“The idea of having essentially no net job creation after a remarkably severe recession is a real pathology for the U.S. economy.” Lee Ohanian, UCLA economist, SF Chronicle, October 25, 2009

Last week— for the first time—I attended the thought-provoking and motivating Pop! Tech conference in Camden, Maine.

“PopTech’s mission is to accelerate the positive impact of world changing people, projects and ideas.”(poptech.org).

Each year Pop!Tech brings together people to discuss the present challenges we face and to suggest solutions for the future using new technologies. There were some of the greatest minds from multiple disciplines at the conference— professionals from urban farming, behavioral economics, solar energy, genetics, education, architecture and design, as well as artists writers and musicians. Some speakers were familiar names—Michael Pollan (The Botany of Desire, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, The Omnivore’s Dilemma), Dan Ariely (Predictably Irrational), Daniel Goleman (Emotional Intelligence and more recently, Ecological Intelligence) Others, I met for the first time. People such as the amazing Katy Payne who showed us how elephants communicate, Luis von Hahn the inventor of the CAPCHAs (i.e., the device for distinguishing humans from computers and reducing the unwelcome assault of spambots), and Marije Vogelzang, an eating designer, who readily admitted that she is not facing much competition—yet!

There was much to absorb—and try to understand. It was interesting to have people from so many different disciplines sharing their perspectives and proposing their solutions to the issues facing us. And, it reminded me of the importance of migrating our understandings across disciplines. It was a wonderful opportunity to sit among the multiplicity of ideas and to allow my mind to make connections and sense out of what I heard. It was also a reminder of how incredible our minds are in coming up with approaches to addressing so many complex issues.

I had not read a newspaper since arriving in Maine. The news seemed so yesterday. But on my way home I took advantage of the monotony of the airplane trip to “catch up”. As a career counselor and educator it should come as no surprise that I went first to the articles about jobs and the economy—hoping, I suppose that great minds were busy working on the problem and that things might be looking up. While I am sure that there are smart people at work on this issue, the stats continued to be grim.

o “Workers are spending an average of 26.2 weeks unemployed, a post- World War II high. After prolonged periods of unsuccessfully searching for work, workers are more prone to give up their job search.” (Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Department of Labor)

o Recession’s End Won’t Stop Job Loss Pain
Government Figures Soon to be Released Expected to Show Economic Awakening, but Unemployment Remains High. It’s about to become official: The recession is over – but not the pain. (Associated Press, WASHINGTON, Oct. 27, 2009)

o “Forget a jobless recovery. The economy may be entering a recovery with job losses.” (SF Chronicle, Washington Bureau, October 25, 2009).

The numbers were familiar.
o 8 Million jobs lost in past 2 years
o 6 people applying for every 1 job
o State unemployment rates vary – California over 12%

And the really bad news—the published unemployment rate (by BLS, Department of Labor) close to 10%—is actually higher (maybe even 20%?) once you realize that the BLS does not include the 11 million farm and self-employed individuals in its tally, nor the 15 million individuals who have left the labor force.

After reading these grim statistics, I wondered, who are and where are the smart people that surely are addressing the “job situation” in America. Where is the conversation taking place and how do I get involved? Helping individuals update their resumes and prepare for interviews they may never have is not enough. Where do we go to find information about future work and retraining – strategies for coping with a declining job creation environment?
If you know of sources that might be of help, I and about 8 million others
would love to hear from you.

What if there was a store where you could go to find answers to questions about life and living— and work. Wouldn’t that make living a lot easier? Well, I recently discovered that there is such a place. Unfortunately it is not in the United States, but rather it is in central London and it is called the School of Life. I thought you might like to find out what I learned about the place.

In a Monocle video (September, 2008 http://www.monocle.com/sections/business/Web-Articles/The-School-of-Life/) of an interview with the director of the School of Life, Sophie Howarth, remarked:

“Typically the world of self-help is terribly doughty. The idea behind the School of
Life was to make it a gathering place for intelligent people who could have “really invigorated conversations.”
She looks for inspirational speakers who will “take people to places that seem idiosyncratic and rather unexpectedly fascinating to them.”

It did not take me long to become enchanted with the place. As a career counselor I am often disappointed and quite frankly, bored by what is available to help others choose, manage and find the work that puts smiles on their faces and money in their pockets.

I was intrigued to find that at the School of Life one may take classes in what the school classifies as topics “about five of the big issues of life—love, politics, work, family and play.” The “work” course that is currently offered is led by faculty member, Roman Krznaric, who according to his bio on theschooloflife.com is “ a writer and teacher on creative thinking about the art of living and social change.”

In the marketing flyer for the course—which like the website and so much about the School of Life, is quite clever—they ask the questions that many of my clients also ask:
-“Is it possible to find a job we love?
-How do we decide what work to do?
-Can we give ourselves a second chance?” (i.e., reinvent ourselves)

I wanted to jump on the next plane to London!

I have learned a little (and I want to learn so much more…) about the School of Life, but from what I have learned, it appears to be a place where interested people can go to meet with other interested people and learn some new ideas or at the least, some new ways of thinking. While visiting, one may also purchase books, postcards and other materials, that I hope will soon be offered on line. One that will be at the top of my list is “expert in a jar”—a large glass jar with a tiny figure sporting the uniforms of different occupations.

The School of Life does not appear to be simply a repackaging of outdated ideas, but rather an innovative and playful approach to learning life lessons. I want to visit.

“For the Unemployed, a Day Stacks Up Differently.” The New York Times, Sunday, August 2, 2009.

No surprise. There are many differences between the unemployed and employed – a job being the most striking difference. In spite of the obvious, I learned some interesting things from this NY Times analysis of data from the American Time Use Survey (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2008).

When we are working we have little time for much else, although we do seem to find time in the evening for watching television and movies. The unemployed have more options in this area, however, allowing them to stretch out their television and movie watching time throughout the day. Yet, “At 9 p.m., about a third of all people surveyed are in front of the television.”

As the article points out, and unfortunately most of us know: “Nearly 1 in 10 members of the American work force are unemployed – a level not seen in 27 years.” We might be surprised by how the unemployed are spending time. As a career counselor, who suggests that unemployed people treat their job search as a full time job, imagine my surprise to learn that “Only one in five are looking for work over the course of the day, but spend more than two hours doing so.” I hope that the ‘more than’ gets them closer to the recommended 32 hours a week for job searching.

No one can blame the unemployed for wanting to catch up on their sleep. According to the data the unemployed get an extra hour of sleep during the week. Once out of bed, they are busy “studying, cleaning, or searching for jobs.” Well, as we learned, one if five is doing the latter. There is a great deal of housekeeping taking place. I wonder if laundry and household chores are done to feel productive or to avoid unpleasant tasks (like looking for a job in this tough economic environment) – or perhaps it is a combination of the two.

The unemployed are not housebound, which I think is a very good thing because it is easy to find something around the house that is calling for our attention. It is good to get out of the house! They are on the road for about an hour and I wonder where they are headed.

The article suggests that the unemployed spend more than twice the amount of time socializing as the employed – 2 hours to be precise. Are they “just talking” on the phone with friends or using these 2 hours to network? Could these 2 hours actually be time spent looking for a new job?

I have not read the study, but plan to do so. We can learn a few new factoids from The New York Times analysis of the data, but I am still finding it puzzling that only 1 in five of the unemployed are looking for work. Have the others given up, and if so, what should we do to lend a hand?

More Career Advice from Sarah Palin

Vanity Fair, August, 2009

It was almost a year ago that I wrote a column sharing Sarah Palin’s career advice. With her recent announcement, I thought it would be interesting to look back at what she had to say about interviewing.

I will update this career advice as I learn more from the former governor of Alaska.

September 28, 2008
If you think that the best place to go for advice about your career are career advice books, think again. Advice is often found in unexpected places.

In recent interviews with Sarah Palin, audiences have been treated to a plethora of ideas useful in launching and advancing their careers. From these you will find guidance for choosing your next job, as well as tips for managing those dreaded interviews.

Here are 10 tips to consider:
1. Don’t apply for positions for which you are not qualified—saying, “I’m
ready” will not get you where you want to be.

2. Do not confuse proximity to positions with experience—“I could see the CEO’s office from where I sat.” is not sound evidence of experience.

3. Be prepared by anticipating the questions that you will be asked. This will go a long way in avoiding credibility shattering “deer in the headlight” responses.

4. Don’t expect the interviewer to answer the questions you are asked.

5. Don’t fudge on questions whose answers are matters of record.
And, remember, that unlike some game shows, during most interviews you will not be given the option of phoning friends for help.

6. Answer the question asked.
Don’t bury the interviewer in a “blizzard of words,” as Charles Gibson pleaded when interviewing Palin.
Spewing random, disconnected thoughts/points will not make you look smart.

7. Talk in complete sentences and be careful not to be redundant.

8. When asked a question that you cannot answer, it is usually best not to say, “I will try to find someone and I will bring him to ya.”

9. Have a point of view. The interviewer wants to know what you think.

10. No matter what— blink before you accept the offer.

Stay tuned.

The first time I saw and heard Susan Boyle I became a fan for all of the obvious reasons. I was not alone. There have been more than 200 million viewers on YouTube!

Even on this side of the pond I received countless emails from new fans of Susan declaring, “Woman’s dreams come true!” “An example of why we are never too old to realize our dreams.” “Ugly duckling turns into swan.” “Never give up your dreams.” I joined the shouting, “You go girl—and show them your talent. Be who you are. Sing. Just sing.”

We now know that the sudden fame and adulation of a formerly stay-at-home adult who ventured out to volunteer at her local church where she sang in the choir— might have had unexpected consequences. Has Susan temporarily forgotten how to be who she is…or was?

We have learned that Susan’s birth was a difficult one and that as a result she suffers from learning disabilities. She was bullied in school and cruelly called “Susie Simple,” according to the Daily Mail/News International.(1) Yet throughout her life Susan Boyle has been a singer—for family and small audiences, while her mother encouraged her daughter to find a larger stage upon which to share her amazing gift of song. We have learned that Susan sought center stage in remembrance of her mother.

As one of the spectators who watched the less than beautiful talent show participant beautifully sing her heart out—not once, but twice on Britain’s Got Talent—I feel a little guilty that I did not notice that maybe the shy songbird was living out a dream that was not of her own making.

In my career counseling practice, I work with people to uncover, discover and realize their dreams. Some have carried around their dreams for many years, while others discovered them along the way. It is unbelievably gratifying to hear a client say, “Wow. This is it. This is what I love doing.” “They” say that Susan Boyle has always enjoyed singing and I do not doubt that…I only wonder if the stage she stood upon – apparently to honor her deceased mother’s wishes-was part of Susan’s dreams?

We must be careful in the pursuit of our dreams—first making sure that they belong to us.

According to the press (CBS News, June 5, 2009), “Susan Boyle has left a London clinic where she was being treated for exhaustion and is “much happier” now, her brother Gerry Boyle said Friday.”

Let’s hope that this is true.

I do not like getting lost—the feeling of not knowing where I am. I suppose this is why I asked for a GPS for my birthday. And not just any GPS, but one that I could turn to when feeling lost and say, “Where am I?”—and “it” would tell me. I also wanted to be able to ask for directions from where I was to where I wanted to be. I didn’t realize just how easy it was going to be to find a device to conquer my fears of not knowing where I am or where I am headed—that dreaded feeling of losing my bearings.

My friend, on the other hand, loves to explore and would find a GPS rather restricting. “How would I discover the unexpected places, she asked?” She is a wanderer who finds her way by exploring. She may have a destination in mind, but at the same time allows her curiosity to lead the way.

There are other people who feel lost without their GPS devices to guide them. Recently I was teaching a class in the Silicon Valley. As we were breaking for lunch, I handed out “maps” showing nearby cafes and restaurants. Two of the students (who perhaps not surprisingly were engineers) took one look at the map and exclaimed (almost in horror), “There are no street addresses on the map! What are we supposed to type into our GPS devices? How will we find them.”? I took them to a window and pointed across the street, “You will find them.”

Thinking about GPS devices, directions and destinations, lead me to thinking about work.

How we figure out what we want to do and finding the place where we can do it—and, of course get paid for what we do. Some of my clients are like me. They are uncomfortable not knowing the answers. It makes them feel lost—unsure about where they are headed. They have a need to have a picture of the destination, as well as the route to travel in advance. Others are more like my friend—the explorer. They have a notion of what they want to do and that is enough to get them started. They enjoy exploring and experimenting and discovering the career neighborhood where they can feel “at home.” Then there are the clients who see the process in terms of its perceived linearity—literally going from “a to b”. Time is not to be wasted on side trips or inefficient routes.

These differences show up in the work we do together, and as a career counselor it is my job to make sure that I do not offer a GPS to a wanderer, or give imprecise information to those who do not leave their house without their GPS devices. But it is also my job to help clients feel comfortable going in another direction—and even temporarily being directionless. Like me, many will feel uncomfortable at first—not knowing. It takes practice to break our habits—our customary ways of navigating through life. But, if we do not figure how ways to take a different look at things, we will be stuck doing what we do—being where we are.

… a career counselor might make the journey easier.

We have all heard the advice about how we should treat a job search. “It is your new full time job. You should spend at least 40 hours a week on it.” This is sound advice, but what about those times when you simply cannot muster the required energy or enthusiasm? Are you allowed to take a break?

Remember the days at the office when all of our time was not filled with productive activities? There were the interruptions, those endless meetings and a myriad of distractions. It wasn’t that we weren’t working hard, but rather that we weren’t always working.

But, we are told, it is different now that we are out of work. Every waking moment, it seems, should be directed to looking for that next job. Well, this is a bit of an exaggeration, of course, but I do think that sometimes we forget to give ourselves permission to take a break and do things that might make us feel better. And, who knows, maybe taking a break will get us closer to our next job.

No one needs to remind us of how difficult a process job hunting can be. Maybe that is why we are told to put our nose to the grindstone—and not look up until we are finished. What would happen if we put our search on pause— even for an hour? Some of us would feel guilty. “We SHOULD BE looking for a job, after all. Others of us would not know what to do with the newfound “freedom” or “gift of time.” We might even become bored.

Boredom is uncomfortable—perhaps not as uncomfortable as looking for a job can be, but uncomfortable nonetheless. It leaves us alone with our imaginations. The “burden” is on us to figure out what to do with the unscheduled time.This is a good time, I think, to put your worries aside and let the right side of your brain kick into gear. It may take a couple of attempts to quiet the other side of your brain—the side that thinks you need to get back to work if you are going to go back to work! So, be sure to give yourself the chance to practice. And, if boredom should slip in and try to take away this special time, remember that it might simply be a distraction—keeping you from experiencing something out of the ordinary.

So, give it a try and see what might happen with a job hunt time-out?

“And you may ask yourself
What is this beautiful house?
And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go?
And you may ask yourself
Am I right?…am I wrong?
And you may tell yourself
My god!…what have I done?

Talking Heads/David Byrne/Once in a Lifetime
I

We move through life in irregular motions to arrive at places that seem they were planned destinations. Our choices create a pattern—giving shape to what we become. Some of our decisions—both large and small are deliberate, or so they feel at the time. Life takes place in 24-hour increments and we clock our movement accordingly.

Events occur that seem to stop the clockwork pattern. It might be the death of a parent, close friend or child—the diagnosis of an illness, or even something as seemingly innocuous as receiving an invitation to a high school reunion. “How could it be my 40th high school reunion?”
We can recall the events that have taken place between then and now, but it is often more difficult to remember the details.

What does this have to do with our career choices? Plenty. We do not make our career decisions in a more structured manner than many of our other life decisions. However, most career advice grounded in a linear process. There are some who have stepped outside of the grid to consider that making career decisions may not best be done by thinking and planning. People, such as John Krumboltz, Professor of Education and Psychology at Stanford University who offers such radical advice such as “You never need to decide what you are going to be in the future.” Why? Well, if career “decisions” are more a matter of luck and “happenstance” than the results of left-brain thinking and ‘rational’ decision-making, then it probably makes a great deal of sense to keep our options open.

Neither Krumboltz nor I are suggesting that you take a passive approach to life and career planning, but rather that you do not just think about your career, but that you explore and experiment—and in the process you might be surprised by what you discover.

For more info:

Krumboltz, John D. & Levin, Al S. (2004). Luck is No Accident-Making the Most of Happenstance in Your Life and Career. Atascadero, California: Impact Publishers.

One of my favorite books (and I have many) is Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton. I suppose the reason I like this book so much is because it was one of the first books that I found that actually encouraged me to play to my strengths. I was both surprised and relieved to discover this advice.

Perhaps it was because I had spent so many years within the corporate setting where I had, like others, received performance evaluations that always seemed to be more about what I needed to do to change—rather than what I might do to build upon my strengths. “Room for improvement” was code for this is something you do not do well and that we would like for you to do better. Not bad advice, but upon receiving it I often bristled, which not surprisingly was an attribute found in my “needs improvement” column.

But, putting aside my personal “room for improvement,” let’s take a look at what Buckingham and Clifton have to say about why so many corporations (and employees) spend time and energy addressing our weaknesses, rather than amplifying our strengths.

“Most organizations are built on two flawed assumptions about people:

1. Each person can learn to be competent in almost anything.

2. Each person’s greatest room for growth is in his or her areas of greatest weakness.”

So, it seems that our misconceptions about how we humans are wired have led us astray. Might we be better if we “Ac-Cent-TCU-Ate the Positive” —eliminate the negative, as Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen recommended? Well, maybe we should not eliminate the negative, but instead refocus our energies to cultivating our attributes, rather than correcting our “weaknesses” —especially when it comes to our careers.

Buckingham and Clifton, in fact, suggest a better way for corporations to manage their talent —challenging the flawed assumptions about people—and proposing more realistic and helpful assumptions :

“1. Each person’s talents are enduring and unique.

2. Each person’s greatest room for growth is in the areas of his or her greatest strength.”

I think that not only corporations, but also each of us may personally benefit from incorporating these people assumptions into our own lives. A good place to start— taking inventory of our strengths and looking for ways to make them even stronger.

And, the next time you prepare for your performance evaluation—you may want to take the lead in framing the conversation.

For more info: visit my website gibsonworks.com
Buckingham, Marcus and Clifton, Donald O. NOW Discover Your Strengths, The Free Press: New York, 2001.

Perhaps it is because I was born in the South that at a young age I was taught to write thank you notes. It did not matter how big or small the gift—it was always acknowledged by a handwritten thank-you note. We used to tease our mother that she prepared a thank you note before attending a neighbor’s dinner party—and dropped it in the mailbox on our way out.

There was one gift that was always in our Christmas stockings—a box of thank you notes. We were allowed to play with toys for a while, but then were told to sit down and write our thank you notes. I remember it was often difficult to know what to write. “Thank you for the lovely sweater. I will enjoy wearing it.”
“I have always wanted a pair of red rubber boots. How did you know?” Sometimes I would write THANK YOU in really big letters followed by a colored exclamation point or a poorly drawn flower. It really did not seem to matter what I wrote, but that I wrote.

Last week I was delivering some job search training to newly unemployed individuals, and the topic was networking. I could hardly wait to share an idea for standing out—which is something we are all trying to do in a crowded market—a handwritten thank you note. Really. I have nothing against email as a primary way of communicating, but when it comes to the thank-you note, only a handwritten one will do. And, it just might get you
the attention you want.

Give it a try.