When Is The Right Time To Network

When Is The Right Time To Network A few weeks ago I asked my daughter to take the car she drives all over town to get the tires rotated.  This is a simple procedure, and helpful to lengthen the life of tires and Im now bought into the idea that we need to do this.  Im also bought into the idea that she should do it, and learn about vehicle maintenance by doing it. So, she comes back to me and says that the tire tech said the two front tires needed to be changed, and that they they were running thin I was kind of ticked (not at her) because these are less than a year old.  Even though they have a warranty that should cover them for years, Im sure the tire people would say well, sorry, but the alignment is off, and you havent rotated them lately so its really all on you. I was not excited about spending a couple hundred dollars to get new tires. I was not excited about the time it would take to do this (I didnt trust the salespeople with my daughter, who has never bought tires before). And frankly, I just wasnt finding the time to get this task done.  The car doesnt spend much time in the garage, and I have been very busy lately. Last week my wife called me from school, where she was mentoring a class, and my daughter had come for a class she said that the front tire was leaking air pretty bad.  I knew the time had finally come, and I had to table what I was doing and get the front tires replaced. The thing is, this was admittedly stupid. I should have taken care of this before my daughter drives on the highway every evening to go to stuff, and if she had problems on the highway, it would have likely been a blow-out.  My mechanic told me that too many accidents are a result of bald tires that blow-out.  And the anguish and cost could be much worse than $200. Long story short, I left work, took care of the tires while they were in school, and were all good. Driving home I was thinking about how I didnt make the time to fix the tires there really was just not a good time to do it for me.  Just like when we have a job, and we put of career management stuff because we are too busy working, or resting from our work.  We neglect it.  The timing just doesnt seem good enough. And then, if you are like me, you are told that there is no more job, and all you have is time.  And then you wish that you would have addressed it earlier but you were too busy. Let me invite you to rethink what job security is.  It might have been a degree and a work ethic back in the 1990s, but today it is the strength of your network (which is not how big your LinkedIn network is), and what people understand about you. You can work on that, right now.  Today.  And tomorrow.  And the next day.  A little bit every day, whether you are in transition or not. We were lucky to have avoided a blow-out on the highway.  Work on your network and brand, and you might avoid a blow-out in your career. When Is The Right Time To Network A few weeks ago I asked my daughter to take the car she drives all over town to get the tires rotated.  This is a simple procedure, and helpful to lengthen the life of tires and Im now bought into the idea that we need to do this.  Im also bought into the idea that she should do it, and learn about vehicle maintenance by doing it. So, she comes back to me and says that the tire tech said the two front tires needed to be changed, and that they they were running thin I was kind of ticked (not at her) because these are less than a year old.  Even though they have a warranty that should cover them for years, Im sure the tire people would say well, sorry, but the alignment is off, and you havent rotated them lately so its really all on you. I was not excited about spending a couple hundred dollars to get new tires. I was not excited about the time it would take to do this (I didnt trust the salespeople with my daughter, who has never bought tires before). And frankly, I just wasnt finding the time to get this task done.  The car doesnt spend much time in the garage, and I have been very busy lately. Last week my wife called me from school, where she was mentoring a class, and my daughter had come for a class she said that the front tire was leaking air pretty bad.  I knew the time had finally come, and I had to table what I was doing and get the front tires replaced. The thing is, this was admittedly stupid. I should have taken care of this before my daughter drives on the highway every evening to go to stuff, and if she had problems on the highway, it would have likely been a blow-out.  My mechanic told me that too many accidents are a result of bald tires that blow-out.  And the anguish and cost could be much worse than $200. Long story short, I left work, took care of the tires while they were in school, and were all good. Driving home I was thinking about how I didnt make the time to fix the tires there really was just not a good time to do it for me.  Just like when we have a job, and we put of career management stuff because we are too busy working, or resting from our work.  We neglect it.  The timing just doesnt seem good enough. And then, if you are like me, you are told that there is no more job, and all you have is time.  And then you wish that you would have addressed it earlier but you were too busy. Let me invite you to rethink what job security is.  It might have been a degree and a work ethic back in the 1990s, but today it is the strength of your network (which is not how big your LinkedIn network is), and what people understand about you. You can work on that, right now.  Today.  And tomorrow.  And the next day.  A little bit every day, whether you are in transition or not. We were lucky to have avoided a blow-out on the highway.  Work on your network and brand, and you might avoid a blow-out in your career.

Why Shrinking Your Resume Can Hurt You - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Why Shrinking Your Resume Can Hurt You - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career Have you ever visited a friend who regaled you with their 50-page wedding album or 30-minute DVD of a European vacation? Perhaps they had you crouch over their computer while linking to Facebook posts and images so they could enthuse over their latest accomplishment? How difficult is it to sit still as they narrate each image, sharing names, relationships and details regarding people and involvements, most of whom you’ve never met or can relate to? Wouldn’t you rather just sit with a cool beverage and share in their excitement about their big day, proud accomplishment or event through the eyes of how it relates to both of you? That is, perhaps, how a hiring decision maker feels when you send them a resume story weighed down more heavily with links to social media (LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Facebook) than it is with meaty, targeted content. Expecting hiring managers and recruiters to navigate your social media tracks and connect your career dots is unfair. Many will deep-six your resume and move on to the next candidate. While your activity on social networking channels can play a monumental role in career management, career momentum and job search strategies, it is important to be careful about how much emphasis you place on it “replacing” your robust and singular career story. While many career experts are suggesting you shrink your five, 10 or 15+ years’ experience down to the size of a mobile phone screen, you would be wise to reconsider. Creating a link-laden resume with sizzling headlines, brand statements and staccato sentences may be working a bit too hard to fulfill a mythical 6-second scan of your resume. It may sound sexy and cutting edge, but the problems that erupt are multifold. 1.  The hiring manager gets frustrated having to link and scroll through your Twitter stream or navigate around your Google+ media. While they may be met with cool content and nuggets that relate to your thought leadership, they are not receiving a direct story as to how you will solve their specific needs. 2. A recruiter wants to know more! While it is the intention of a compelling resume to leave the reader thirsty for more, you don’t want to leave them so parched that they are frustrated. Providing context around stories is where the connection with their needs deepens. Providing context requires using words. Wielded with finesse, words are your hero, not your enemy. 3. You may not have scrubbed your profiles to the extent you thought. Focusing hiring decision makers too heavily on social links can have its downside. Have you engaged on Facebook in a playful conversation around politics? The hiring manager may not be as amused as you and your friends were. As such, leaning too hard on social media to sell your story can backfire. Bottom line: Be present and positively visible across whichever social networking venues make sense to you and your career. But when it comes to creating a powerful resume that markets your value, center your efforts on a focused story rich in detail and context. Do not get caught up in the wrong trends; be savvy, meaningful and rich in communicating your value to your target audience’s needs. Author Bio Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter, MRW  writes for Glassdoor.com.  

Get married first, then focus on career

Get married first, then focus on career Women who want to have kids should make it a high priority in their early twenties to find a partner. This weeks Newsweek cover story, Marriage by the Numbers, says is okay to wait until after 35 to get married. Newsweek is revising the saying that a woman has more chance of getting hit by a truck than getting married after age 35. But the article ignores one of the most pressing issues facing Generation X: Infertility. No generation of women has had more trouble with fertility than this generation who received the terrible advice, Wait. You have time. Focus on your career first. In fact, you have your whole life to get a career. This is not true about having a baby. Even if you are past your early twenties, or not heterosexual, if youre single and want to have kids with a partner, you need to find one now. Take that career drive and direct it toward mating because your career skills will outlast your ovaries. In case you think youre waiting for the right time, there is no evidence to show when in a womans career is best to have kids. At any point, she is thrown off track. At any point when a woman has kids, statistically she will start to earn less money even if she takes no maternity leave whatsoever. There is no evidence to show that its easier to take time out of the workforce at a certain point in a career. People just plain dont know. Phyllis Moen, professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota, told me in an interview, Dont wait until the right time in your career to have a child or it will never come. However there is lots of evidence to show that a womans biological clock takes a nose-dive at age 35. I know, because thats when I started having kids. The geneticist showed me and my husband a graph of Downs Syndrome and we nearly keeled over when we saw the cliff at 35. We had no idea. That Downs Syndrome cliff, though, is a stand-in for everything, because a huge percentage of fertility statistics get bad at 35. There is also lots of evidence to say that having kids at least two years apart is best for the kids. However there is a distinct advantage for first-born kids. They are richer, smarter, and as if thats not enough, year after year 90% of Harvards incoming freshmen are first-born. You can mitigate the impact of birth order on your second child by having three years between kids. If you start when you are thirty-one, you can have two kids, three years apart, before youre thirty-five. But this plan does not take into consideration that about 20% of pregnancies end in a miscarriage. This means you have almost a 50% chance of having to go through three pregnancies to have two kids, which means you should start when youre thirty. If you want to have babies when youre thirty, then you probably want to be married when youre twenty-eight. This is good news because if you marry very young youre more likely to get divorced, but the statistics get much better if you wait until youre twenty-five. For a healthy marriage, experts think people should be married two or three years before they consider having children. A reasonable expectation is to meet someone, date for a couple of years, and get engaged with almost a years time to pull off a wedding. So you need to meet the person at age twenty-four. So this means that it may make sense for men to work full-speed ahead on their career in their early twenties, but women cannot afford that. Women need to make time in their lives to search for a mate in the same systematic, focused way that women have been searching for careers in their early twenties. And dont tell yourself youre waiting until you know yourself better. Getting to know yourself is a lifelong process, and after age twenty-five, waiting to get married wont decrease your chance of divorce. The good news here is that a large body of research shows that you will gain more happiness by being married than by having a good job. Yes, you should not have to choose between a good job and marriage. But this column is not about what is fair or what is just. It is about what is real. You have a biological clock that does not pay attention to issues of social justice. You cannot control your biological clock and you cannot control the workplace. But you can control where you spend your time and energy, and you should look hard for a husband early on. Line up the marriage first, then the career.