Switching gears…

This is my last official blog entry for this blog. I am still planning to write regular posts and in fact am hoping to write more frequently. My challenge has been that I have been trying to feed two blogs simultaneously and the truth is that I am just not that good or prolific a writer.

So, from now on I will be posting all my blogs to my new consolidated blog titled “Musings of a Business Junkie”, which you can find here. My new blog will still be covering off career management ideas, just now as part of a broader theme about “all things business”. I hope you enjoy the new blog — please don’t hesitate to send lots of comments. Happy reading!

 

 

Repost: “What to do after you’ve made a mistake”

Another posting from a blog entry on “Tech Republic” that I thought would be useful, re-posted in its’ entirety. Not really much to add to this — I would suggest dwelling on the thought at the end of post: “When someone says they don’t make mistakes, it makes me wonder if they have taken enough risks.”

 

Repost: “11 Career Tips for 2011”

This post is a re-print from the newsletter by Tech Republic (if you want to see the original you can find it here). I found the tips to be excellent advice for anyone at any point in their career — the earlier you are in your career and you embrace these ideas, the more they will pay off for you in the long term. Here is the full post…

 

The evolution of entrepreneurship

Came across a great article in one of the Silicon Valley technology newsletters I subscribe to — guest blogger Steve Blank lays out his somewhat contrarian viewpoint that we (the US specifically, but my read is that it is equally applicable to the world’s free-market, open economies) may be just entering the “golden age of entrepreneurship and

 

The trouble with our “educational” institutions

I wrote this blog entry on my “Business Detox” blog as it relates to the larger themes I am exploring there about reforming business (and society) to better meet our societal expectations of the 21st century.  The specific theme of this blog entry is looking at the structural problems of our whole approach to formalized education

 

The world of the Recruiter

Here is a great article I just stumbled across today — it is titled “10 Things Recruiters Won’t Tell You” and it certainly rings true to me. So if you are currently in a job search and you’ve shopped your CV around to a bunch of industry “head hunters” in the hopes that they’ll be pushing your case, you definitely want to read this to get a bit of a reality

 

What motivates us?

Just finished reading a great book with the byline “The surprising truth about what motivates us”… the author is Dan Pink and the book is titled “Drive”. It is a really good read (like all Dan Pink books — I’m definitely a fan) and continues with Pink’s usual theme of exploring — from some perspective or other  —  the future of work.

 

Repost: 10 common career myths (1-3)

I came across this article in one of the many newsletters I receive in my in-box; this one struck me as a well constructed set of “myths” that many of us have bought into over the years. This blog post is from “Tech Republic” which is an IT centric newsletter, so the blog itself is IT-centric and also US-specific. The original blog entry is here and is well worth skimming through.

 

Do you know what you are worth?

If you are like the majority of working people out there, you willingly exchange a significant portion of your labour and talents for the ongoing promise of some kind of stability, predictability, and financial remuneration. You know this as your employment contract. Do you ever wonder how much you are worth? Maybe you think that you should be paid more for your efforts?

 

Career change — lessons from business transformation strategies

I came across an article today in Strategy+Business about managing business change, and it struck me that it was very applicable to how we coach our clients to manage/drive their career transformation — essentially just replacing the words “business” or “company” with “people” drives the key points home of effective career transformation.

 

6 necessary conditions for effective job search

I meet lots of people every week who tell me about how bored or stressed they are in their jobs, or how frustrated they are by not having meaningful employment, or how confused they are about what they should do in terms of a “career transition” decision looming on the horizon.  And most of them ask some variation on the same basic question: “What are MY chances of being successful in finding something that is a really good “fit” for me?”

 

Definition of insanity: the standard job search

Albert Einstein defined “insanity” as doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results. Unfortunately, this sounds a lot like a conventional job search strategy that

 

Who is controlling your career?

Our working motto is: “Helping you to take control of your career.” It’s got a nice buzz to it, and certainly it’s true that most people want to feel that they are in control of their own career. It does beg the larger question, however — how much control you really have over your own career…?

 

What CCI means to me…

People will  tell you that for a business to be meaningful, it must connect up with something that is important to the customer… and so of course in promoting the business in public, we tend to lead with a customer-centric statement  — more often than not, its expressed as “..this is what we can

 

Resolving the job search “jigsaw puzzle”

Do you like doing jigsaw puzzles? For me, while I find that the early stages can be a bit frustrating, it is always a great pleasure when the picture has started to take shape and every new piece inserted adds a bit more clarity to the puzzle.

Now, imagine the same jigsaw puzzle, but this time there are just the puzzle pieces with no packing box, so there is no guiding picture to work from.

 

Don’t just search under the street light..!

In an earlier post “The Frustrating Lottery…” I compared the traditional job search of focusing on posted jobs to an opaque, poorly designed lottery that offered a very small chance of success for the job seeker.  I suggested that the alternative to squandering your precious time

 

The frustrating lottery we’ve all played…

Imagine the introduction of a new lottery game that promises a “lifetime of cash and security” to those lucky enough to win. You’re intrigued, and so you check out the rules of this game: