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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Tags: blog, blogs, business, business blogs, careers, entrepreneur, Guy Kawasaki, jobs, John Jantsch, Seth Godin, Silicon Valley, tech, TechCrunch

Create An Interview Preparation List - AdvancingWomen.com Careers-Employment.

Here’s a quick way to compare your own job experience and qualifications with those that your prospective employer is looking for in a specific job position. Make an “Interview Preparation List”. When you prepare for a job interview, it’s good to have a quick reference of your past work experience that you can study ahead of time to help prepare you for the specific job you’re interviewing for.

Grab a sheet of paper and make three columns.

Column A will be “Position Requirements”;

Column B will be “Your Qualifications and Experience”; and

Column C will list “Your Stories”. For this exercise, you’ll be using the actual job description from the employer.

So, in Column A (Position Requirements) you’ll take one piece of the job description and write for example: “Ability to work well with others.” Ok. Now you’ll have to think about your own experiences while working well with others. What specific examples do you have that demonstrates this ability?

Great. You’ve thought of something. In this example, we’ll write under Column B (Your Qualifications and Experience) “Worked on the XYZ project team.”

Now you need to break it down even further and list a specific action-oriented example of “working well with others” on the XYZ project team.

In Column C (Your Stories) you write something like this: “Coordinated winning marketing campaign which resulted in a successful launch of new product.” See how successful that makes you look?

(And don’t forget personal branding: be sure to include those signature elements of your style, your talents and achievements which differentiate you from the crowd and make you stand out.)

Keep going until you’ve listed something for every part of the job description. Now, you’re ready for your close-up.

Author, Donna Monday of Get A Job Interview- Quick Tips

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Tags: business, employment, interview, Job description, job interview, job search, jobs, Work experience

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 coroporations 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

Tags: Aggregator, careers, diversity job site, employment, indeed.com, job seeking, jobs, niche job sites, Search engine

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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Tags: careers, employment, entrepreneur, jobs, start up business, transition to business

It is true, unfortunately, that the United States needs its roads and bridges rebuilt before any more disasters befall families just trying to get from one side of a river to another.  But it is equally true that infants and toddlers need care and nurturing; children’s hearts and minds need to be developed in schools so they can become responsible and innovative adults who can create and contribute to a green economy, while, at the same time, having the good sense to maintain their roads and bridges.

In the NYTimes.com piece, Where Are the New Jobs for Women? , Linda R. Hirshman examines the Obama administration’s proposed stimulus package and women’s place in it:

“BARACK OBAMA has announced a plan to stimulate the economy by creating 2.5 million jobs over the next two years…but there are almost no women on this road to recovery.

The bulk of the stimulus program will provide jobs for men, because building projects generate jobs in construction, where women make up only 9 percent of the work force.

It turns out that green jobs are almost entirely male as well, especially in the alternative energy area…Fortunately, jobs for women can be created by concentrating on professions that build the most important infrastructure — human capital. In 2007, women were 83 percent of social workers, 94 percent of child care workers, 74 percent of education, training and library workers (including 98 percent of preschool and kindergarten teachers and 92 percent of teachers’ assistants).

Obama’s Campaign Promised Jobs Which Include Women

Women are teachers, and the campaign promised to provide support for families with children up to the age of 5, increase Head Start financing and quadruple the money spent on Early Head Start to include a quarter-million infants and toddlers. Special education, including arts education, is heavily female as well. Mr. Obama promised to increase financing for arts education and for the National Endowment for the Arts, which supports many school programs.

.. Mr. Obama also promised that the first part of his plan to combat urban poverty would be to replicate a nonprofit organization in New York called the Harlem Children’s Zone in 20 cities across the country. The group, which works to improve the quality of life for children and families in the Harlem neighborhood, employs several hundred people in full- and part-time jobs. By making good on this promise, Mr. Obama could create thousands of jobs for women in social work, teaching and child care.

Women represent almost half the work force — not exactly a marginal special interest group. By adding a program for jobs in libraries, schools and children’s programs, the new administration can create jobs for them, too.”

It is unfortunate that this blind spot about women is so ancient and systemic that many, and certainly those in Obama’s job stimulus planning team, seem to be unaware of it. Ive mentioned before that during the Clinton administration, I went to a conference at the White House where the focus was about creating work for women in the Americas.  The consensus was that if you want to help a country, help the women in it. The result of that thinking was that, through training and micro-loans, a woman who was ebabled to buy an industrial strength sewing machine, grew her tiny business into a small factory that employed most of a village. That is only one of countless stories of what women in remote Latin American villages achieved with some intelligent intervention and support.

Women, in fact, have the drive and ability to change the entire social and economic ecosystem around them, if given some support.  Let us hope that Obama’s team recognizes their oversight and has the political courage to reconfigure their job stimulus proposal accordingly.

Linda R. Hirshman, author of the NY Times article is also author of “Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World.”

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Tags: economy, employment, jobs, stimulus package

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

Tags: career path, careers, communication, competitive advantage, Education and Training, employment, jobs, Public speaking

Now, more than ever, in these bleak economic times, with many legacy companies either drastically downsizing or dropping like flies, it’s a good idea to have your resume up to date. And, as we’ve said many times, the whole idea is for you to stand out from the crowd, which is getting tougher with so many jobless out there, forcefully expatriated from corporate America.

Dan Schawbel writes a blog on personal branding….and we’re all about personal branding in your career…and he shares some thoughts on the best way to put your own unique brand on your resume: Personal Branding Toolkit - Part 3: Resumes « Personal Branding Blog

“1) Design your brand. Instead of using a standard template, use a branded template. A brand you template! If you have Microsoft Word or another word processing program, then you might notice shapes and colors at the top. If you don’t already have a website, blog, business card, etc, then you need to think about what colors you want to use, as well as what type of job you’re applying for. In the picture below, a woman is applying to be a “Cosmetic Nurse Specialist.” At the top of her resume, she has a picture of someone putting cosmetics on a patient. The rest of the resume has shades of pink. The resume comes off as “soft” and “gentle,” with the colors, picture and shapes used. To me this is effective.

Brand yourself with a resume

2) Don’t use your picture. I agree with my friend Chris Russell that pictures can’t be on resumes (even though I’d love to put mine on it). A personal photo is a distraction. Recruiters give you about 30 seconds to impress them with your experience and you don’t want 10 of those seconds to be eyes on your picture do you! Don’t come off as someone who is trying to get a job because of your looks. Companies are scared to deal with your picture because of discrimination laws and lawsuits.

3) Links rock. I haven’t seen many resumes with links EVEN from people that have blogs, social network profiles and other websites. It blows my mind! Why not have a link to your site. If the recruiter likes your resume or has further interest in your credentials, a link acts as a supplemental piece of marketing that will help you sell yourself without saying one word.

4) Experience trumps education. Don’t believe for a second that your degree and “deans list” on your resume is going to get you a job. Recruiters are starting to discount GPA for resumes! Listen, a resume is all about showing recruiters that you have had proven success, eliminating risk on the companies part. In life, experience is everything and if you don’t have it, you will leave to lean towards your education. Make a point to put your work experience in the top part of your resume because that’s what employers really care about.

5) Show some class. The quality of paper you use shows how serious you are about the position and can be used as a differentiator. Purchase quality paper and print your resume using it because more applicants use standard printer paper.

6) Create the multimedia you. How much information can you really get from a stupid resume? Not much. I’ve written about video resumes a lot and believe in them, as long as you are passionate, energetic and have some showmanship. If you plan on videoing yourself sleeping or eating chocolate than you might want to reconsider.

7) Get Linked-In. This is another topic I’ve touched on without a dedicated post. LinkedIn is a resume, cover letter and reference list all in one, which makes it exceptional. It is a virtual resume, with the same fields as a typical resume. It is a cover letter because you have space to explain where you’re at in your career, what you want to be and summarize your qualifications. It is a reference list because it’s searchable by recruiters and you can endorse others (managers, peers, etc).

8 ) Grow it. A resume is useless if it shows the brand you from 1938. You need to constantly update it as you grow, finish projects, switch organizations, etc. Always keep it up-to-date so it represents the “present brand you.” Feel free to grow your resume online as well, by creating a webpage dedicated to it or blending it onto a blog. I’ve seen people add social media elements(Facebook, Digg, Flickr, etc) to resumes such as Christopher Penn and Bryan Person, who have sharing features. Think about it this way; if someone finds your resume and has heard of an opening at a different company, they might share it using a social media tool!

9) Summarize it. If I were recruiting someone for a position I wouldn’t care about a resume. I’d ask for your blog, but for everyone else, I think a summary of your credentials is very very important. At the top of your resume, I’d like to see 3-4 sentences that showcases all your top achievements and your career objectives.

10) Customization. Aside from customizing your resume to fit your brand, you need to tailor it to the position your gunning for. The resume below is for a Oracle Certified Professional. Think about it, if you are branded as this type of expert, won’t it be clear to recruiters immediately once they see this resume? Aside from this, you should use keywords and experiences that match the position you are trying to fill.”

Resume tailoring 101

Your personal branding toolkit

1) Business cards
2) Portfolios
3) Resumes
4) Cover letters

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What Is Your Greatest Weakness? Find A Career -  AdvancingWomen.com

The fastest way to make a good interview go bad is to avoid questions posed by the hiring manager. The one question candidates love to avoid is, “What is your greatest weakness?” Most candidates are quick to respond with superficial answers such as “I’m a workaholic” or “I’m a perfectionist.” Not only are those responses boring, but they are also predictable answers interviewers are used to hearing. So much so that an interviewer’s comeback line often is, “That doesn’t sound like a weakness. Now why don’t you tell me about a real weakness?”

Ouch. What an uncomfortable position to be in-when a decision maker challenges you during an interview. Just like you, the interviewer wants the process to go as seamlessly as possible, and they quickly become resentful when they are placed in a confrontational position.

When answering questions surrounding your greatest weakness, my advice is to tell the truth-to a point. Though I don’t advocate providing a play-by-play of every area that may need improvement, it isn’t a good idea not to cop to a weakness either. A happy medium does exist, and it lies in focusing your response on an area that doesn’t have a major impact on your ability to do the job. This should be an area that you are on your way to improving. Note, not an area you’ve already improved, but one that is well on its way.

Interviewers recognize that jobseekers aren’t forthcoming when answering the “greatest weakness” question. As a result, there is a new trend in hiring circles of interviewers cleverly disguising the question and using a variation of the theme. In doing so, interviewers are successfully stumping candidates, and are receiving responses that uncover the not-so-pleasant side of candidates.

Cleverly Designed “Greatest Weakness” Questions

* We all have aspects of our job we prefer not to do. What aspect of your day-to-day responsibilities do you dislike?

In hopes of making you feel comfortable, interviewers may ask questions that start with “we.” The psychology behind this is to make you feel as though you are with a friend, which can cause you to let your guard down.

* Think back to your last review. What suggestions did your supervisor have for improvement?

The chances are extremely high that your supervisor offered suggestions for improvement. Interviewers are aware of this and anticipate that you will disclose the details of your most recent evaluation.

* Describe a project you worked on that didn’t turn out as well as you expected.

Interviewers find that job seekers reveal more when they are asked to tell a story. The assumption is made that the more you talk, the more likely you’ll disclose your weaknesses.

* In what area of your work do you think you can be more effective?

This question is very similar to “greatest weakness” question. However, interviewers believe the way the question is phrased will make you feel less threatened, and therefore more likely to answer freely.

Bottom line: whether or not you want to divulge sensitive information during an interview, an interviewer is going to try his or her darnedest to dig for skeletons in your closet. Interviewers want to uncover any reasons why they shouldn’t hire you, and they hope those reasons will come straight from you. So be prepared.

About The Author: career expert, Linda Matias is President of CareerStrides and the National Resume Writers’ Association. Visit her website at http://www.careerstrides.com or email her at linda@careerstrides.com.

Tags: business, career, employment, interview, jobs

Like the saying goes, there’s good news and there’s bad news. Let’s start with the bad news and get it behind us.

We are all bombarded every day with the ever broadening ripple effects of an economy headed South.  Legacy companies like the big three automakers are battered, looking for bail outs.  Others, like Circuit City and Linens ‘n Things are dropping like flies.

A quick over view tells us that about half the United States is in recession and the rest is at risk, with the notable exception of Alaska, which has all that oil.

Here’s the good news.

There are still some healthy sectors out there and one of them is in computer systems design/IT.

This sector provides computer system design services, custom computer programming services and other related computer services such as software installation and IT security. So, although many industries are vulnerable to recession, and there is a very real danger of being laid off, if you’re not already in a computer related industry, you may want to start planning now to acquire the skills that will let you ride out the recession.  Skills would include computer system design services, custom computer programming services software installation and IT security.  The median salary for these higher level skills is $85,000 to $95,000. There are also many jobs available in web design and website creation. And if it takes you awhile to get up to speed on these higher paying jobs, remember that, with the proliferation of websites, support services for them have proliferated as well.  If you are at all computer and Internet savvy you can probably find a job as VA, virtual assistant to an online business, which could bring in some $25,000 to $40,000 per year . For instance, can you do at least some of the following:

If you’re not sure how to get started, Multiple Streams Team is currently hiring virtual assistants to help with their clients.( I have no relationship with Multiple Streams Team, but they do have some good references). At the bottom of this page they are also giving away a free eBook about being a Virtual Assistant, so that might help you make an informed decision if you thinking of moving your career in that direction.

Despite recent job losses in many sectors, the computer/Internet/IT remains one of the 25 fastest growing industries. Our need for customized applications and support only further feeds the demand and growth. Companies over the next decade will continue to install sophisticated computer networks, set up internet and intranet sites and engage in e-commerce. This should all lead to the continued employment expansion as indicated, even in a downturn economy.

Source:
Moody’s Economy: http://www.economy.com/dismal/recession.asp
Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2008-09 Edition
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) -
http://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag61.htm

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• Tech may not shed so many jobs this time

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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.

Tags: business, careers, employment, jobs, rules for success