The New Mountains to Climb of 2010

Mark Twain once said that “twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do !

And to put a more positive spin on Miley Cyrus’s recent song “The Climb”, there is always going to be a mountain to climb in our lives… new challenges … new treasures to uncover in people and in ourselves.

As we begin the adventurous expedition of the year 2010, maybe it is time to throw off the bowlines and sojourn away from the safe harbor of your current personal and professional life.

As we approach the New Year- 2010,is it the year to catch the trade winds in your sails? Explore?. Dream? Discover? Do you dare activate and actualize your passion by climbing the new mountains in your life and share the experience with others?

Are you ready to climb those new and challenging mountains in 2010?

The knowledge economy ... is it really our future?

Jeff Brownlee, spokesperson for the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters , has commented that the future of manufacturing isn’t about mass production but customization. He emphasizes that businesses need to find their niche, then do it well and offer value add.

Instead of making one million mass produced items of questionable quality, you make 1000 products that are customized to your specifically targeted niche based on your research.

They say that the 21st century is all about the knowledge economy but Brownlee tends to think otherwise… “ At the end of the day, innovation and creativity are what sets us apart from other countries.”

Daniel Pink author of “ Free agent nation” and “A whole new mind: why right-brainers will rule the future” would most likely agree wholeheartedly with him.

What is Your Change Quotient? Resources

For more resources on 360 degrees Assessment and Self-Awareness:

1. Paul Copcutt—A personal branding expert: www.paulcopcutt.com .
2. Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton (2001)


I particularly recommend the book "Now, Discover Your Strengths" , because it provides an on-line code for the Strengthfinder- an assessment of your strengths/ potential talents.

You can also go to www.authentichappiness.com for a complimentary self-assessment.
3. Go Put Your Strengths to Work by Marcus Buckingham (2007)
4. One of the first books on this kind of feedback: 360 Degree Feedback: The Powerful New Model for Employee Assessment & Performance Improvement Mark R. Edwards and Ann J. Ewen. ( 1996)

What is Your Change Quotient?

Are you a driving force for Change? What is your tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty in your personal and professional life? If it is low, then it is time to work on increasing and developing your change quotient.

Can you cultivate a passion for the needed change? Can you make that tremendous effort to realize and actualize that Change? Is a passion for Change an subversive idea? Yes, indeed, you can ignite that fire within to make the changes you feel so strongly about.

Our current economic downturn means upheaval and revisions in the roles and responsibilities for companies/organizations. A significant impediment to Change is that you often hear and perceive only what you want to hear. Your auditory view of things is filtered and processed based on your own values, beliefs, prejudices, and personal history.

Behaviours that hinder embracing ambiguity and uncertainty act as blocking agents that can be touchy areas to deal with. The first step in this process of self-development for Change is creating and nurturing self-awareness. Your 360 degrees Assessment from your manager, boss, mentor or career coach can specifically target some of these behaviours.

Eccentricity and the 21st Century

Eccentricity is the key driver for the 21st century. What does being eccentric mean in this case? It represents standing out in a positive, professional manner from the competition- but don’t be ostentatious. Be different but be very good at what you do.

Innovation and creativity will set you apart from the competition and put you ahead in your career achievement milestones.

Break out of the mold of mediocrity --- Part 2

Referring back to Dr. Wayne Dyer classic book “ Pulling Your Own Strings, he comments that “If you want to achieve your own greatness, to climb your own mountains, you’ll have to use yourself as your first and last consultant.” ( p. 94)

To this end, in cultivating your Serendipity Quotient, you must work on your mind, body and spirit awareness in displaying creative aliveness while undergoing the greatest of adversity.

Victor Frankl in his book “Man’s Search for Meaning” also attests to this in creating and finding the purpose and meaning of your life through the most tragic of circumstances.

Another book that reflects this theme is “One Day in the Life”of Ivan Denisovich” by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. In this book, the author focuses on life in a forced- labour prison in Siberia.

These two books, in particular, tell the life- changing story of using the mind to be creatively alive in moment-to-moment contexts.

These authors, like Dr. Dyer, emphasize the significance of “applying your sense of self-worth” to the present moment and refusing to let your own attitudes and self-beliefs defeat you as being the basic ingredient to the survival of the characters in these books.

Some quotations by Dr. Dyer summarize the essence of this theme:

“ You are the product of what you choose for yourself in every life situation” ( p. 234)


“ You do have the capacity to make healthy choices for yourself by changing your attitude to one of creative aliveness”. ( p.234).



And, this one by me- “You truly are the power of your mind!”

Break out of the mold of mediocrity

Break out of the mold of mediocrity and develop your peripheral vision for job searching and career planning.

One way to do this is by transforming your attitude into action.
There is an old adage that says” Your attitude determines your altitude”.

Become a non-conformist by not using the traditional ways of getting a job. Mass emailing of your resume to companies on Workopolis.ca and Monster.ca is the pathway pursued by most people; and therefore you end up behaving like “ all the other job seekers”.

Prove yourself resourceful by abandoning the so-called“ the right way” approach to job hunting by substituting creative individualized behaviour that brings results!

Don’t pigeon hole yourself with rules.. Take off those tunnel vision glasses you are wearing and throw away “ the only right way” manual of rules!

Be proactive by :
1. Getting rid of your stereotypical thinking and list some alternatives
2. Accessing the risk factors
3. Picking the best bet of these and doing it.

Don’t focus on the words “ what if”, ‘maybe” or “ I’m not sure” .

If your attitude is that you believe you cannot do it, then you become paralyzed by this self-limiting belief; and this belief will be transformed into a sad reality.

Learn to become your own marketing expert. Success in your job searching and career planning is not spotting the latest trends, but is starting them!

You can package an idea and sell it to anyone by believing in yourself and if you can demonstrate that it will work by designing a logical and easy- to- implement plan of action.

Dr. Wayne Dyer refers to this theme in his book “Pulling Your Own Strings” as the creatively alive approach to overcoming adversity. I like to refer to it as cultivating your “Serendipity Quotient” by using adverse circumstances to nurture out-of-the-box thinking.

Dr. Dyer comments ‘Don’t say to yourself that imaginative approaches may be fine for others, but they could never work for you”.

In your unique value proposition, you are succeeding by doing it “ your way” with your unique talents and competencies that can specifically benefit the company/ organization. This is all in part of cultivating your Serendipity Quotient.

Put some effort into having fun by seeing how effective you can truly be!

Breaking Out of Your Comfort Parameters

Yes, we all are tempted to go back to that which we know to be so comfortable .

However, if we are not changing, then we are not growing.

You cannot move forward in your life to achieving your life and career goals if you are constantly looking back in the rearview mirror at your life.

Strive for your goals, but also be open to the possibilities of opportunities you have never thought of.

Work on breaking out of your comfort parameters by developing your peripheral vision and expand your world!

Remember too that the only rut you cannot get out of is the one you have created with your mind.

Other more complex search applications

If you want to try something more challenging in your research, you can check out some of these below.


There are software applications that automatically use multiple
specialized search engines, query them simultaneously, then you can
aggregate the results.

DEVONagent for Mac:
approx. $50

Copernic for Windows:
free
approx. $30
approx. $80

Depending on your platform, either of these is well worth the
price.

More Specialized Search Engines

In job searching and career planning, you must often think "outside the box". These search engines and sites below can help you do this.


www.theinvisibleweb.com features info. that is usually hidden from general search engines. This site, however, is quite complex in the choices it offers you so it will take some time on your part to see which feature best suits you.

Another personal favorite is www.copernic.com . There are various levels for this one… a free version and others you have to pay for. It is great for serious research.

Wolfram Alpha – The Internet’s new computational knowlege engine- see article at: http://www.pcworld.ca/news/column/51dde573c0a8000600b4bb658d1a1f4a/pg1.htm
Wolfram Alpha can't answer every question that a search engine can; but on topics it has data for, such as a town's historical temperature reading, it offers deep information.



Also, a good place to look for information about search engines in general
is http://www.searchenginewatch.com . Some parts of the site require a paid
membership, but there's a lot of good info even in the free parts. They
also have a newsletter you can subscribe to for the latest search engine
news.


You can also check out www.freepint.com and www.researchbuzz.com for their great newsletters and their info. rich content.

Topic Specific Search Engines

Topic- specific engines:

A good way to do a highly effective search that is customized to your topic is to try out topic- specific engines , such as the following:

1-Scirus is excellent if you are searching for scientific info.

2-Topix , created by the founders of the Open Directory Project, may be the Internet’s largest news site because it draws upon articles from more than 7,000 media outlets. However, it is mainly American based. For Canadian content, try www.topix.net/world/canada.


My personal favorites

Some of my personal favorites, but they are not heavy weight search engines like the ones previously mentioned, are the following:

www.webferret.com
www.alltheweb.com
www.teoma.com- now www.ask.com
www.inktomi.com- yahoo for small business
www.dogpile.com
www.search.com
www.altavista.com
www.mamma.com

Specialized Search Engines for Research

When doing research for your job search and your career plan, you can use, along with Google and Bing, other different specialized search engines .

Here below are some search engines and applications that can help you do this.



Kartoo -visual meta search engine- presents info. in flowchart form. The results can be personalized to show past searches, if you are willing to let Kartoo track such things.

Vivisimo Inc ( now Clusty)- Enterprise Search, Federated Search and Clustering .Each listing of this engine includes info. on how that site is ranked by mainstream search engines, such as Google, Lycos, MSN, and Looksmart. I like its layout , especially for news, health , blogs, and Wikipedia searches. I find the left-side clusters really helpful in targeting info. specifically to your topic search.

The Librarian's Index to the Internet contains info. you can trust. Its searchable directory only contains websites that have been personally approved by at least two librarians. Each listing is also annotated by one of these persons who felt it was worth including.

Freepint, maintained by librarian Gary Price, offers a portal into the invisible Web- hidden pages that are otherwise not visible on other search engines.

Open Directory Project (ODP) provides a free listing service, unlike some search engines that charge a fee for listings.

Social networking and people search engine service

I'm taking a break from "going green" for awhile and revisiting " social networking" once again.

Great social people search engine service, Spokeo, like Pipl , CVGadget, Wink and PeekYou can help you locate info on others for networking purposes and vital business relationship building … Spokeo now has a premium service, which you have to pay for that provides you with more detailed info.

Such search engines are new people-tracking utilities that can help you build a detailed dossier about yourself online, and about companies/ organizations and people you would like to work for.

Construction and Our Green Economy

Construction workers in “our greening economy” will be able to get jobs retrofitting homes to make them more efficient.

This, along with the $1350,00- $1500.00 rebate from the federal government in tax credits if you spend a specified amount improving your residence, makes construction an even more desirable occupation.

Hail "the Green Movement"

Seeking jobs of the futures in trades and in other occupations? Then, look to those occupations that embrace “the green economy”.

We can now see a strong movement toward creating environmentally sustainable energy sources.

Yes, you can meld a strong economy with a healthy environment- they can coexist quite well with strategic planning and collaboration from all parties and stakeholders.

In the field of trades, the green movement will open up a lot of jobs for electricians, iron and steel workers, construction workers, and sheet metal workers.

The Future is Green

On October 20th, 2008, I attended the Toronto Small Business Forum 2008 at the Delta Chelsea Hotel that featured renowned key note speakers and their presentations, such as Laurie Simmonds’ “ Green Enterprise”- President of Green Living Enterprises, and “Lessons Learned from Building a Green Business by Tom Heintzman- President of Bullfrog Power, stressing the global concern for environmental issues and eco-friendly products.

The emergence of” green marketing”, and “green businesses and enterprise” was indeed a prevalent theme for this year’s Forum. It seems that “ green” is now the primary foundation colour for building any current and future successful career and business venture.

The Future is Now

No one can accurately or consistently predict the future. That said, it is important ,like Richard Worzel- known as “The Futurist “(futurist@futuresearch.com), recommends that you have plan B and even C ready to be implemented, especially when it comes to your career.

For instance, whether we like to acknowledge it or not, the Canadian economy is affected by the American one- more than 70 % of Canadian Trade is with the US and so our economy is very much interconnected .

With respect to career planning, it is best to use scenario planning in order to have Plan B, and C ready to go , if necessary. Use different scenarios based on your research and development, and professional network and memberships to help design your career plan strategies. This is one way of being “ proactively creative” in a very difficult market place..

List all your skills and competencies and see how they can be transferred to different fields. You will quite impressed to know that your skills can fit in with many other professional fields, particularly if you have to change fields due a layoff or a restructuring process.

Personally, to maintain “the future is now” mentality, I try to keep up on the trends -looking for declining sectors and future areas of growth by watching the channel- CP24, reading the online version and e-updates from the Canadian Business magazine ,Business Week, Globe and Mail, and Macleans.

Watching the Business News Network or subscribing to their e-newsletter/updates can also keep you in the “know”. You can also subscribe to the e-updates/ newsletter for Money Sense, and Profit magazines that can get you up -to -speed with what is happening in the economic world.. Other sites like Statistics Canada and Manpower can give you current information on various sectors and demographics for doing your scenario planning.

Successful Interview Planning

This week, I thought I would return to my thoughts on interviews and tips for preparation.


Successful interview planning is marketing put into practice based on the market research of the companies/ organizations you want to work for , and their needs and wants by doing an in-depth analysis of such needs and wants, and of how to meet those needs to impress them.

The principles of successful interview planning are similar to that of marketing and promotion:

1- Product: - you are the product that is being offered and that you passionately believe in .

2- Pre- planning – you do a needs assessment/ analysis and the due diligence required for the orchestration of the finest details of that interview.

3- Promotion -you promote “You” -the product, through results-oriented social media applications i.e. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, MeetUp, Plaxo, etc.. to get the word out about your skills, and competencies.. You can also post testimonials, and video clips and audio clips on some of these sites to heighten interest in your professional profile. But, do this professionally and tastefully, self-promotion is not about broadcasting, spamming or shouting. Using social media applications is about creating and fostering vital one –to- one relationships that will help attain your career goals.

4- Personal Touch- you develop a personal connection with the interviewers . For example, never forget to include the authentic and professional touch by addressing the needs of the company to create a fit that is right for you and for them.

5- Strategic Implementation- you follow through on a well structured plan- including all parties involved- for different scenario planning( have numerous back-up plans) to cover the Murphy’s Law aspect. Do an assessment with a SWOT analysis ( strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats for yourself and for the company to address specifically related questions that may be asked at the interview) to develop these scenarios for the interviews.

6- Perseverance in Follow up- you follow up after the interview with the prospective employer using a phone conversation, and personal thank you letter and/or email. As part of the follow- up stage, have a debriefing process/ meeting with yourself by creating an interview journal . In this interview journal, you also do a SWOT (strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats) as part of this post -planning portion to improve the quality of your next interview and its success.

You basically have to consider the interview as a project and apply project management techniques with a strong commitment to maintaining a genuine and professional connection.

Social media applications and your career

I am taking a break from strategies for interviews by visiting a subject that is very "hot" today-- the use of social media applications in career management.

Recently, I got a reality check re: blogs, social networking sites, and social bookmarking sites ( e..g. LinkedIn, Facebook, Meetup, Twitter, Plaxo, Digg, Delicious, etc.) and their ability to significantly impact our career development and our professional lives.

If you fail to connect and interact with these sites, you are missing the opportunity to leverage their tremendous power to promote yourself ,your key skills/ competencies, and talents to the targeted companies in your job search/career plan. By making full use of these sites, you are truly optimizing your competitive advantage, because they are the primary results-oriented, self- marketing tools of the 21st century for all “careerpreneurs”, particularly for those who wish to be proactive about implementing a well-designed strategic career plan.

More on Interviews.. the First Critical Minutes

e) Breath- I recommend my clients to always carry and use breath mints or breath spray. Don’t use gum to freshen your breath as you can forget you have it in your mouth.
f) Grooming- try to be impeccably turned out at all times
g) Tone of voice- watch that your voice is even tone- not harsh or anxious.
h) Posture- don’t hunch over or slouch. Don’t cross your legs. Your posture gives away your attitude and confidence level.
i) Confidence- remember that your stance is portrays how you feel about yourself.
j) Content- try to be articulate and not ramble on. Say what you have to in a concise manner.
k) Listening.- shut off your own noisy thoughts in your mind and focus on their words and issues of concern- not yours.

More on Interviews.. the First Critical Minutes

From a personal perspective, I now these make the following recommendations :

a) Clothing-wear the high -end clothing from your wardrobe. Prior to the interview, try the outfit on first and wear it front of a full-length mirror… Practice sitting down and shaking hands as well in front of this mirror to see how your clothing presents itself. Women, please bring, if you are wearing nylons, an extra pair of panty hose/ nylons in case of accidents. Also, men and women, bring a stain away pen for emergencies to remove stains and spills on your clothing.

b) Smile, but not excessively during your interview. Please check a pocket mirror or car mirror to see that nothing is between your teeth , and that there are not any pen marks, dust particles, etc.. are on your face.

c) Eye contact- I suggest you try to not to stare intensely( eyeball- to- eyeball), but focus on the space between the eye brows.

d) Body scents- I coach my clients both men and women not to wear any scented deodorant, cologne or perfume as a lot of people have allergies/ chemical intolerance these days.