Career Opportunities with Douglas E. Welch show

Career Opportunities with Douglas E. Welch

Summary: The High-Tech Career Handbook - A weekly column (and more) on high-tech careers by Douglas E. Welch.

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 Commit to noticing and remembering more of each days progress from the Career Opportunities Podcast | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Commit to noticing and remembering more of each days progress from the Career Opportunities Podcast Listen to this podcast Ask anyone you know and I am sure you will hear the same thing, “What day is it? How did it get to be 2011 already? The year is moving so fast!” It seems a simple truth that the older you get the faster the days, months and years seem to pass. We go to sleep in one month and wake up in another, not really recalling what happened in between. This year, though, I am going to try and pay more attention to the passing of time and the things I accomplish along the way. Call it mindfullness. Call it paying attention. Call it “Getting Things Done.” No matter what you call it, let’s commit to noticing and remembering more of each days progress. Looking at the calendar I see that this is the 14th day and 2nd week of the new year. Both weeks have been very busy for me, but looking back over my calendar (a shared Google Calendar, in my case) I see that I had 11 client calls and 2 user group meetings and 1 night of archery practice with my son. We usually think of calendars as forward-looking devices, but they can be just as useful as a tool to remind us of everything we have accomplished. I even have a service that adds my Twitter messages to my calendar so I can see what I was talking about last week or last month. Read this entire article – Commit to noticing and remembering more of each days progress from the Career Opportunities Podcast One-To-One Career Consulting Now available exclusively to Career Opportunities readers and Listeners. Click for more information and pricing  Build the Career You Deserve with these books * A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs ** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out! 

 Don’t make resolutions, make action items from the Career Opportunities Podcast | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Don’t make resolutions, make action items from the Career Opportunities Podcast Listen to this podcast I am writing on New Year’s Eve here in Los Angeles as celebrations of the New Year have already started in other, distant parts of the globe. We will be attending a party tonight to bring in 2011 ourselves, as will many others. One big topic of discussion at all these celebrations will be New Year’s Resolutions. The beginning of the calendar year is always a good time to reflect on the past year and plan for the next, but I want you to think about this new year in a new way. This New Year, instead of making resolutions, make action items. Instead of trying to make things happen, make them happen. To quote Yoda from the Star Wars movies, “Do, or do not. There is no try!” The trouble with resolutions is they are a waffling way to approach change. There is already an assumed “try” in them and I think this is what allows us to abandon them so easily. There is also a bit too much thought and too little action involved in resolutions. We think and think on what we want to accomplish, but unless we take some direct action towards our goals they will always remain dreams. Read this entire article – Asking a lot of myself…and you, too from the Career Opportunities Podcast  One-To-One Career Consulting Now available exclusively to Career Opportunities readers and Listeners. Click for more information and pricing  Build the Career You Deserve with these books * A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs ** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out! 

 Demand more from yourself and others from the Career Opportunities Podcast [Audio] | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Asking a lot of myself…and you, too from the Career Opportunities Podcast Listen to this podcast After a busy few months, things have slowed down a bit here for the holidays. This has given me more time to reflect on the year and think about what I want to accomplish in 2011. After a bit of this thinking, I find that the watchword for the New Year is going to be “demanding.” It will be a demanding year, but that demand will not be entirely external. The fact is, I am going to be demanding a lot more of myself, too. Even more importantly, I am going to be a bit more demanding of you…at least as much as I can be at a distance. Read this entire article – Asking a lot of myself…and you, too from the Career Opportunities Podcast  One-To-One Career Consulting Now available exclusively to Career Opportunities readers and Listeners. Click for more information and pricing  Build the Career You Deserve with these books * A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs ** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out! 

 Accepting Thanks and Communicating More Clearly from the Career Opportunities Podcast [Audio] | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Accepting Thanks and Communicating More Clearly from the Career Opportunities Podcast Listen to this podcast     The Thanksgiving holiday here in the US always leads to people giving a tremendous outpouring of thanks for everything from years of service or marriage to something as simple as holding the door at the grocery store. While it is always worthwhile to be reminded of those things for which we are thankful, there is another side to the conversation. We need to think more deeply about the act of accepting thanks and how that simple act can also lead us into more effective communication. First, when someone thanks you, what do you do? Do you say “No problem?” It is a very common response, but I don’t think it really communicates a proper reflection of thanks. No problem seems, to me, more of an acknowledgement that something has been said instead of accepting the thanks that were offered. “No problem” is similar to saying “It was nothing.” The fact is, your kindness was more than nothing and accepting thanks shows that you understand the transaction that just occurred. You didn’t have to go out of your way to hold the door, pickup the dropped item or help with something else. You went above and beyond the call of duty and someone appreciated that fact. Take the thanks that were offered and acknowledge that you heard the thanks. Make the communication complete. It leads to a better experience for everyone. Read this entire article – Accepting Thanks and Communicating More Clearly from the Career Opportunities Podcast   One-To-One Career Consulting Now available exclusively to Career Opportunities readers and Listeners. Click for more information and pricing  Build the Career You Deserve with these books   * A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs ** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out! 

 Sometimes you just do the best that you can from the Career Opportunities Podcast | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Sometimes you just do the best that you can from the Career Opportunities Podcast Listen to this podcast Sometimes you just do the best that you can. Most of us want to do more with our life, our work, heck, even our day, but sometimes you just can’t get it done. I am having one of those times right now. Everyone in the family seems busier than usual and it is leading to days where our only thought is sinking in to a comfy chair at night and turning off our minds. My wife has an amazingly busy scheduled teaching at 4 different colleges, my 7th Grade son is deep in his studies as well as flag football, chess and a host of other programs and I am taking on more of my “Stay at home Dad” role again as well as balancing that with my consulting and writing work. We all seem to be running in a hundred different directions at once. Read this entire article – Sometimes you just do the best that you can from the Career Opportunities Podcast  One-To-One Career Consulting Now available exclusively to Career Opportunities readers and Listeners. Click for more information and pricing  Build the Career You Deserve with these books * A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs ** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out! 

 Little Boxes – and they all look just the same from the Career Opportunities Podcast [Audio] | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Little Boxes – and they all look just the same from the Career Opportunities Podcast Listen to this podcast When you are writing your resume or interviewing for a job, do you fall into a common trap? Despite all your unique insight and experience, do you end up looking and sounding like everyone else? Do you we end up looking like the “little boxes on the hillside, little boxes all the same?” For decades we have been taught to sit down, shut up, and act like everyone else. We have been taught to wear the same clothes, watch the same television shows, read the same books and have the same opinions. Even a cursory look at the world today will show you that this is no longer true. The world is an amazingly diverse place. Yet, when we go job hunting, we revert to methods from the 1950’s and beyond. We endeavour to be the “company man” who keeps his head down and makes it through our career relatively unscathed.  Read this entire article – Little Boxes – and they all look just the same from the Career Opportunities Podcast One-To-One Career Consulting Now available exclusively to Career Opportunities readers and Listeners. Click for more information and pricing  Build the Career You Deserve with these books * A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs  ** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out! 

 Pursuing your work as art, but also making money from the Career Opportunities Podcast | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Pursuing your work as art, but also making money from the Career Opportunities Podcast Listen to this podcast     I just finished reading Seth Godin’s latest books, Linchpin, and there is much to recommend there. He clearly describes and analyzes the dramatic shifts in the work world where being “good enough” simply isn’t enough anymore, especially when such work can easily be outsourced to thousands of others all over the world. If you want to have a successful career, you need to treat your work as art, and yourself as an artist, regardless of what you do. While the book rings true to my own experience in almost every way, it also fails to address one of the deepest burning issues I live with every day — how to make money pursuing your art. There are the typical assurances that doing your best work will attract money, which I believe, but it doesn’t address the day-to-day realities of putting cash into our pockets so we can buy groceries and pay the rent. I can’t fault Godin with being unable to answer this question. It is indeed one of those problems that seems to defy solution. That said, reading the book got me thinking (which I believe is the clearest sign of a good book) and I have developed a few ideas of my own.   Read this entire article – Pursuing your work as art, but also making money from the Career Opportunities Podcast   One-To-One Career Consulting Now available exclusively to Career Opportunities readers and Listeners. Click for more information and pricing  Build the Career You Deserve with these books * A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs    ** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out! 

 What are you saying, and thinking, about your work and career? from the Career Opportunities Podcast | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

What are you saying, and thinking, about your work and career? from the Career Opportunities Podcast Listen to this podcast Want to know what people all over the world think about their work and career? Visit http://search.twitter.com and enter work, career, job, or any other phrase you want. Then hit enter and watch the world zeitgeist pour into your browser. Never before have you been able to put your finger on the pulse of the world in such a detailed way. Of course, you can use this same method to divine what you think about your work and career, too. Much like an old-fashioned paper journal (which I still carry around, by the way) your social media stream captures your feelings, your thoughts, your disappointments every time you post a note to your friends or the world. This information can be a goldmine when it comes time to for the “hard thinking” I often mention in columns. Reviewing your social media streams can give you a clear indication of how you are doing in your career and whether you might need to make some major changes. Read this entire article – What are you saying, and thinking, about your work and career? One-To-One Career Consulting Now available exclusively to Career Opportunities readers and Listeners. Click for more information and pricing  Build the Career You Deserve with these books * A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs  ** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out! 

 Social Media, Introverts and Conclusion from Using the Career Compass To Find Your Work and Career [Audio] (1:32) | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Using the Career Compass to Find Your Work and Career with Douglas E. Welch  Listen to this clip   Read the book // Douglas E. Welch (http://douglasewelch.com) presents to the class Career Development – Theories and Techniques at Pepperdine Graduate School of Education & Psychology taught by fellow CareerCamp Co-Chair, Danielle Gruen The two biggest challenges are deciding what you want to do as a career and then building the career you deserve once you decide. I discuss the Career Compass method of discovering your career wants, needs and desires and then using various social media tools to show people “What you do and how well you do it” Transcript:  I know it can seem — just to close — it can seem a little daunting because I walk the line between introverted and extroverted. Depending on the time of day, the day of the week, the day of the month, I go either way and I often get questions from people, “Well, What about the introverts amongst us?” and what I tell them is this, “It doesn’t cut you out. In fact, it can, you can still utilize these tools often if you are still a relatively introverted person because these give you that distance. You can say something in a blog post or in a Facebook that you might not say face-to-face to someone because the conflict is too close to you, but by giving yourself some distance, you can actually bring out some of those ideas. This comes from the fact, my wife and I taught an online course on podcasting and writing and one of the things she noticed immediately form her face-to-face classes to this online class was the amount of discussion that took place. People are verbose online. They will talk and talk and talk and talk. They may be the quietest person sitting in corner of a classroom, but put them online, where they’ve got that distance, conversation flows and so that sort of brought this home to me that you can use these tools even if you are little bit introverted, because you will have some distance between you and that physical person there that might intimidate you. But that’s pretty much all I have today. I hope that you guys a can face these two challenges of both figuring out what you to do and also then using the tools that we have to tell people what you do and how well you do it so that you can bring that opportunity to you. Links for items mentioned in this talk: * Video: Career Compass: Finding Your Career North from CareerCampSCV 2012 * Audio: Career Compass: Finding Your Career North from CareerCampSCV 2012 * Career Compass Kindle Book * Video Archives: Career Prescriptions at Tuesdays with Transitioners * Video: CareerCamp: New Unconference Methods for Helping People Build the Career They Deserve with Douglas E. Welch Help Support Career Opportunities!

 Social Media, Introverts and Conclusion from Using the Career Compass To Find Your Work and Career [Video] (1:32) | File Type: video/mp4 | Duration: Unknown

Using the Career Compass to Find Your Work and Career with Douglas E. Welch    Read the book // Douglas E. Welch (http://douglasewelch.com) presents to the class Career Development – Theories and Techniques at Pepperdine Graduate School of Education & Psychology taught by fellow CareerCamp Co-Chair, Danielle Gruen The two biggest challenges are deciding what you want to do as a career and then building the career you deserve once you decide. I discuss the Career Compass method of discovering your career wants, needs and desires and then using various social media tools to show people “What you do and how well you do it” Transcript:  I know it can seem — just to close — it can seem a little daunting because I walk the line between introverted and extroverted. Depending on the time of day, the day of the week, the day of the month, I go either way and I often get questions from people, “Well, What about the introverts amongst us?” and what I tell them is this, “It doesn’t cut you out. In fact, it can, you can still utilize these tools often if you are still a relatively introverted person because these give you that distance. You can say something in a blog post or in a Facebook that you might not say face-to-face to someone because the conflict is too close to you, but by giving yourself some distance, you can actually bring out some of those ideas. This comes from the fact, my wife and I taught an online course on podcasting and writing and one of the things she noticed immediately form her face-to-face classes to this online class was the amount of discussion that took place. People are verbose online. They will talk and talk and talk and talk. They may be the quietest person sitting in corner of a classroom, but put them online, where they’ve got that distance, conversation flows and so that sort of brought this home to me that you can use these tools even if you are little bit introverted, because you will have some distance between you and that physical person there that might intimidate you. But that’s pretty much all I have today. I hope that you guys a can face these two challenges of both figuring out what you to do and also then using the tools that we have to tell people what you do and how well you do it so that you can bring that opportunity to you. Links for items mentioned in this talk: * Video: Career Compass: Finding Your Career North from CareerCampSCV 2012 * Audio: Career Compass: Finding Your Career North from CareerCampSCV 2012 * Career Compass Kindle Book * Video Archives: Career Prescriptions at Tuesdays with Transitioners * Video: CareerCamp: New Unconference Methods for Helping People Build the Career They Deserve with Douglas E. Welch Help Support Career Opportunities! * Buy Douglas’photography products available from http://DouglasEWelch.com/buy

 Don’t let your ethics be a casualty of a bad economy from the Career Opportunities Podcast | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Don’t let your ethics be a casualty of a bad economy from the Career Opportunities Podcast Listen to this podcast   A lousy economy can be tough on everyone. We all are looking for ways to get by until things improve. Unfortunately, one of the first items to suffer is often our own, personal ethics, No one will see if we take something that isn’t ours. No one will notice that kickback on a sale. No one will notice when I lie about my products. No one will notice that my farmer’s market produce wasn’t grown by me, but purchased at a wholesaler. Oh, and by the way, it isn’t organic or even pesticide free. It is easy to cut corners when life is tough, but, in most cases, we risk damaging our careers and our lives beyond repair. Laws don’t change when the economy is slow. Slow times don’t bring any special dispensations. Your local prosecutor isn’t going to look the other way just because you are unemployed. If you start to slack on your ethics, you could end up turning a bad situation into something much, much worse. You might be struggling, but I can guarantee you that a prison sentence, probation or house arrest is worse than any economic downturn you might be experiencing. Read this entire article – Don’t let your ethics be a casualty of a bad economy One-To-One Career Consulting Now available exclusively to Career Opportunities readers and Listeners. Click for more information and pricing  Build the Career You Deserve with these books * A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs    ** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out! 

 Don’t Be Afraid. Just Do It! from Using the Career Compass To Find Your Work and Career [Audio] (1:03) | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Using the Career Compass to Find Your Work and Career with Douglas E. Welch  Listen to this clip   Read the book // Douglas E. Welch (http://douglasewelch.com) presents to the class Career Development – Theories and Techniques at Pepperdine Graduate School of Education & Psychology taught by fellow CareerCamp Co-Chair, Danielle Gruen The two biggest challenges are deciding what you want to do as a career and then building the career you deserve once you decide. I discuss the Career Compass method of discovering your career wants, needs and desires and then using various social media tools to show people “What you do and how well you do it” Transcript: Yes. it can be scary. I do want to address that. It can be frightening. It can be a little off-putting. “What do I have to write? How do I…? Oh, I’m not that good of a writer.” You know what? You get better. I started off writing the column when I had never written anything but college papers and everything I had ran through my wife who’s an English teacher and it would come back all redlined at the time and every column I got a little bit better and those chronic problems that she corrected every single column, every single week, started to disappear. My commas got better. My possessive’s got better. Anybody can get there and I will say even if the quality of what you’re sharing — how it’s presented — how it’s shot on video — how it’s written — is a little bit less than perfect — and we’ll all think our stuff is less than perfect — it’s just human nature — if it’s good information, people will forgive a lot. People will forgive crappy video if the message inside that video is good and important to them. Links for items mentioned in this talk: * Video: Career Compass: Finding Your Career North from CareerCampSCV 2012 * Audio: Career Compass: Finding Your Career North from CareerCampSCV 2012 * Career Compass Kindle Book * Video Archives: Career Prescriptions at Tuesdays with Transitioners * Video: CareerCamp: New Unconference Methods for Helping People Build the Career They Deserve with Douglas E. Welch Help Support Career Opportunities! * Buy Douglas’photography products available from http://DouglasEWelch.com/buy * Use our Amazon Affiliate Code by starting your shopping at http://welchwrite.com/bookstore * Consider a donation via PayPal to support more career posts, podcasts and videos! * Circle Career-Op on Google+

 Don’t Be Afraid. Just Do It! from Using the Career Compass To Find Your Career [Video] (1:03) | File Type: video/mp4 | Duration: Unknown

Using the Career Compass to Find Your Work and Career with Douglas E. Welch    Read the book // Douglas E. Welch (http://douglasewelch.com) presents to the class Career Development – Theories and Techniques at Pepperdine Graduate School of Education & Psychology taught by fellow CareerCamp Co-Chair, Danielle Gruen The two biggest challenges are deciding what you want to do as a career and then building the career you deserve once you decide. I discuss the Career Compass method of discovering your career wants, needs and desires and then using various social media tools to show people “What you do and how well you do it” Transcript: Yes. it can be scary. I do want to address that. It can be frightening. It can be a little off-putting. “What do I have to write? How do I…? Oh, I’m not that good of a writer.” You know what? You get better. I started off writing the column when I had never written anything but college papers and everything I had ran through my wife who’s an English teacher and it would come back all redlined at the time and every column I got a little bit better and those chronic problems that she corrected every single column, every single week, started to disappear. My commas got better. My possessive’s got better. Anybody can get there and I will say even if the quality of what you’re sharing — how it’s presented — how it’s shot on video — how it’s written — is a little bit less than perfect — and we’ll all think our stuff is less than perfect — it’s just human nature — if it’s good information, people will forgive a lot. People will forgive crappy video if the message inside that video is good and important to them. Links for items mentioned in this talk: * Video: Career Compass: Finding Your Career North from CareerCampSCV 2012 * Audio: Career Compass: Finding Your Career North from CareerCampSCV 2012 * Career Compass Kindle Book * Video Archives: Career Prescriptions at Tuesdays with Transitioners * Video: CareerCamp: New Unconference Methods for Helping People Build the Career They Deserve with Douglas E. Welch Help Support Career Opportunities! * Buy Douglas’photography products available from http://DouglasEWelch.com/buy * Use our Amazon Affiliate Code by starting your shopping at http://welchwrite.com/bookstore * Consider a donation via PayPal to support more career posts, podcasts and videos! * Circle Career-Op on Google+ * Like Career-Op on Facebook

 Do you remember how unique you once were? from the Career Opportunities Podcast | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

   Listen to this podcast Take a moment to look around you while you read this column or listen to the podcast. Take in all your surroundings. Notice the clothes you wear, the furniture in your office, the books on your bookshelves. Look at the art on your walls, the DVDs near your player. Now, consider what all this says about you. Do all these things represent a unique individual or could this be the home or office of the mythical “Everyman”? Do these items present you as someone special or yet another cog in the world’s machinery? The fact is, the nature of the modern advertising world and the nature of our corporate work within that world is to make us all like those around us. Where we once started out with all sorts of unique points and edges and curves, the world slowly grinds these off, often leaving us as round and smooth as everyone around us. There was a time, though, when we truly saw ourselves as unique individuals in the world. Long before kindergarten, peer pressure, high school, job interviews, and years of work, we once reveled in our individuality, our uniqueness. There was no other Doug, Rosanne, Jenny, Tracy or Jennifer quite like us. Read this entire article – Do you remember how unique you once were?   One-To-One Career Consulting Now available exclusively to Career Opportunities readers and Listeners. Click for more information and pricing  // * A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs  ** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out! 

 Harvey Weinstein and Where Do We Go From Here? from the Career Opportunities Podcast | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

   Listen to this podcast I dearly hope that the current, explosive story around Harvey Weinstein and his behavior will show that we have finally developed the courage to address the issue of sexual abuse and harassment in the workplace. These sort of attacks exist in all industries and in far too many companies throughout the world and continue to occur each day due to our inaction. It is truly sad that it has taken this long for the issue to finally reach a crescendo, but the attacks themselves, along with the threats of retaliation used to hide them are a frightening scenario for anyone. Current culture seeks to deny or dismiss sexual assault charges instead of taking the simplest steps to investigate every attack and accusation. We simply want the problem to go away and will demean, deny and damage anyone who dares raise the issue. One-To-One Career Consulting Now available exclusively to Career Opportunities readers and Listeners. Click for more information and pricing  This must change. We must begin to start with the belief that sexual assault and harassment does happen and investigate immediately when such behavior is brought to the attention of co-workers, company management, and/or the human resources departments. I particularly have been dismayed at the actions of various HR departments and their staff as accounts continue to filter out. They have uniquely abandoned their co-workers to abuse and harassment when they should have been protecting them. For me, any HR personnel who dismissed or denied abuse reports should be summarily fired. They should be acting as ombudsmen for company workers and not as enforcers and apologists for their company. Those HR personnel who behave in that way have failed in their role to the highest degree. Tomorrow I want each HR department to review every sexual harassment report they have received in the last 5 years or more. Look at each of those reports with the knowledge of what has been reported this week. It is my guess that you will find at least some of these people were treated very badly and you now have a lot of explaining — and action — to do. What next? Starting Today… First, Believe them enough to listen. Then Verify. Then Take Action. Do not dismiss. Do not deny. Do not seek to damage. Start with belief! In business, as a principal figure in any company, if you ignore reports of sexual abuse or harassment, you are culpable. And, you can and should be held to account along with the person performing the harassment or assault. Additionally, we must also understand that any others who knew of these attacks — outside of the victims themselves — are also culpable in the coverup and continuation of these assaults. Through our inaction they have allowed countless others to suffer attacks and harassment that we could have been prevented. That may be a hard message for us to hear, but it is a true and it is an important message to take to heart. We lacked the will. We lacked courage. We lacked action. We looked at ourselves and found ourselves wanting. We must do better! We also need to see the Weinstein affair as a call, an opportunity, a mission to seek out others like him and finally investigate what has been seen as an “open secret” in many industries, businesses and corporations. Let us no longer hide behind these “secrets” but rather investigate and prosecute at every possible level. We can use this current situation as a fulcrum for our courage to raise us all up.

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