Peak Careers

Professional Development for Career Practitioners

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Four Things You Can Do To Keep Your Clients Out of Their “Panic Zone”

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“Get out of your comfort zone.” We’ve all heard this but some people think that there is only one zone beyond “comfort” and they call it “panic” or “freakout”.  Bryan Murphy who recently took a seminar from me explains to his students that there are actually three zones to think about.119_0073

Comfort zone, where no learning takes place. People are complacent here and often go through the motions that they are doing something.

Freakout or panic zone, again, where no learning takes place. When you freakout, you shut down, not much good is going to happen here.

But what lies in between is the key. In between comfort and panic is a zone that Bryan calls the stretch zone. This is where learning can happen. [Read more…] about Four Things You Can Do To Keep Your Clients Out of Their “Panic Zone”

Today is Not the Day to be Humble.

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“Today is not the day to be humble”, is what I often say to people when doing a mock interview.

Are you showing the “best” you in the interview?

Interviewing is one of the areas of the job hunting process that so many people freak out about. I do lots of mock interviews with college students and mid-life career changers, and I am amazed that so few people understand WHAT an interview is. If you don’t know what it is that employers are looking for, then you won’t know what to do in one.

The goal is to find someone who adds the greatest value to the company that other employees will get along with.

With that in mind, here are six of my tips to “up” your clients’ interview game.

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No Regrets. Only Lessons to be Learned.

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Regrets are wasted energy.

I had a person in one of my online seminars post that she was an oncology nurse early on in her career and was often the last person people spoke to before dying. Many of them shared their regrets with her about:

  • Not taking risks in their lives
  • Not doing jobs they wanted to do
Mt. Whitney
Perspective often helps how you view things
  • Not doing the education they wanted
  • Long-held grudges

    • She had to leave nursing because this was such a depressing part of the job. But what she learned was to live a life of no regrets.

    Don’t look at your career development ever as a regret. You can’t change the past… only the future. And it’s how you deal and react to past events that are important. Most of us make the best decisions we can with the information we have at the time. Remember that when you look back on your career development.  Don’t ponder or wonder “what if…” Let it go and move forward.

    The key to regretting something is to look at it and ask yourself, “What did I learn from it?”  I really have no regrets about past decisions and mistakes because I learned something from all of them. I learned that a bachelors degree in Forestry still helps me appreciate the outdoors and to understand ecology in a different way. It was not a waste of five years…and I love the outdoors…as a hobby. So there are no regrets. What I learned by being involved on campus during that time in a variety of student activities was that my true passion was working with people and creativity. That was a good lesson.

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    Twitter confuses me

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    Twitter confuses me. But so did LinkedIn when I joined it seven years ago, but I was patient with LinkedIn and will continue to be patient with Twitter now. I am not an ‘early adopter’ of technology preferring others to lead and my experience with Twitter is no different. Let me humbly share with you my thoughts on Twitter for career practitioners after two years. My profile says I joined in February 2011 but I think I was shell-shocked the first two years.

    Jim-chessboard
    How do you fit an idea in 140 characters?

    KEY POINT #1 Be thoughtful and patient. It really is amazing how much you can share in a tweet if you think about the essence of your message.

    How can people communicate only using 140 characters? Verbosity is clearly not rewarded here in “tweet world”. I think Twitter was created by an introvert and early on attracted more introverts who found a way to cut down on the noise created by us extroverts. Twitter requires some thought on messaging and has really forced me to be a minimalist.

    “How can I say this using less characters, words, and spaces? AND still convey the message?”

    As I wrote in a recent blog, “Less is Best” http://bit.ly/peakcareers7 and Twitter challenges this thinking all the time.

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    Overcoming Obstacles. Four tips when you break your ankle or need to find a job.

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    Dear Diary,

    IMG_0764

    My lesson on overcoming obstacles is in progress. When I see anyone on crutches in the future, I will open the door for them, help them carry anything they want, carry their coffee to their office, and simply say, “I know what you’re going through”.

    We all face obstacles but breaking my ankle gave me a whole new perspective and has made me think about the many clients I work with who face their own obstacles, many much more difficult than my broken ankle.

    Here are 4 tips on helping our clients deal with their obstacles.

    LESSON 1. Ask for help and advice.

    I decided as soon as I was crutching around the house that I was going to ask for help. Even the simplest of things like opening a door were sometimes difficult for me. Five days after breaking my ankle I was presenting a pre-conference workshop at a conference in New Hampshire and knew I’d need lots of help there.

    Our clients, who are looking for work need to know when to ask for help. A good friend and former colleague was at this same conference and is ready to make her next professional move from her current position. I asked if she had told anyone here that she was looking for a new job?

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    Less is Best

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    Less is best in most cases. We live with a tsunami of information and all we often need is a beach and an umbrella. Malcolm Gladwell in Blink says, “We live in a world saturated with information….The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding.”20130704_112354

    So how do we take this enormous amount of information and turn this into understanding? One way to do this is to embrace the “less is best” motto and it will leave you with the clues to understanding. Malcolm Gladwell speaks to this in his book and I talk about “trusting your instincts”. (See 3rd bullet point in this blog).

    When working with college students on their resume, I say that every word on this needs to count. To have a purpose. You do not need to tell me that 207-555-5555 is a “cell phone” or JimPeacock @Peak-Careers.com is an “email”, I know what it is. Use bullet phrases, not sentences in your experience area because I am skimming this document, not reading it. Make this resume shorter, meaningful, and cleaner, so I can understand you.

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