How to Get a Better Job Or Make Your Job Better - Carnival of Careers #6

How many of you are in search of “the perfect job”?  We’d all love to find a job where we could spend the day doing exactly what we enjoy; unfortunately many of us are still searching for that elusive job.  We turn to the articles in the carnival of careers below to give us some advice on finding the job that we do want or at least help us make our current job a better fit for us.

Editors Picks

I can really relate to Wally Bock’s claim that many companies take the one size fits all approach to career development.  In a recent visit to my Human Resources department my inquiry about career counseling and changing job types within the company was answered with a printed list of all the job openings in the company.  Thanks HR, REAL helpful.

Another interesting approach to finding the right job for you, Slow Down Fast Today looks at building a Portfolio Career

A portfolio career is one, “in which instead of working a traditional full-time job, you work multiple part-time jobs (including part-time employment, temporary jobs, freelancing, and self-employment) with different employers that when combined are the equivalent of a full-time position.

My one question with this approach is how do you handle benefits with a bunch of part-time jobs?

Lastly, I thought The GreatManagement Blog had a good list of tips, 101 Tasks Helping New Managers to Survive.  I started a “semi-management” role a few years back when I became a team lead and found out there sure is a lot more work to do once you have to manage a team.  I think his final tip may be the most important one.

“Have fun and laugh; don’t take things too seriously”

 

Career Advice

Silicon Valley Blogger presents Find Your Dream Job, Just Like This Millionaire Did  posted at The Digerati Life.

FreeFromBroke presents Murphy?s Law Of The Workplace posted at Free From Broke, saying, “Remember, what can go wrong will go wrong!”

Jim presents Elements of a Job Promotion posted at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity.

Tip Diva presents Behaving Appropriately At Work & Being A Courteous Co-Worker posted at Tip Diva, saying, “Company codes of conduct exist for a reason - to make sure every worker feels comfortable and not threatened in the workplace. Here are more ways to be a courteous co-worker and to create a satisfactory work environment for all. Being in a workplace with others calls for collaboration and respect in order to have well-functioning operation. And part of having an effective workplace boils down to your relationship with others”

George L Smyth presents One Minute How-To - How To Avoid Mistakes When Responding To A Job Posting posted at George L Smyth, saying, “Jessica Duquette goes through a list of errors she has seen during her search to hire an individual, and explains the proper way to offer your resume.”

David Stefan presents Things Better Left Unsaid posted at Career Confidant: Job Insight from Dave, saying, “There are some little things candidates say during interviews that can compromise their success.”

MoneyNing presents Motivation Monday - Change Your Routine posted at Money Ning, saying, “Stay motivated to advance your career!”

Jose DeJesus MD presents Successful Business Networking posted at Physician Entrepreneur.

Brip Blap presents 4 quick steps to building wealth posted at brip blap, saying, “Finding something you like to do and doing it a lot are the keys to building wealth.”

 

Career Management

Mark McClure presents Career Anchors Workbook posted at Mark McClure Today, saying, “Ed Schein’s (MIT) “Career Anchors” approach to finding what anchors you are most drawn to has stood the test of time. Here’s a report on my experience with the online commercial version of the test.”

Kirsty presents Cover Letters: Top 10 ways to WOW a recruiter posted at EnhanceYourChances.com.

 

Work-Life Balance

Wilfrid presents Sample of How To Write A Condensed Work Week Proposal | Your Finish Rich Plan - A Personal Finance Blog posted at Your Finish Rich Plan.

Kristie presents Bored with your job? Work overseas for the summer! posted at Norway - An American In Oslo.

Cash Money Life presents Which Shift to You Prefer to Work? posted at Cash Money Life, saying, “I’ve been working a little over time and doing some split shifts lately. After working several years on different shifts, I’ve decided I much prefer a standard day shift schedule! Thanks for histing!”  

 

That’s all for this this edition, thanks to the participants for the great contributions.  Hopefully you gained a little career insight from the collection of articles. Next week’s carnival of careers will be over at ErikFolgate.com, you can submit your article using the carnival submission form.

How Much Job Detail Should You Put on Your Resume - Ask the Readers

Do you put your entire work history on your resume or only jobs that are relevant to the position you’re applying for?

We’ve been doing a lot of interviewing at work lately and I’ve noticed that a lot of applicants list every single job they’ve ever had on their resume, regardless of whether they’re applicable to the job they’re applying for.

Looking at it from the perspective of the candidate, I guess they’re trying to show a long steady history of work ethics and continuous employment. Some of the jobs are quite diverse which I suppose could catch a potential employer’s eye and help them stand out. 

Just listing all your past jobs isn’t such a big deal but when you give extensive detail on past (irrelevant) jobs and even discuss them in the application letter or email it seems almost a form of “resume stuffing”.  As if you don’t have all the skills necessary for the job in question so you talk at length about other qualifications.

So what do you think, from the perspective of someone doing the interviewing/hiring for a specialized job do you care that the candidate delivered pizzas in high school?  When you submit your own resume, how do you decide which details to include and which to leave off? You can share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Quit Your Job Or Keep Your Job - How to Decide When a New Job’s Right for You

Quitting your job isn’t easy but sometimes it’s the right thing to do.  The problem is, it’s not an easy decision to make.  In fact, a lot of times it’s an easy decision to avoid because you can’t figure out what your best options are.

Quit Your Job or Not – What’s Best for You?
One of the tough things about deciding whether to leave your current job is the many factors that go into a “good” job.  As you’ve probably learned, the grass always seems greener on the other side of the fence. So a new job may sound appealing due to a higher salary or opportunity for career advancement but how does it measure up all around?

One tool I’ve used to help me overcome similar analysis paralysis in the past is something called a weighted criteria model.  This method is a great one to use when making a major decision because it helps you quantify all the different factors (or criteria) that have an impact on your decision.  I’ll walk you through an example of how you can use this decision making tool to determine the best job for you.

Identifying Your Criteria
The first step when making a decision is to come up with a list of things that you’re basing your decision on.  When you’re considering a job change, here are some criteria you might consider:

• Commute
• Salary
• 401k Options
• Profit Sharing
• Stock Options
• Health Benefits
• Career Advancement
• Interest in Job
• Parking
• Office Environment
• Hours Worked
• On Call

Prioritizing Your Criteria
Once you’ve made your list, order it based on which factors are most important to you.  Then assign each criterion a percentage weight, in other words, how important that factor is compared to the other factors.  In my example, I came up with 12 job criteria.  I decided that salary was the most important factor and assigned it a weight of 30%.  That left 70% to split among the remaining 11 criteria, you can see how I ranked them in the example below.

I’m including an image of the finished model for taking a new job, you can refer to it as you read through the description.  I’ll do my best to give a straight forward explanation but, picture == 1000 words.

Rating Each Decision Factor
Once you have your criteria prioritized you come up with a rating scale and assign each decision factor a rating.  To keep things simple I chose 0, 1, and 2 in my example.  I’m comparing my current job against potential Job A and potential Job B. 

The ratings are relative to one another, I gave my current job a score of 1, job B has a lower salary so it gets a 0.  Job B on the other hand has a much higher salary so I give it a score of 2.  You don’t have to give out a 0, 1, and 2 for each factor, if two of the options are pretty much the same you can give them the same score (Ex: Salary for Job A & Job B).

What Does the Weighted Score Mean?
Once each decision factor has a value you multiply the score by the weight you assigned it.  Look at the weighted scores for Salary below:

• 0.0  – Job A
• 0.6 – Job B
• 0.3 – Current Job

Confused yet? Don’t worry, this score will mean more in a second.  If you look at the example, you can see the next step is to add up all the weighted scores for all factors for each job.  The job that has the highest score is the one that is the best fit based on how you prioritized your criteria.

In my example, Job B is pretty close to my current job and Job B has the best score by far.

Why Do I Use This Method?
I find the weighted criteria model useful because it helps you take all the different factors into consideration and allows you to somewhat objectively compare them against one another. When you’re trying to make a big decision that has multiple factors, it’s easy to get one or two major points stuck in your head and let those drive your choice.  This helps you keep your eye on all the different pieces without getting overwhelmed by the decision.

Not only that, it can be a good tool to use for hindsight.  Let’s say I took Job B and absolutely hated it.  I could look back at why I chose Job B and might realize that even though it had:

• the highest salary
• most opportunity for career advancement
• the technologies I was most interested in

I may have been underestimating the importance of things like

• lack of health benefits
• long hours
• having to be on call

I can then tweak the priority of my factors when looking for my next job and help myself make a decision I’m more comfortable with.

Major Decisions Made Simple
You can obviously use this method for any major decision that involves multiple deciding factors, hopefully my description made sense, if you have any questions just leave them in the comments.  Happy job hunting!

How to Improve Your Performance Review This Year

Below is an email I sent to my team recently giving them the option to have some feedback into their annual performance reviews.  In the past, team leaders have filled out all the information but I think each person is their own best advocate so I wanted to hear what each person had to say. 

I was a little surprised when one person sent back the form with only three or four sentences filled out.  If you have an opportunity similar to this in your job, wouldn’t you put as much detail into it as you could to create the best performance review possible?  As I mentioned, you know best all the work you’ve done and things you’ve accomplished at work so be sure to let your boss know those things when it’s time for reviews. Promote yourself to get promoted : )

=============================

John has informed me its time for annual reviews again. I’d like to incorporate your input into the review document so please send me any information you think is relevant, ex: projects you’ve worked on, congratulatory emails, achievements, training you’ve attended, process improvements, etc.

I’ve attached the form that will be used for the appraisal so you can get a feel for what kind of information is documented. Pay particular attention to:

SECTION I
Information that would be helpful here is a list of the projects you’ve worked on/contributed to over the last year.

SECTION II
As you can see off to the right of this section is where ratings are assigned for each Goal Area.  The Results column is where specifics are entered to support the rating.  Any details you can provide on how you helped work towards those goals during your projects would be useful.

SECTION III
This is similar to SECTION II except it measures the performance factors listed rather than the goals addressed in SECTION II.  You can offer your thoughts and examples on how you performed in each of the performance factors.

One of the things that we include in the appraisal are things to work on next year so be sure to include things you’d like to learn, projects you’d like to be involved in, or things you might want to work on next year.

Feedback Optional
Although I won’t necessarily be able to incorporate all the information you send into the document, I wanted to give you the opportunity to provide your input since you’re the most familiar with all of your accomplishments.  You don’t have to send me anything if you don’t want to, it’s just a way to allow everyone to participate in the appraisal process.

Can You Maintain a Work Life Balance While Carrying a Pager?

What’s one of the first things you want to know when interviewing for a new job?  What’s the salary, right?  Of course then you move on to how much of your life will you have to spend at work? 

You need a job to make some income but you also don’t want to work 80 hour weeks to earn that money so you’re relieved to hear it’s the standard 40 hour week.  So what do you do when they bring up the fact that you have to carry a pager, some or all of the time?

The Curse of the Pager
Suddenly your 40 hour week job potentially turned into a 24/7 gig.  With the pager they can find you wherever you are and whenever they want.  How can you plan out a good work/life balance when you could be summoned into the “twilight zone” of work at any time by a beeping pager?

I’m asking these questions because I’m carrying the pager this week and it went off alerting me to a crisis in the middle of the night.  I used to carry it round the clock a few years ago but we’ve switched to an alternating schedule since then.  I can barely handle the intrusion on a periodic basis now and remember back to how miserable I was when that ball and chain was permanently attached to my hip.

Emotional & Social Damage
Even if it doesn’t go off, the pager takes a heavy psychological toll on the person carrying it.  That fact that it “might” go off keeps people from making plans and enjoying their lives.  Sometimes you chance planning something in the evening or on the weekend in hopes you won’t be disturbed but inevitably the pager will scream at you right in the middle of what you’re doing and ruin your plans.

If you want to see someone panic, walk up to their desk, set down the pager, then walk away.  They hate to pick it up but they will so they can chase you down and throw it back to you. Even the word pager or discussion of the pager schedule makes people’s heart race with distress and misery.

Are Pagers Worth the Salary?
Some jobs don’t pay any extra for carrying the pager. Mine doesn’t, it’s expected of me as part of my job description.  So I wonder, is a job that requires a pager a job worth having?  Would you turn down or leave a job if they asked you to carry a pager?

Can You Get Paid to Learn?

Is there a job in your industry where you can get paid to learn about a topic that you need to know about anyways?

Get Paid to Learn
If you’re going to be spending a lot of time at a job, mine as well find one that creates value for you other than just a paycheck.  Of course the income is most likely why we show up every day but if you learn a skill that will benefit you personally or professionally and get paid to do it then you have two good reasons to go work in the morning.

My wife started a job not to long ago where she makes money training or tutoring parents on how they can help their children learn.  Her employer has the mission of helping parents learn the best ways to teach their children as they play and spend time together.  She has received an enormous amount of training and support in this area through her new job.  This is a perfect scenario for her since we can use all her newly gained knowledge in raising our son.

Professional Development
Of course this is a personal example where the skills learned through a job can be applied at home but there are many ways you can make use of things you pickup at work to further yourself professionally down the road. One way to do it is find a job that will teach you specific skills you need in order to break into a certain field. It helps if you have an idea of what you’d like to be doing in the future so you can try and target certain skill sets when interviewing. 

Of course, this can also work to some extent in a job you already have.  If there’s an area you’d like to get into professionally but don’t have the experience you can always work with your boss to see if you can incorporate some projects into your existing job that would help train you in those areas.  Basically this is a way of investing in yourself, not just thinking about your current paycheck but how you’d like to earn your income in the future and positioning yourself so that can become a reality.

Can Losing Your Job Mean Finding Happiness?

What goes through your head when your boss stops by your cube and asks, “Do you have a minute?” As you follow them into the conference room a little voice in the back of your head wonders if the impromptu meeting will end with you being escorted out of the front door without a job.

I remember when we had a “Reduction in Forces” a while back; if you were pulled into a conference room it meant the end of the road.  People were led out of the office with their personal items in a box and tears on their cheeks.

Being Fired Stinks
I’m sorry to say Lazy Man had a rough day yesterday. I don’t know how it went down but I picture a somewhat similar scene.  I’ve never been delivered the bad news myself and I never want to be in that situation.  Although I’m a bit disenchanted with corporate America and often times fed up with my job I’d prefer to leave when I’m ready, rather than an abrupt flush down the toilet.  You work so hard to get ahead it really takes you by surprise when the company says thanks for playing, there’s the door.

Do Secure Jobs Exist?
In today’s society many “secure jobs” are only one bad earnings report away from an unemployment check.  Since at-will employment works both ways you never know what tomorrow will bring. I have a cartoon tacked to my cube wall where a younger boss says to an older man, “You’re the best there is at something we don’t need done anymore”.  The myriad of reasons a company might let you go can be a little nerve-wracking to think about.  Of course, it’s good to wrack those nerves so that you can be prepared in the event you do lose a primary source of income.

After Losing Your Job
Now that we’ve covered the negative, lets talk about the positive.  After the shock of being let go wears off, you automatically start to think about what’s next.  You look at life from a different perspective since certain assumptions and obligations no longer exist. As Lazy Man said:

“I’m a lot happier than I thought I’d be.  In fact I’ve never felt so free. This could fade or get old, but right now, it’s new and exciting.”

I have a good friend that lost his job unexpectedly several years ago and in hindsight it was a pretty good career move.  He went onto bigger and better things and found the job he really wanted. Of course it doesn’t happen like that for everyone.  It may be that you love your job and your life’s a mess after you’re fired.  It’s for times like those that we should try and be financially prepared for a layoff.

On the other hand sometimes we just can’t make ourselves let go of a “secure” job even though we’d really like to and losing it actually turns out to be a good thing.  Other times, we’re not wanting to leave but a layoff turns into new opportunities or a new direction in life.  If your job vanished into thin air tomorrow, what would you do?  Would losing your job help you find happiness?

How Do You Thank Your Coworkers Without Breaking the Bank?

Every quarter things get really busy at my job and everyone works like mad to get things done on time.  Teams stay all night and work weekends, it really sucks for the people involved.

Since the majority of people are salaried employees, there is no incentive for staying late and working insane hours.  As a team lead, saying “thanks a lot, I really appreciate your help” tends to ring hollow quarter after quarter.

Of course the nice thing to do is treat them to a dinner or lunch or buy them a gift card.  But if you figure you have 10 people to thank @ $10 for a meal or gift card, that’s $100. Multiply that by 4 times a year and you’re looking at spending $400 a year.

Why do I struggle with this? We all just worked a lot of overtime without pay to ensure the company earns more money, why are we the ones paying each other for recognition? The current company recognition program will earn anyone submitted a crappy metal pin.  Frankly, I’m almost insulted every time I get one.  So my evenings and weekends away from my family are worth a tacky pin?

Is there any way to show your co-workers and team members you appreciate their hard work without shelling out money from your own pocket or is that the only way to make a genuine gesture?  What non-cheesy techniques do you use to express gratitude to people at your job?

Going Steady with Your Boss - 20 Reasons Your Job Is Like a High School Relationship

Several decades ago, people built a career-long relationship with their employers.  Now-a-days companies are all about the bottom line and our employer relationships are more like bad high school crushes.  How many of these 20 reasons can you relate to?

Pre-Relationship
1) Every person has an image of their ideal job in their head; many people spend a lot of time searching for the ideal job but never find it.

2) Somehow all your friends seem to know when you’re in the market and everyone knows this “perfect job” that they want to set you up with.

3) The interview is like the initial phone call. You don’t have enough time to really get to know the employer and what they’re all about in an hour.  Based on what you learn in that short time you set your first day(te) and hope for the best.  If it doesn’t work out, oh well, there are other fish in the sea : )

4) The early relationship is only based on mutual benefits. You’re attracted to their salary and benefits and your knowledge of AJAX or DB2 is what really excites your perspective employer.

Honeymoon Phase
5) The first day(te) is the most exciting part of the relationship.  Everything is brand new.  There isn’t any hard work, you’re still spending all your time learning about the employer, not arguing about client requirements and whose needs are more important.

Reality Check
6) Once the honeymoon phase wears off those quirky habits of your co-workers stop seeming so harmless and start becoming annoying.  Eventually you feel comfortable enough with them to let them know what you really think of their habits.

7) At least one weekend a month is ruined by “quality time” with your job, paging you for extra work or working overtime to help “maintain customer relationships”.

It never fails, your clingy job always comes up with something it wants you to do at 5:30 on Friday afternoon instead of going out on the town.

Green With Envy
9) After a while every day(te) starts to feel the same.  You start to wonder, where did the passion go?  You catch yourself sneaking peeks at sexy jobs on Monster.com.

10) The grass is always greener.  Did you hear about John?  He hooked up with this awesome new job with a bombshell company.  They have cool new technology and hot stock options!

Self Doubt
11) You make yourself believe you can change your job.  Sure you don’t like the way things are but if you “talk about it” with your boss you just might be able to salvage the relationship.

12) You think about venturing out after other jobs but aren’t ready to risk it.  You already have a decent catch, if you leave now, where will you get your health benefits?  What will you tell your friends when they ask which job you’re working steady with?

Death Throes
13) You begin complaining about your job behind its back to your friends.

14) You really want to check out the other available jobs but you can’t at work with your boss hovering over you and the proxy server blocking your view of job sites.

15) You start lying to your job because you can’t bear to spend another day(te) doing the same boring thing with the same boring people.  You call in sick an hour before the day(te) begins so you can spend time looking for other jobs.

Break Up Worries
16) You can’t decide whether you should ask for your ring back, I mean your two weeks banked vacation, when you leave.

17) You feel guilty when you think about leaving the relationship.  Senior prom, I mean the end of the quarter is coming up.  What will they do without you there?  They need you, maybe you should stick around at least a while longer.

18) You start to doubt your decision to move on.  What if I don’t like the next job?   What if I miss the old one?  Will they take me back if I admit I was wrong?

19) You decide that today’s the day to end it but you chicken out part way through the day(te).  You just couldn’t find the “right moment”.

Freedom?
20) You feel SO GOOD after you finally break it off!  You wonder why you didn’t do that a long time ago!  You can’t believe you stayed with that loser job for so long!  Now, on to find the next job and start the same dance all over again

How to Quit Your Day Job in Six Not So Easy Steps

What’s the secret to being able to quit your day job? Make your own time worth more to you per hour than your employer is paying. How can you do that, one step at a time : )

Step One – Overcome Naysayers
This is a topic I’ve been giving a lot of thought to recently. Actually twice yesterday, first when a fubar project blindsided us at work and then again while seething in snarled traffic on the drive home. How can I make my time worth more than $39 an hour (around $52 an hour including benefits)? This is quite a tall order, daunting to say the least. I think the first step to quitting your day job is convincing yourself that you can swing it. It’s not an easy thing to do, so there will be many naysayers, yourself included.

There are some days when doubt hits me big time the first few minutes after the alarm goes off. “What am I doing”, I think to myself as I recap the previous night working into the early hours of the morning. “Why can’t I just be happy with the steady job I have? Why do I push myself so hard? It’s never going to happen, just give it up.” Luckily as I slowly wrap my brain around these thoughts the optimist inside me starts to wake up and I’m planning my “work outside of work” schedule for the day ahead by the time I leave for the office. You’ll doubt yourself at times, just keep going! If you’re really struggling watching the Pursuit of Hayypness should get you going again.

Step Two – Set Expectations
How I’d love to give my two weeks notice tomorrow but alas that’s not realistic with a family and a mortgage. You have to set a time table for success, decide when you’ll be ready to strike out on your own. My date is January 10th 2013; 13 years after the day I started work with my current job. If the day comes sooner that’d be GROOVY but as of now I’m planning to give my two weeks notice right around Christmas time 2012. Having a D-day not only gives you something to look forward to and work towards but also sets you up for the next step, planning.

Step Three – Plan Backwards
One problem I have with making progress towards my D-Day is that I have too many ideas and get easily distracted from my plans by new projects. As I recently listened to Simpleology for some tips on staying focused I picked up on the backwards planning method where you begin with your end goal. You picture yourself achieving your goal and then determine the last step you took just before reaching the goal. You continue this process of looking back one step at a time until you’ve reached the current point in time. I haven’t taken the time to sit down and do this yet. Once I’m finished, I think I’ll have a much better idea of the different things I need to succeed at to reach my goal.

Step Four – Reality Check
Run the numbers from your backwards plan against where you are today. What are your living expenses now, what do project they’ll be around your D-day? What financial changes do you need to make to accomplish your goal? The less you spend, the less you’ll need to earn. Does your current financial reality fall in line with your plan, if not what needs adjusting?

Step Five – Network
I don’t know where I read it or who said it but I think it’s true. One of the best ways to become successful is to help make other people successful. Surround yourself by like minded people and help them succeed. Sharing ideas, giving & getting getting feedback, and partnering together on projects will help you both grow.

Another important step is to find good mentors. Just last night I heard a quote from Tony Robbins something along the lines of how you have to ask the right questions to get the right answers. If you have an experienced mentor they’ll not only be full of answers but will hopefully steer you towards asking the right ones.

Step Six – Get Started
Of course, you actually got started with step one but I’m referring to the work you have to do after the initial steps. You’ll have to get started every day and every night. Luckily, after you get started enough times it becomes a little easier because you create routines and figure out smarter or more efficient ways to do things. But if you don’t get started, you’ll never get where you’re headed, so get going!

Of course, you shouldn’t necessarily listen to me. As you’ve read, I’m still at my job. But I have created the six not so easy steps to leaving it so stay tuned to my progress and see if they really work!

Recommended: Fly On the Wall Club
Serious about quitting your job? Learn from a Super Affiliate how to build your business on the web and become your own boss! Watch Colin McDougal build an online business step-by-step as part of the Fly On the Wall Club.

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