A Mid-Year Checklist for How to Always Be Ready for a Great New Job – Ray Bixler

Oct 302017
 
Constantly try to expand your list of professional contacts.

It’s June, the halfway point of the year. Whether your job is going great or going nowhere, right now is an ideal time to think about your career prospects, where you are and where you want to go. As Alec Baldwin’s character in the movie “Glengarry Glen Ross” said, “ABC – Always Be Closing” – except in this case, ABC stands for “Always Be Candidating.”

The workplace version of ABC means you should consistently think about yourself as a potential job candidate, even if you’re not actively looking at all. Situations can change quickly. There’s a good chance you might even become an independent contractor at some point in your career. In fact, it’s increasingly likely you’ll be a member of the growing gig economy. A survey by Intuit found that 43 percent of American workers are forecast to be gig economy participants by 2020.

[See: 25 Best Business Jobs for 2017.]

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How These Recent Grads Landed Jobs at YouTube, Giphy, and SoundCloud – Rich Bellis

Oct 232017
 
What it takes to avoid a crappy first job in a competitive job market.

The class of 2017 is joining the workforce with some tough challenges but, according to researchers, with plenty of optimism. But no matter how lofty the speeches on this year’s commencement circuit may be, the reality is that lots of new grads will land in crappy entry-level jobs–if they’re lucky to find jobs at all.

That means competition for the good ones is going to be steep. So to find out what it takes to get a leg up, Fast Company asked a few recent grads at YouTube, Giphy, and SoundCloud for their advice.

Related: What It Takes To Start Your Career At Facebook, Nike, Refinery29, And BuzzFeed

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5 Ways to Tap Into the Hidden Job Market – Lisa Rabasca Roepe

Oct 162017
 

When Arleta Brodell, 28, decided she was ready to find a new job, she knew her search would take time but she didn’t expect it to take 14 months.

Ten months into her search, Brodell hired a job coach who told her to stop applying for jobs online. “My approach had been to apply for a job and then figure out if it was something I wanted to do,” Brodell says. “That meant I wasn’t getting job offers that were interesting.”

Brodell shifted her focus from apply for jobs to developing a targeted list of companies she wanted to work for and setting up in-person meetings with people who work at those companies. Four months later, Brodell landed a job at her dream company, earning 75 percent more than her previous salary.

“I received my best results when I stopped applying for jobs online,” Brodell says. Here’s how Brodell tapped into the hidden job market.

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The Pursuit of Happiness in the Workplace – Sharissa Sebastian

Oct 092017
 


 

The pursuit of happiness is defined as a fundamental right in the Declaration of Independence to freely pursue joy and live life in a way that makes us happy.

I love that. But as great as it is to have the right to do this, how many of us are actually intentional about pursuing our own happiness? Yes, everyone would love to be happier, but have you ever taken a moment to determine what that means for you?

This first came to me while I was on a flight from Dubai to Dallas about two weeks ago. I was listening to an interview with the UAE’s minister of happiness, Ohood Al Roumi. I had no idea that happiness even had a place in government, and I was intrigued by what this meant. Al Roumi’s role is to drive government policy to create social good and satisfaction by understanding what makes citizens happy and making changes at a government level to increase their nation’s happiness. Only time will tell what effect her role will have on the people.

But as exciting as these changes are, the point of this article is not to examine happiness initiatives in the public or private sector. Instead, it’s to encourage us to take personal responsibility for our happiness, especially in the workplace.

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The Next Generation of Jobs Won’t Be Made Up of Professions – Alina Dizik

Oct 022017
 

To prepare for the future, we need to shift from thinking about jobs and careers to thinking about challenges and problems.

When Jean-Philippe Michel, an Ottawa-based career coach, works with secondary school students, he doesn’t use the word profession. Neither does he focus on helping his young clients figure out what they want to be when they grow up—at least not directly.

For him, there’s really no such thing as deciding on a profession to grow up into.

Rather than encouraging each person to choose a profession, say, architect or engineer, he works backwards from the skills that each student wants to acquire. So instead of saying, “I want to be a doctor”, he’ll aim to get students to talk about a goal, in this case “using empathy in a medical setting”.

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  •  October 2, 2017
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