at least for the first time in awhile; either way, I know we’d never spoken before). We knew of each other but had never had a conversation. Thinking this person had a lead for me, I was happy to chat, but when we connected, I discovered that the conversation was more about this individual asking me to help promote a new networking group. While I’m happy to assist with requests like this, I couldn’t help but feel that this person’s timing and context of the original connection request weren’t quite appropriate. There was a network connection, but no relationship.
Building your network is important – I agree with this 100%. Many of my colleagues provide great advice and personal examples on how to quickly grow a network. However, there is so much more to getting value out of your network, and this requires the development of relationships within your network.
Benjamin Franklin has a great quote – one of my favorites – which states: “Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few; friend to one; enemy to none.” Franklin’s observation could and should be applied to building relationships within your network: you should be willing to network with anyone (civil to all), actually connect with some (sociable to many), but develop relationships WITHIN that network (familiar with few).
It would be practically impossible to develop relationships with everyone in your network, if you’re building a massive one. My personal feeling is that the worst thing you could do is attempt to do so. By doing this, you will come across as being canned and shallow. For example: boilerplate invites on LinkedIn, or catch-all notes to your network informing of a career change or other major event. We’re all becoming more web-savvy, and we can smell an impersonal mass email from a mile away.
On my LinkedIn profile, I have at the bottom under Contact Settings a short paragraph that says,
“While I never want to discourage anyone from contacting me, I would GREATLY appreciate a personal message if you wish to connect; not one of the generic ‘recommended’ messages that LinkedIn provides. It tells me that you took the time not only to read my profile, but also that you feel a profound reason for our connection and not just a need to put another name on your networking list. Please personalize your request to me; I will be more inclined to connect with someone who has taken the time to do this! Thanks and happy networking!”
It amazes me how many connection requests I get from people who obviously never made it to the bottom of my profile to see this. That’s not building relationships.
So, how do you go beyond building your network to building lasting, and valuable, relationships? Here are four suggestions:
- Personalize your correspondence. It takes more time, but it lets your connection know you specifically thought of them. If you have to, use an email program that will help you do this if you have large amounts of correspondence going out. Make sure you address people as they have requested (i.e. nickname, initials, etc.) and for Heaven’s sake, spell their name right. Having an uncommon first name myself, I get this all the time. It’s Amybeth, with a small “b”, and all one word, not Amy Beth.
- Don’t automatically subscribe them to your newsletter. Goodness – when I make a new connection and all of a sudden I start receiving tons of newsletters from that person, I feel like I was just another number. Go with an opt-in as opposed to an opt-out approach. Otherwise you’re going to end up with a bad reputation. I provide a link to my blog, my RSS, and a way to email-subscribe to my blog in my email signature. That way, people have the option to check out what I’m doing if they want to, and they can choose to ignore it if they don’t.
- Take your connection offline. The best way to build a relationship – professional or otherwise – is in person. Not through email, IM, text, or even phone. When possible, arrange to meet with new connections – host a networking meetup, grab a cup of coffee, attend a tweetup, etc.
- Give before asking. This is tough, especially if you’ve started networking as a result of being laid off. But trust me – this will pay off in the end. Ask your new connections what you can do for them first. Chances are they will reciprocate after being asked.
A great example of personalized networking and relationship building is Jennifer McClure, a local HR blogger known as CincyRecruiter. In a conversation I had with her over dinner at iHOP one night (there’s a clue), she told me that she personally responds to everyone who emails her. While I realize that many of you don’t have the bandwidth to do this, know also that she really doesn’t either 
But she still does it because she knows how valuable it is to build personal relationships within her network. I highly recommend connecting with her for more info on building relationships.
Zig Ziglar’s motto is: “You can have everything in life that you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” Just remember: your network is made up of human beings. Human beings want to feel special, and by building relationships with them, you can accomplish this and glean more value from your network at the same time. Otherwise, you’ve just got a random collection of nodes.
Be prepared…this is a bit of a rant! (the chick in the picture isn’t me, BTW)
I’ve been in the role of internet research for coming up on 7 years now. Over the years, people in my role have been called many things, including:
- Jr. Recruiter
- Sourcer
- Researcher
- Admin/Research
There’s never going to be a 100% agreement on what we do, because the function we each serve in our respective companies is different.
There is a new and growing sentiment in many of my online communities now that basically compares the practice of referring people to the art and skill of sourcing. I personally don’t take lightly to something that I hear being said more and more:
“Anyone can be a sourcer!”
Um – no. This is simply not true. This, in my mind, is like saying that anyone can be an automobile if they sit in the garage long enough. It’s never going to happen.
For you recruiters out there, equate this to what many have said over the years, that anyone can be a recruiter – they just need a Rolodex and a telephone. If I were a recruiter, I’d personally take offense to that, because sure you can be a recruiter with those tools, but can you be a GOOD one with ONLY those tools? No – you must have people skills, sales skills, business development skills, and there certainly is an art to becoming a GOOD recruiter.
I’ll say the same thing about sourcing! Sure, referrals are a PART of what I deal with every day. But that in and of itself does not a sourcer make. I get irritated when my function is trivialized and reduced to the latest and greatest automation tool. Regardless of how much of any step in the talent attraction process you’ve got automated, it is STILL a people-centric process. It is still a relationship business. And it will ALWAYS involve people. The moment you remove people from the process is when you stop being consultative and start being transactional.
My colleague David Mullen wrote a post a couple months ago that inspired me to take a look at what makes a good sourcer. I’ve also written several pieces on what makes a researcher a good one: check them out here, here, here, here, here, and here. Oh and make sure to check out this post which talks about all the sources from which I, as and internet researcher, pull. Networks are included, but there are plenty of other places that referrers wouldn’t consider.
So, why is referring NOT sourcing? Because I say it’s not. Just kidding But seriously, they’re different. If you tried to replace the role of Sourcing with a role you called Referral Strategist, eventually the referral network for that individual would dry up. It’s basic law of diminishing returns. Guess what that role is going to end up having to do? SOURCE to find more people for the referral network.
Referrals are great ways to help your friends and colleagues get a foot in the door. I love when people refer their friends to me – it tells me I’ve done a good job at building that relationship. But when I source, I put personal relationships to the side. I’m looking for the best fit for the job, regardless of relationship. Sourcing takes work that goes well beyond referring those within your network.
Please stop trivializing the role your researcher/sourcer plays within your company. In order to be successful, sourcing takes more than knowing how to plug a Boolean string into a search engine or tapping one’s existing network. Realize that you can automate until the cows come home, but at the end of the day, you still need a human being to be there for quality control. And please recognize that sourcing is not just a SKILL that can be taught, but an ART which must be mastered.
Filed under: Tweetups
The next date we’ll be co-working is Wednesday, May 13th. Check out the Jelly Cincinnati Wiki page - we’ll post updates there as well as having event registration available through Eventbrite.
Join other Cincinnati area telecommuters for a day of working in a collaborative environment. We’ll meet at Crossroads Community Church – the church graciously offers free wifi and coffee during the week for the local community. The idea here is to have folks who work in many different job functions working together in an open environment. The expectation is that creative juices will flow and new friendships will be forged. Hope to see you there!
Register to attend the Jelly Cincinnati Tweetup here.
When: Wednesday, May 13th
Where: Crossroads Community Church
3500 Madison Rd.
Cincinnati, OH 45209
Today it seems like we are always talking about presence. Whether it’s improving our online presence, or simply having one, there is all sorts of chatter around being present and being engaged. But are we REALLY present? I think something is getting brushed to the side. Something that is really more important than having an online presence. And that’s having presence when you’re actually present. Sound confusing? It shouldn’t. What I’m talking about is being there when you’re with people. In person. Being present when you’re in the company of others.
Picture this: You’ve developed a great relationship with a professional colleague. Perhaps you discovered each other through a LinkedIn connection, or you followed each other on Twitter. You eventually find yourself at a party, or a networking event, or somewhere in a social setting together. (This, by the way, is one of my most important pieces of advice in developing relationships – taking online relationships offline at some point.) However, your colleague can’t stop checking their phone, or is constantly sending texts while you’re hanging out. Even though you know (or at least you think you know) that they’re probably important things, you can’t help but feel a little devalued. After all, this is right here, right now. Whatever is going on in their email/texts/etc. isn’t in person. Even if just a little bit, it makes you feel like your company is less important.
Everyone has been in this situation at some point in the last couple of years. And sadly, many of us (myself included) have CAUSED this situation as well. We can’t put our phones or PDAs away for even a couple of hours to spend in-person time with our professional colleagues, and often even our friends and family. This isn’t being present. And it’s negatively affecting our relationships.
A few months ago, I wrote a post called A Breakdown In Communication. To date, it’s one of the most frequently visited posts on my blog. This tells me that people are searching for information on better communication, and they recognize that this is a problem. After writing that post, I made a conscious decision to try to be more present in in-person situations. This meant:
- Turning my phone completely off during church (not just put it on vibrate)
- Keeping my phone in my purse when having dinner out with others
- Sometimes, even leaving my phone behind is the most appropriate action
I think I’ve done pretty good, though there have been times when I failed. For example, I recently went on a very long car trip with my best friend and her boyfriend. I sat in the backseat for the whole trip, and I spent a great deal of time checking email and texting on my iPhone. Present? Not really. Also, when a friend came to visit recently, I didn’t ignore phone calls and texts when they came in and I ended up feeling like I was being pretty rude, because my friend had traveled a long way to spend time with me.
There are of course times which will be exceptions, for example if you’re attending an event that was specifically designed for online networking – like our New Media Cincinnati monthly meetups. We are encouraged to live-tweet from these events. Of course, there are always going to be in-person opportunities at these types of events so it’s good to know when to put the phone away.
Making these personal adjustments has really opened my eyes to others around me, and it’s finally allowing me to understand how others must have felt when I did this to them. Not being able to resist checking that new text message that just came through. Or visiting friends, and then not resisting the urge to check and see what was going on with everyone else who wasn’t there. My friend Krista Neher has a great saying, “I never leave fun to find fun.” When you aren’t present when you’re present, this is the message you are sending to the person or group you’re with – “the text/email/call I’m getting might potentially be more ‘fun’ than what’s happening right now.” Ouch!
Please – if you’re with someone – physically there with them – have proper presence. Make them the most important person at that moment. Whatever is happening on your phone can certainly wait for an hour or two. Making people feel important is part of building relationships, anyhow. We have enough things in our lives to distract us these days – why not treasure the time we have together, face to face, instead of wasting it on something that most likely won’t even be important tomorrow.
Here’s an interesting tool that will help you to be more present - Mobilza: a Windows Mobile Phone application that automatically creates canned text messages to tell contacts you’re away.
Anyone want to develop an iPhone app version of this?
Filed under: Thoughts
Today, I officially kiss my 20s good-bye as it’s my 30th birthday! This is a milestone birthday for a number of reasons. Of course, many believe that when you turn 30, your life really begins. Others say that you officially start getting old when you hit 30, and that’s when things start falling apart. But I believe those who’ve been telling me for the last several weeks that your 30s are the best time of your life.
About 7 years ago, I set a goal for myself to be completely debt-free by the time I hit 30. At that time, I had two student loans totaling about $20k and I had racked up about $15k in credit card debt. Am I debt-free yet? Nope – I missed this goal. However, I DID pay off all of my credit cards, paid off my car entirely, and I only have around $12k in student loans left to pay, which I should be done paying off by the time I hit 31.
Did I fail here? I don’t think so! Setting goals helps you stay focused in any given area of your life and gives you something to work toward. Most people don’t even hit their goals the first time around. But they’re better off than when they started.
Lesson learned: Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land amongst the stars!
This year for my birthday, all I wanted was to spend time with the people I call my friends. I’m having a party at a downtown Cincinnati martini club and some of my local friends and those within driving distance are coming to help me celebrate. At this point in my life, making memories with those I love is important. My mom had planned to come up this week, but at the very last minute she had to cancel because of some health issues that are not allowing her to travel. She was very upset about this and I felt bad that she was more worried about missing my birthday than she seemed to be about her health.
To give you a little background on my mom, she was diagnosed back in the 90s with a disease called fibromyalgia. In its simplest definition, fibromyalgia is described as chronic musculoskeletal pain, fatigue, and multiple tender points that occur in precise, localized areas, particularly in the neck, spine, shoulders, and hips. My mom was a special education teacher at the middle school level, and she was moving some boxes one summer preparing for the school year when she injured her back. Because it was a Workers’ Comp case, she was made to wait three months to have back surgery, resulting in complications that led to scar tissue developing around her incision area. She had to have a second back surgery, and shortly after that she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia.
Fibromyalgia can be very mild or extremely severe. The form my mom was diagnosed with is more toward the severe side. Over the years she has had to wear a brace to deal with weak nerves in her foot, and she has to walk with canes now. She has had to take some really heavy-duty medications which dried up her salivary glands and caused several of her teeth to decay. She now has complete dentures, and she is only 61. Lots of other things have been affected, including her kidneys and her overall posture. It breaks my heart to see what this has done to her – a lady I used to have to run to keep up with.
This year, for my 30th birthday, I want to do something for the woman who brought me into the world. That’s why for every comment that is left on this post, I am going to donate $5 to the National Fibromyalgia Association. The National Fibromyalgia Association supports research, medical education programs, patient education and support groups to help those dealing with the disease. I love both my mom and dad, and I know many of you are getting to, or have already gotten to, the point where your parents are starting to age quickly and it’s tough to watch them go through health challenges.
I’ll donate up to $500 (100 comments). As far as comments go, you can leave whatever you’d like, I would only ask that you don’t leave like 10 comments, and make it somewhat meaningful
Thank you for helping me work toward another goal, and also to give my mom a gift on my birthday
2 years ago I submitted an entry into AIRS Xtreme Sourcing Games contest. I won Runner-Up for the contest and my prize was being able to take the classes to earn the CIR designation through AIRS. A couple of nights ago, I was chatting with my new boss, Chris Hoyt – aka The Recruiter Guy – and I shared this technique with him. He liked it, and I thought I’d go ahead and share the technique here!
This is a specialized search technique, as Koders.com is “the leading search engine for open source and other down-loadable code… Used by tens of thousands of developers each day.” So, this will work for those of you who are searching for software and/or web developers. Enjoy!
from 2007…
I use Koders.com to find software engineers and programmers. I use the string “*@gmail.com” or “*@yahoo.com” or substitute the @ for (at) (since a lot of programmers list their email address using (at) to avoid bots) and I select the programming language I desire (ex, C#). The reason for this is because programmers will often “stamp” their code with ownership by including their name and email address. I also use either 2006 or 2006..2007 to make sure the information returned is recent. Once email addresses are returned, I either run a web search based on the email address or I search for the name returned as the author. For example:
And the results…
”*@gmail.com” 2006 run under the programming language of C# returned this in the results:
Mpeg4Properties.cs
/***************************************************************************
copyright : (C) 2006 by Dan Poage dan.poage@gmail.com
copyright : (C) 2006 by Brian Nickel brian.nickel@gmail.com
***************************************************************************/
Language: C#
License: LGPL
(C) 2006 by Brian Nickel brian.nickel@gmail.com…
LOC: 67
Google : alexandrialibrary – Alexandria Media Library (project search) : …/trunk/src/Alexandria.TagLib/Mpeg4/Mpeg4Properties.cs
After finding this information, I ran a search on the email address for Brian Nickel and came to his homepage on Arizona State University’s public site:
Here, all of his email and instant messenger contact information is listed. I learned that he desires to design websites. I decided to click on his blog link and found this:
His most recent post was about 4 days ago, so he is active. I clicked on his About page and learned a little about Brian – his interests, the fact that he grew up close to ASU, etc.
I now have enough information to contact him and know a little about his skills.
**Hat-tip to Jim Stroud for showing me Koders in the first place…
