Tag Archives: careers

Why Tweet When You Can Blellow: Microblogging for Freelancers and Web Workers

We’re all about finding jobs or starting your own business in this rough economy.  If you want to be more focused in any of these endeavors, you might give Blellow a try.  Blellow is a blellow logoniche  microblogging site to join groups, find projects, check the job board, and meetup with other Blellow members. Jennifer Van Grove describes it in Blellow: A Better Microblogging Tool for Freelancers and Web Workers.

  • Name: Blellow

    Quick Pitch: Blellow is a social network allowing freelancers and professionals to collaborate, find work, and solve problems through a friendly, familiar micro-blog interface by answering the question: “What are you working on?”

    Genius Idea: One of the reasons that people are embracing Twitter with open arms is the quality of people and networking opportunities that arise from the 140 character community. With Twitter trending towards the mainstream, however, conversations are becoming more social, so freelancers using the popular microblog to find clients and projects might start to feel like a small fish in an expansive sea.

    For niche networking with a professional purpose and Twitter-like feel, we can now turn to Blellow, a more focused microblogging site to join groups, find projects, check the job board, and meetup with other Blellow members.

    blellow home page

    The Twitter-similar site launched at SXSW and asks users, “What are you working on?” to foster professional conversations and create networking or project-related conversations. Members can update their status, seek advice when stuck on tasks, share files, give and receive kudos for peer-to-peer help, engage in threaded conversations, and join public or private or groups. Kudos are like credibility, so each time you receive kudos for a job well done, you’ll rank higher in Blellow search results, which could expose you to new clients and more work opportunities.

    blellow-job-board

    Blellow also has three important features for freelancers looking for gigs: a job board, project listings, and a meetup page. The job board is a community-generated list of full-time and freelance jobs that Blellow users can peruse for work, while the projects page lists paid and pro bono deliverables which include the available budget for the project. Plus, if you’re looking for professional face time with other Blellow members, you can check out upcoming meetups or create your own.

    blellow-group

    Blellow would be a killer app if it offered a better way to find friends. Currently the site limits users to inviting friends or searching for existing users, but it would be beneficial to see the TwitterTwitter reviewsTwitter reviews friends and email contacts shared in common with the Blellow user base. Blellow, however, does make it easy to self-identify yourself with groups based on your specialties or interests. Group conversations abound using the % + group name tag, and updates of that nature typically get quality replies. For $5/mo or $10/mo, Blellow users can create private groups with 1 gig and 10 gigs of space, respectively.

    Since Blellow is so new, its Achilles heel right now is the sparsity of people, jobs, and projects, but the site does serve freelancers, Web workers, and information seekers extremely well with the groups feature. So, Blellow’s survival will depend of whether we Twitterers will find enough value in creating and maintaining another microblogging profile.

    For a quick tutorial on the site, watch this video:

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Promises Unkept, The Enduring Pink Ghetto

Today there is an ongoing flap about the consideration of Kim Gandy, President of the National Organization for Women (NOW) , for Directorship of the Women’s Bureau in the U.S. Department of Labor. If you recall, NOW endorsed the all-male ticket of Obama and Biden in the general election.  Some question her motives and believe it was a type of “pay for play”.
All the talk and back and forth in the blogosphere, with many women’s groups protesting Gandy as a choice, has set me to thinking about the the Women’s Bureau itself.  Specifically, what has it accomplished and is it, in itself, another form of a pink ghetto?
What is a pink ghetto?
Elana Centor, in Can You Ever Escape The Pink Ghetto? explains ” Time was the Pink Collar Ghetto was a term to describe traditional women’s jobs — those jobs with low pay and little job advancement opportunities: teachers, nurses and secretaries.”  It is also used to describe certain spots for women in corporations such as HR, an Marketing or the role of CMO (Chief Marketing Officer).

In just about every field there is a corner reserved for women where the pay and prestige are lower even though the work is equally demanding.

Think about it.

As Imdiversity.com points out, “….the medical profession provides a case study in the opportunities and problems for women in general. Most women doctors are in the so-called nurturing fields — pediatrics, family doctors, obstetrics and gynecology. Few are in the more prestigious and highly compensated fields such as neurosurgery or heart surgery. Women remain a distinct minority on medical-school faculties, and there are precious few female deans.”

In fact, when women begin to be the majority in a field, the pay goes down.

Melanie Perry reports she “was wondering during a recent salary survey of Design professionals that I did that Training, Marketing, Landscape Architecture and Interior Design were among some of the lower-paying fields when they obviously require such skills… then it occurs to me… those are the fields with some of the highest percentages of women in them.”

So, my question is, What is it that the Women’s Bureau is doing for us? They’ve had a long time to do it, so why are women still only earning 78 cents on the dollar for men?  Why is it that Federal law requires that certified women-owned businesses receive at least 5% of all Federal contracts, but less than 3.2% of all contracts are awarded to women.

Yes, Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter act but are individual women going to have to sue huge, rich conglomerates to get fair pay?

I have to wonder if the Women’s Bureau itself is a Pink Ghetto?  Is it like the Bureau of Indian Affairs, there to babysit us and hold our hand and see that we don’t get off the reservation?  Or, if we do, we don’t get into too much trouble?

If women are going to be marginalized couldn’t they at least give us our own plot of land so we could build a casino and make some real money? ( I’m kidding.)

Long ago many women decided the only way to get a fair break was to start their own business, which women have increasingly done and are making almost $2 trillion doing it.

But we shouldn’t have to jump out of the labor market to make equal pay.  And that, it seems, should be the base line expectation for the Women’s Bureau. Whoever is appointed to lead the Women’s Bureau we should hold her feet to the fire until she accomplishs that one goal.

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Is The Fair Pay Act For Women A Constantly Moving Target?

Remember those Looney Tunes animated cartoons where the characters Wile E. Coyote (also known simply as “The Coyote”) and the Road Runner did battle with each other, with the Road Runner  using devilish tricks to humiliate and defeat the Coyote.  I remember one cartoon, or seem to, where the Road Runner kept zooming ahead, constantly moving the sign that said “5 miles to Somewhere”, so it became a 100 mile trek, with the goal always out of reach.  The Coyote usually wound up running as fast as he could and going SPLAT head on into a wall or cliff, having completely lost his bearings in the skulldudgery and never even getting close to his destination.

I remember a personal trip like that when I, my niece and a few supportive friends made the trek to visit a nephew of mine who had misguidedly joined the remote Rashneesh compound in Oregon.  Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rashneesh had purchased the 64,000 acre Big Muddy Ranch near Antelope for $5.7 million and enticed many of his followers to join him, their wallets in hand.  Our goal was to get my nephew to sign some papers to preempt him from emptying out any of his other relatives’ bank accounts into the guru’s pockets, to support the guru’s lavish livestyle or his fleet of Rolls Royce’s, in which he drove by and waved to followers like my nephew whose job was digging fence posts and pledging more money.  As we drove on and on into the Oregon wilderness one of my friends asked dolefully:  “Is someone running ahead of us, moving these signs back 5 miles, every time we drive 4 miles?”

Good question.

And one which Lilly Ledbetter and a lot of other women must be asking ourselves about now. My nephew was not the only one ever to be suckered.  My niece and my friends and I were not the only ones who ever made a long trek only to have the sign posts moved down the road ahead of us to forever prolong the journey. Lily Ledbetter is an unfortunate symbol for women. She embodies the wrong that has been done to us all.  And one more time, there are promises on the table to correct it.  But will it happen?

According to the AFL-CIO in House Passes Two Major Working Family Bills: Fair Pay Act, Paycheck Fairness Act, Lilly Ledbetter says she knows she’ll never recover the hundreds of thousands of dollars she lost from her paychecks because of nearly 20 years of pay discrimination. But a few days ago, by a vote of 247-171, the House passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Act (H.R. 11) overturning the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that denied Ledbetter—and any worker who suffers pay discrimination—justice. Then shortly after, lawmakers added some new teeth to equal pay laws and passed the Paycheck Fairness Act (H.R. 12) by a 256-163 vote. Both bills now go to the U.S. Senate.

During a conference call with reporters Ledbetter said:

“I’m a living example of the fact that pay discrimination is a pervasive problem in workplace today….My case is just the tip of the iceberg. My case is over and I will never receive any pay. But Congress has the power to ensure what happened to me won’t happen to anyone else.”

After years of working at an Alabama Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. plant, Ledbetter discovered she was being paid less than the lowest-paid man doing the same work. She gathered enough evidence to file suit, and a jury awarded her $3.8 million. But Goodyear appealed to the Supreme Court.

But in May 2007, the Supreme Court squelched the award and ruled Ledbetter—and other workers—has no right to sue for a remedy in cases of pay discrimination if she—or any worker—waits more than 180 days after her first paycheck, even if she didn’t discover the pay discrimination until years later.

Following the court’s ruling, hundreds of pay discrimination cases have been thrown out based on the 5-4 decision that basically overturned decades of precedent that considered each paycheck a discriminatory act, thus allowing workers who don’t discover the discrimination for years to seek legal remedies.

Marcia Greenberger of the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) says the Ledbetter bill is a matter of economic justice and a matter of economic urgency for women and the families they support. More than 300 cases…were lost because of the court’s ruling. How many more were told by their lawyers, “It’s too bad. You’re too late.” We can’t wait another day to pass this law.”

The Paycheck Fairness Act, introduced by Rep. Rosa DeLauro’s (D-Conn.), would provide more effective remedies for women who are not paid equal wages for doing equal work, by adding some teeth to the 1963 Equal Pay Act. The Paycheck Fairness Act makes the 45-year-old Equal Pay Act a more effective tool. It stiffens penalties, protects workers from retaliation and offers concrete solutions to what is a real problem.

Anti-labor groups and Republican leaders in the Senate are sharpening their knives for the upcoming vote on this and the Employee Free Choice Act.  It is sure to be a knock down drag out battle.

And one more time, can women look forward perpetually to have the destination of equal pay enticingly in our sights then have it moved down the road again?  Will we keep getting suckered in?  Will we once more go SPLAT against the wall of our expectations?  Stay tuned..……

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Need a job? CREATE one! Personal Coaching To Help You

Need a job? CREATE one!

Simply Hired is partnering with Sramana Mitra, Forbes columnist and author of Entrepreneur Journeys, to bring you an online entrepreneurship forum. The open forum will take place on January 14th, 2009 at 11am PT/2pm ET and will center on job seekers taking their careers in their own hands by learning to create jobs now.

During the 60-minute session, Sramana Mitra will answer participant questions in real-time about all aspects of entrepreneurship including:

* forming a business idea

* finding great mentors

* funding your business idea

* mistakes to avoid

* anything else participants might ask

The session is open to everyone, however only the first 15 participants to register will have the opportunity to interact with Mitra.

The forum is free to all participants and will be run on the Dimdim Web Conferencing platform. To register for this event, go to http://entrepreneurshipforum.eventbrite.com or visit http://www.dimdim.com.

Check out the press release for more info!


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15 Top Business Blogs

Of course, you know there are many more great business blogs out there.  For the moment, these are some that strike me as particularly useful.  If you’d like to add to the list, just post your comment and I’ll put it up.

So, here goes:

Career News & Job Search

All Top Career News:  a cornucopia of career news, articles, tips by hundreds of bloggers.

Job Mob: has some insightful articles and good tips.

Entrepreneurship

How To Change The World: Guy Kawasaki, is a pretty down to earth guy, but he is actually world famous as a tech entrepreneur, evangelist, author, speaker and blogger. He gets it, big time, and he shares his insights generously.

Toilet Paper Entrepreneur: If you can get beyond the initial toilet paper analogy, which is humorous, if a little indelicate, Mike Michalowicz offers good advice and tips for new entrepreneurs.

About Entrepreneurs: Scott Allen’s practical guide for entrepreneurs.

Planning Startups Stories, the very seasoned and successful Tim Berry’s blog, sharing his insights on starting your business.

Bootstrap Me: about bootstrapping, small business, entrepreneurs, start up.

Escape From Cubicle Nation: a favorite and one which will start you thinking about how to move on.

Marketing

Duct Tape Marketing: John Jantsch has to be at or close to the top when it comes to marketing.

Seth Godin’s Blog: marketing guru has insightful things to say about all things marketing

Winning the Web: internet marketing strategy and other very insightful tips on running a blog.

Social Networking

How To Change The World: Guy Kawasaki, from time to time, has more social networking how to information in one blog than others do all year.  Yes, I know I mentioned Kawasaki under entrepreneurs, which he definitely is, but he is an uber successful guy, who wears many hats, so I thought I’d mention him again in this context.

ChrisBrogan: one of the most popular social networking bloggers, sharing many moments of his life with you and informed tips on how to raise your social networking IQ.

Tech
TechCrunch: Tech news for those in the know.

Silicon Alley Insider if you like to keep up with gossip and goings on in Silicon  Valley

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Job Hunting? Try A Niche Job Site, Aggregator or Corporate Career Section

As the economic scene darkens, more people are going online to look for jobs.  As job cuts hit, domino style, industry after industry, job seekers need to get a little more creative and persistent in their search.

Sometimes, when flocking to the big boards, job seekers overlook the niche job listings which might be a perfect fit and have just the right job for you. Niche job boards focus on a specific industry or demographic. Careers.AdvancingWomen.com, our job board, for example, is a diversity job board where employers seek women and minorities, the disabled or other diverse groups.  But there are plenty of niche job sites out there, one of which may be right for you.

Interested in Anthropology / Archeology Jobs?  How about Dance Jobs, Environmental Jobs ,Equine Jobs (that’s horses)?  Yep, all of them have niche job boards.  Even Retirement Jobs, Winery Jobs ( sign me up!) and  Zoo Jobs have their own boards. How cool is that?

Want more niche job sites to pore over?  Look up Niche Job Sites Directory

Another source not to overlook is job aggregators like Indeed.com. Companies like Indeed.com scrape jobs from a variety of sources and describe themselves as “a search engine for jobs;  jobs that are listed on job boards, newspaper sites, and niche sites. In one simple search, you can find the very latest job listings throughout the web – one search. all jobs.”  Well, not quite.  Although job aggregators, like Indeed.com, are another tool in your job searching tool box, there are more.

Don’t forget the jobs sites of big corporations. Although they may be advertising in many job boards on the web and in news papers there, there’s a good chance they have three to ten times that many jobs advertised on their own corporate career site.

So, here’s the strategy.  Go to the big boards like Monster.  Go to the niche sites in your industry or your demographic. Identify some corporations you’d like to work for.  Then go to all of them, and, if you don’t see what you want on first visit, set up an rss feed or an alert so that you don’t go looking for the jobs, the jobs come to you.  And we invite you to go post your resume and get an alert from our diversity niche board, Careers.AdvancingWomen.com

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What It Means To Take Charge Of Your Work Life

Economy of American Samoa
Image via Wikipedia

You may wonder why I write so much about bootstrapping and entrepreneuring?

I’m passionate about jobs and careers as well.  But I think we can all agree, jobs are dependent on someone giving you one.  And also, keeping you in it.  What I want you to realize is that you can create a job for yourself that no one can take away from you.  You can start your own business and employ yourself.

We all have to agree the job news is bleak and appears to be darkening:

New York based Employment Trends Index reports:“The U.S. economy has lost 1.9 million job and the declines in the index suggest job losses could very well surpass 3 million by mid-2009.” Business Journal adds “The report comes on the heels of Friday’s report from the Labor Department that said the economy shed 533,000 jobs in November — the largest monthly decline since December 1974. That brought the year’s total job losses to 1.9 million.” Economists also predict a decline in job pay.

Given the state of the economy, we all know some things we should be doing or trying to do: paying down our credit card debt; building a cash cushion. Although, for some of us, stretched like a rubber band to the breaking point as it is, that may be easier said than done.

But there are other alternatives:  I’ve heard of some people taking on other, easier to get 2nd, part time jobs like delivery services or even throwing newspapers ( make that last a really short term fix as newspapers themselves are shrinking daily.)

Now, however, might be the perfect moment to start your own business.  It can be after hours, after your day job, to start out.  Think of it as a life raft, in case your boat ( your main day job) sinks.

We wrote about this cross roads before in A Fork In The Road: Career Path Or Entrepreneurship. One of the things we mentioned was how this could be such a wrenching decision, as you would be giving up so much security.  Forget that.  At this moment, everyone’s job outside of civil service, possibly teaching and a few other fields is about as stable as a slinky, headed down 5 flights of stairs…. you never know where it might land up, or when it will either cascade or fall to the bottom.  So there really may not be much holding you back from starting up a 2nd revenue producing machine, in the form of your own business.

We’ve already reviewed with you how you can do this.  I’ve done it.  Many times.  So can you.

How to Start an Online Business for $100 – Ramp Up As Needed Or Just For Surges

Start Your Own Small Business Using More Ingenuity, Less Cash

But, what I would like you to take away from this is that you have the power to create your own work situation, one that no one can take away from you.  You can do this in a way that you have several streams of income. ( This blog for example, and the website it’s on, have income from advertising, from a job board and from advising other companies and associations about setting up their websites and online businesses and helping them execute on them.)  That way, for example, if jobs are down, ads may be maintaining steady.  If both are down, and you’ve established an expertise, you can sell that as a service.  A going website has many potential ways to produce revenue.  And so does a going business.  You may have to take off the blinders, use your imagination and ingenuity, shift with the times and sell apple butter instead of apples, but that’s part of life as well as business.  At least you will have a platform from which to maintain your revenues, in one form or another.

Think about it.  Think of it as a life raft which you can build in your after hours time. You may need it sooner than you hope.

If you have work survival stories you’ve like to share, we’d love to hear them. Comment, please.

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Milestones, Support, Visibility, & Leveraging Contacts Leads To Career Success

Regardless of which elements you have worked to build into your career………those extra night classes or seminars in out of the way places…..or others which have come to you by chance, there are still elements you can add to create more support and serve as an infrastructure for your career success:

Create a Plan and Lay Out Milestones

Rule #1: Set your own goals.

Don’t wait for someone to tell you what to do. Analyze your company carefully, and try to understand what you can do which will make a significant difference. Get a handle on the problem, develop a solution, and a consensus around it, lobby for approval, then execute better and faster than anyone else.

This is accomplished most effectively by breaking down big projects into small, realistic and manageable daily goals. When you focus on your career, think in terms of concrete, realistic steps: gaining experience in a different area by taking on a new assignment; taking short courses or attending seminars in cutting edge topics; improving your performance by 20%; decreasing by 20% the time it takes you to accomplish a task.

From those incremental improvements, you can begin to lay out significant milestones, such as moving from middle to upper management.

Develop an “Advisory Board”

To keep your career going strong and achieving its full potential, you will need a sounding board, someone who can provide you with an objective judgment of how you’re performing. This can be a trusted mentor, or a group of professional friends, who are willing to meet with you occasionally and review the milestones you’ve set for your career. And don’t forget your significant other. A spouse or partner will usually give you an honest appraisal…mine does….of whether you’re setting your goals too high or too low.

Frequently, changes take place in an industry or pay scales change, and, if you been putting in long hours, you can miss them or fail to realize their significance or how they can impact your own career. To gain perspective and an objective viewpoint, it’s invaluable to be able to turn to trusted advisers.

Take on Public Speaking

It’s impossible to overemphasize the value of being a good communicator. What all leaders share is the ability to articulate and communicate their goals with such passion or eloquence that others are motivated to share those goals and join together to achieve them.

Regardless of whether you are an eloquent speaker, you can at least bring interesting news to an audience, in a fresh and organized way. Since most people in a general audience are not as up to date on your field as you are, you should be able to convey something to them which is of interest and which they didn’t know before.

If you are able to display a mastery of a subject, and keep your presentation brief and to the point, you will make an impression. And public speaking is one of the best ways to raise your profile in the community and in your professional circle.

Create A Skills Inventory and Continue to Expand

Whether your skills are based on your ability with graphics, or your talent for getting an office organized or inspiring people to join your project, you have a set of skills to track and build on. Create your own “portfolio” which identifies and documents those areas you have developed the most and have the greatest competitive advantage in, as measured against your peers, and make its continuous expansion an ongoing priority.

Remember – It’s Still About People: Develop A System to Leverage Your Contacts

Take a hard look at how you are networking and make some basic decisions about how to develop a system to make personal contacts and extended networks work better to advance your career.  Sometimes it takes a little effort.  In the web business, I am finding that I can meet as many influential decision makers and thought leaders at the right tech networking event in Austin as I can in…. let’s say a month of Sundays… in my city.  The downside: It’s an hour and 15 minute drive.  The upside: the contacts and business potential, not to mention the learning experience are well worth it.

To extract and build on the value of your contact, it is important that you be able to recall the details of your meeting and the specifics of the other person’s job and your conversation. My tech buddy drives up to Austin with me and we both collect business cards, sometimes jotting notes on the back of them about details we particularly want to recall.  When we get back we scan them and exchange them by email.  Voila! Twice the new leads, prospects and contacts, and, at the same time, someone to share the drive and dish about industry trends or whatever projects we’re working on.

Once you have developed a system to track your contacts, and all your contact information is recorded and organized, then you should develop a system for communicating on a regular basis with people you’ve met. Communication can be something as simple as sending an email with a web reference or a reminder of an upcoming meeting or a Facebook notice about a new project. Do this regularly and you will build a network which will be there when you need them.

Creating a career plan with milestones, gathering support, continuing to expand both our career skills and our networks, if executed faithfully,  is not only energizing and enjoyable in and of itself, but definitely will  lead to success

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15 Secret Rules of Job Success Formula

A copy of Auguste Rodin's

Image via Wikipedia

Steven Gilbert has a resume of extreme and notable success as long as your arm, heading up prestigious companies, doing good works, accumulating wealth.  But he believes the path to success and the rules to follow are very simple.  It’s just that most people don’t follow them. Gilbert comments:

” As simple as they sound, 98% of all MBA graduates cannot, or will not, comply with these rules.  You know who you are.”

Gilbert made these remarks at a 2008 commencement speech at the Wharton School.  Although he didn’t say so explicitly, I think what he had in mind was a phenomenon I noticed about the time I had attended Wellesley, one of the sister schools to Harvard, and graduated from Columbia University in New York.  When you first graduate from college, and particularly from a very prestigious college or university, ( and perhaps even much later in your career) you secretly consider yourself just too smart to be bound by such ordinary and mundane concepts. You consider yourself as someone with a dazzling career ahead who will pen “the great American novel”, come up with a cure for a ravaging disease, turn the planet green and reverse the disastrous effects of climate change.  You are too special for such prosaic rules.  But as Gilbert  points out, those great achievements may be the peaks, but they are not the day to day stuff of which success is made.  He does say, explicitly, somewhat suggesting this point:

“We all know you are smart.  Smart is just the beginning.  The basic requirement.  There is no shortage of smart people in business.”

JobMob quotes Steven Gilbert’s Job Success Formula from The 10 Biggest Business Myths & Gilbert’s Secret Rules of Business Success:

1. Show up on time. You might think this to be humorous or facetious. But, as your career goes on, you will find there are a lot of people who cannot do this. Their plane is always late, they pick up the phone before the big meeting, they can’t meet a deadline. 90% of meetings start late. When your colleagues and bosses know that you will show up when promised, they will have confidence in you, and begin to trust you.

2. Do what you are asked to do. Don’t do what you think ought to be required. Don’t add pages of data to prove your point. Summarize the data so your boss doesn’t have to. Don’t change the assignment. Give your boss what he asked for, and life will be simple. You can add exhibits for recreational reading, but only the first two pages will be read.

3. When asked a direct question, answer, “Yes”, ‘No”, or “I don’t know but will find out”. Don’t tell a story. Don’t obfuscate. Don’t repeat the question you were just asked. Don’t fill the air with information of interest only to you. Answer first. Tell the story second, if you must. You would be shocked at how few people can do this. Always make full disclosure.

4. Handle every piece of paper only once. Paper left on your desk will grow, even without food or water. Looking at the same piece of paper multiple times is wasteful, counter-productive, and cuts down on your recreation time.

5. Make your boss look good. Eventually, this will work. Organizations always know who really does the work. Empty suits can’t hide forever. If you make your boss look bad, you might have to try this at your next job.

6. If it isn’t in writing, it doesn’t exist. Without an email or a piece of paper, nothing anyone says to you means anything. Promises are broken all the time in business, and memories are extraordinarily selective.

7. Everyone works hard, don’t complain or point out how hard you are working. No one cares. They all have their own issues. Your best bet is to act like a duck, looking calm and composed on the surface, but pedaling furiously under the water.

8. Honesty is the best policy. Not just because it is, but also because when things get complicated, you won’t be able to remember all the lies you told. If you are always honest, only your memory for the truth is at issue.

9. Being nice is more profitable than being nasty. It takes much less energy to be nice. People want to work with you. You will be happier and so will your colleagues.

10. Speed is important. Most people will value a quick “no” more than a lengthy “maybe”. Responding quickly is much appreciated. Run to the problem first.

11. Work smart, not just hard. Don’t confuse speed with torque. Sitting at your desk all night is not the same thing as making progress. Figure out, each day, what you need to do to succeed. Determine what you need from a meeting; don’t just blindly enter the room like a lamb.

12. Be realistic. No one is going to make you CEO while the ink on your MBA is still drying. Even for the best, it takes a few years before people are comfortable that you can do all the things you think you can.

13. Don’t be afraid to be bold. You can, and certainly will, be able to get another job. Don’t be afraid to find the door if you don’t like what is going on. The sign on the door of opportunity reads PUSH. Don’t be afraid to suggest a new line of business. Don’t be afraid to stand up for your vision. As Ayn Rand said “Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason.”

14. You have more than one job. You can never be happier than your least happy child. You may have to be a husband, wife, father, mother, a son, a daughter, a nurse or a nursemaid during your lifetime. If you fail at any of these jobs, success in the others will be meaningless.

15. You don’t have to cure cancer to be a success. Being a good citizen, a good parent, a good friend, a productive and charitable member of society is all most of us can hope for. And remarkably few achieve.

I couldn’t agree more.  And I bet you do, too.

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Build It Before You Need It : 37 Ideas to Grow Your Job Search Network Right Now

Studies , including a recent one last month by Impact Group, confirm and reinforce the axiom that networking is the best way to find a job.

One key thing to remember as Jeremiah, Sr Analyst at Forrester Research points out, even if you work for someone else, you are a company of one: even though your paycheck is being delivered through your employer, you are solely responsible for your direction, what you learn, how you perform, and how much you’re paid. You’re in control of your own destiny.

Therefore, be part of the party/conversation/network before you need anything from anyone. Start now, and continue to build relationships by giving now: share knowledge, help others, and become a trusted node and connector, not just an outlying ‘dot’ of a comet that swings in every 4 years or so.  Since it takes time, and a certain amount of giving of yourself, and contributing, seeding, nurturing and building of the network,invest the time to build it before you need it.

JobMob says in 37 Ideas to Grow Your Job Search Network Right Now:

To excel at networking, the key question to ask is not “what can you do for me?” but rather “what can I do for you?” The more you give to your network, the more you can get from it.

1. Get an easy-to-remember email address. A good format is firstname.lastname@webmail.com where “webmail” is Gmail, Yahoo Mail, etc. Use this address for job search/work purposes only.

2. Choose your personal tagline. Find a 3-4 word phrase that relates to who you are professionally and puts you in a positive light. You want people to think that phrase when they hear your name, and everything you do work-wise should match your tagline. Use it in your email signature and begin by saying it when people ask what you do.

3. Prepare an elevator pitch. In 30 seconds you need to be able to describe who you are and which problems your expertise can solve. Practice until it comes naturally. Tweak as you go, judging by listener response.

4. Build an impressive web profile. A recommendation-filled LinkedIn profile with the right LinkedIn Applications can show off your accomplishments, successes and elevator pitch. LinkedIn will also give you an easy-to-remember url to put in your email signature, on your resume and business cards, encouraging people to connect with you. Use your personal tagline and easy-to-remember email address.

5. Become a LiON, a LinkedIn Open Networker. This is a quick way to grow your number of LinkedIn connections to the top level of “500+” but the looseness of these connections means you shouldn’t expect much from them. Still, all it takes is one good connection for this to be worthwhile.

6. Be active on LinkedIn Answers and LinkedIn Groups related to your profession, responding to questions and drawing other LinkedIn users to connect to you.

7. Sign up to Twitter. Take a few moments to flesh out your profile, putting your personal tagline in the Bio box and customizing the background image. Use TweetLater to automatically follow back any people who follow you, then search for people to add to your network. Once your network has grown a bit, use Twubble to find more people to follow from among your followers’ favorites. Setup a separate account for personal use.

8. Create a Facebook Page. Use Facebook for more than staying in touch with friends and family. Separately from your personal profile, use a Facebook Page to promote yourself professionally,  giving Facebook users a place to follow you as an expert in your field.

9. Carry business cards with your personal tagline and contact information to give out to potential business contacts. Try to always leave a note on the back before handing over your card, for example, to write where you met.

10. Ask for referrals when handing over business cards. People are more likely to respond to this than if you ask about open positions in their company. Give them extra cards if they have any potential referrals.

11. Use calling cards for non-business occasions. They’re like a business card, but with personal information. I haven’t tried this yet but I like the idea. The novelty aspect alone will leave a good impression.

12.  Join real-world business networks and chambers of commerce. You want people in your industry to notice you. Find local networks by googling “business network” and the name of your city.

13. Join general purpose business social networks. Besides LinkedIn, there are other networks like Xing and ZoomInfo. Use the one that is most popular in your industry.

14. Join industry-specific social networks. In many cases, these are business social networks created on the Ning platform. Use Ning’s search to find relevant networks or start a Ning network yourself.

15. Start blogging about your profession. As a super virtual resume, blogging is a terrific way to not only grow your network and show your expertise but also to attract job offers.

16. Follow industry blogs of different size readership. Subscribe and comment on them so that their bloggers discover and interact with you, especially if you have your own blog too. It’s better to get a lot of attention from 10 small blogs than no attention on 2 big ones.

17. Participate in industry discussion forums and mailing lists. Become the expert that people want to hear from on the topics you specialize in.

18. Become a member of professional associations. Every market has a group of people who are creating the standards and organizing member professionals. Being part of such groups can net you recognition from across the industry.

19. Create an industry newsletter for an industry niche that doesn’t have one. Or, you could become a contributor to an existing newsletter, but only if there’s a clear way for your network to profit such as via a link or email address in the byline.

20. Go to industry conferences, and make time to meet people and exchange business cards. Also great is to use conferences to finally see people face-to-face after having met online.

21. Attend local (speed) networking events. Have lots of business cards with you and a polished elevator pitch.

22. Organize informal industry events like launch parties or anniversaries. If you choose the right type of event and promote it well, the success will carry over to your personal network and people will want you to do it all again so that they can bring along other contacts who missed out.

23. Bring friends along. You can network in parallel and compare notes, opening doors for each other.

24. Join a job search support club. Also called job clubs or job search clubs or groups. Network with like-minded people.

25. Volunteer. Meeting new people is one of the best reasons why job seekers should volunteer. If there aren’t many opportunities locally through e.g. religious institutions, find them online using a site like Idealist.org.

26. Join a gym. A great place to network with people from across different industries and positions, there are also many other reasons to be exercising regularly.

27. Get a career and/or job search coach. Among the many benefits, the coach will be able to guide you to other ways to grow your network.

28. Find a mentor or mentoring community. You want people who have achieved your goals and can help you achieve similar success. Take your mentor out for lunch and pick their brain.

29. Do information interviews. This is a great way to get your foot in the door, and you’d be surprised how often in can lead to a job, even in a different department or company.

30. Email friends and family and ask them to put you in contact with anyone that can help your job search.

31. Talk to people you see regularly. Neighbors, parents at your kids’ school, taxi drivers. Cast your net as wide as possible.

32. Offer a cash bounty when you email your personal contacts. They’ll be willing to help you for free, but encourage them to forward your email to their own contacts for whom the cash will be a big motivator.

33. Join an alumni jobs network. Placing alumni in jobs is usually a major goal of  university and college alumni networks but also military reserves associations.

34. Nudge people in your network from time to time. A simple “any way I can help?” is a great way to stay in touch and not be forgotten.

35. Keep track of your contacts’ needs. Then, fill those needs whenever you can. The more you give, the more you’ll get. Here are another 9 ways to keep value in your network relationships (lower half of the article).

36. Always follow-up. Whether to confirm a referral or send over a link to an article you discussed, find a good reason to follow up with new contacts before they forget about you, which is usually within 24-48 hours.

37. Use thank you notes. Always take the time necessary to appreciate the people in your network. Just because people are happy to help doesn’t mean you should take their help for granted. Snail mail will make your note stand out even more.

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Conclusion

Like a tree, a network requires caring and time to branch out to its full potential. The more you invest in your network, the more you’ll get out of it. Even if you can only afford a few minutes per day, start growing your network as soon as you can and continue nurturing it until you need its fruits.

This article was written for Job Action Day 2008. This year’s goal is to “empower workers and job-seekers to take proactive steps to shore up their job and career outlook.”

If you liked this article, you’ll enjoy 8 Creative Ways to Use Social Media for Your Job Search.

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