Jason Alba of JibberJobber warned all of hose who read his blog the importance of backing up their LinkedIn profile and database. It took me 2 minutes at the most to follow Jason’s instructions. Read in Jason’s blog about Susan Ireland’s true story of how her LinkedIn information was apparently deleted on mistake.

As my clients know, I am a huge proponent of using LinkedIn for social networking! It is an incredibly valuable tool for the career transitioner and career manager. So, I encourage all of you to take a couple minutes right now to go to Jason’s blog and follow the instructions he gives!

I would enjoy hearing your questions, thoughts or suggestions for further blogs! You can reach me at Terri@SummitViewCareerCoaching.com.

I am passionate about you enjoying Monday morning as much as Friday afternoon.

Often a college degree is needed in order to be hired into specific fields. On the other hand, there are several well-paying careers that don’t need a college degree. Successful experience means so much more to employers in several industries than a college degree.

How does a person gain experience without a degree? The short answer is that whenever possible, go through the open door of opportunity to gain experience whether it is volunteering or a part-time position!

The employer wants, of course, to see how you handled challenges and brought value to the company you’ve worked for. When an employer is deciding between a candidate who has the skills, experience and knowledge how to handle situations well (without the college degree) vs. a person who has the degree without the degree and skills, the experienced candidate typically is offered the job.

Greg IP of the Wall Street Journal wrote, “In short, a college degree is often necessary, but not sufficient, to get a paycheck that beats inflation.”

Ms. Dewing, after working for Sprint Corporation 15 years with a degree in computer science, was laid off. After finding another IT job 6 years later, she said she has a newfound appreciation for how insecure any job can be and how little a college degree by itself stands for. “There is enough competition for entry-level positions that employers are going to ask, ‘What else have you done in your life besides go to college?’” she says. “And in information technology, a portfolio of hands-on experience with programming is a really good thing to have.”

To me, the key is to work at whatever it is you really enjoy doing! Try to say ‘yes’ to gaining experience in areas you think you might enjoy! And, before paying for college (whether young 20’s or mid-life), figure out a direction that fits you well first!

As a Career Coach, my niche and passion is helping people discover career direction where they’ll enjoy Monday morning as much as Friday afternoon, their strengths, interests, and how to find a job in the hidden job market!

Contact me at Terri@SummitViewCareerCoaching.com for a complimentary 20-minute coaching session with no obligation to sign-up! To check out more of my services, go to www.SummitViewCareerCoaching.com.

Enjoy Monday morning as much as Friday afternoon!

Your best job is one that seems like play. It will be hard to believe you are getting paid for doing what you do!

We are all created uniquely. What is very enjoyable to you can be very boring to the next person. So, why don’t we all do what is very enjoyable? If we’re doing what is very enjoyable to us we’d naturally excel and love going to work each morning. Most likely we’d not be sick often and come home with energy.

Your best job is one that uses the following building blocks: your core strengths, core values, life purpose, personality type and that is an industry that you are very interested in.

When I coach, I have these building blocks on a form that you research and fill in. After much realistic research, my clients share with me which industry fits best with their unique building blocks. My clients have had much success in finding a position and industry that fits them well.

If you would like to have a 15-minute complimentary coaching session, please email me at Terri@SummitViewCareerCoaching.com to schedule a time for a phone conversation. For more information, go to Summit View Career Coaching.

There are virtually no rules for writing cover letters, other than a few basics. Because of the freedom to go pretty much whatever direction you’d like to go, you can focus in on whatever you want to.

Below are some common questions.

• If salary history or requirements are requested, should I include it in my cover letter? If you don’t, certain companies won’t look at the material. On the other hand, repeated surveys show that nearly 100 percent of readers admit they’ll look at your resume and call you even if you don’t include what has been requested. The bottom-line question is Why give the company ammunition to screen you out?

• Should I send my resume to the Human Resources Department? If requested to do so, yes. The least effective department typically to send your resume to is HR. Generally HR doesn’t make the hiring decisions. So, it would be so much better to send your resume to the President, CEO, COO, CFO, Vice President of Sales, Director of Customer Service, Accounting Manager - whoever is in charge of the department you would like to be hired in.

• Do my communications need a consistent look? I recommend your resume, cover letter, and other job search communications to ‘look’ the same. Pick a standard presentation for your documents and stick with it. The result will be a more professional, elegant, and high-quality presentation.

Questions and answers were taken from Cover Letter Magic by Susan Whitcomb and my own experience as a Career Coach.

If you would like help with your cover letter and resume, please email me, Terri@SummitViewCareerCoach, to schedule a short phone meeting.

As a results-oriented career coach, I work with professionals so that they enjoy Monday morning as much as Friday afternoon!

Every one of my clients so far has shared some fear when moving towards a goal. Fears block us from going forward. The opposite of fear is faith, hope, confidence… All of us have the potential to move from fear to a confident and positive perspective.

Read the following quotes from Dan Miller (48 Days):

Fear is the highest fence. – Dudley Nichols

The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety. — Henry Louise Menken

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly. – Coleridge

You block your dream when you allow your fear to grow bigger than your faith. – Mary Manin Morrissey

Fear is faith that it won’t work out. – Sister Mary Tricky

If a man harbors any sort of fear, it percolates through all his thinking, damages his personality and makes him a landlord to a ghost. – Lloyd Douglas

Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right. – Henry Ford

You can’t discover new oceans unless you have the courage to leave the shore. – Anonymous

He who loses wealth loses much; he who loses a friend loses more; but he that loses courage loses all. – Cervantes

Don’t fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have. – Louis E. Boone

Where fear is present, wisdom cannot be. – Lactantius

The worst sorrows in life are not in its losses and misfortune, but its fears. – A. C. Benson

I’d enjoy reading your thoughts after you’ve read these quotes. You can contact me at Terri@SummitViewCareerCoaching.com.

I’m passionate about you enjoying Monday morning as much as Friday morning! Contact me for a 20-minute complimentary coaching session. To read more about my services, go to Summit View Career Coaching.

Most people read thank you letters, especially hand-written ones. Thank you letters after an interview are an opportunity to contact the employer again!

In your thank you letter you may want to mention your skills, qualifications and experience that you can bring to the company that are related to the position you are applying for. Interviewers can’t remember all of the details, so you do them a favor by reminding them.

Susan Whitcomb recommends for thank you notes in her book Cover Letter Magic , “Don’t ever leave your interviewer wondering whether you can or cannot do something. Spell it out so that your qualifications are clear and readily identifiable.”

If you would like help with your cover letter and resume, email me to schedule a phone meeting. We can discuss whether or not my services would fit your needs. You can email me at Terri@SummitViewCareerCoaching.com.

Enjoy Monday morning as much as Friday morning!

High school students graduate typically without knowing their strengths, interests, life purpose, identity and personality type. Without this knowledge it would be hard to have direction on what careers would fit.

Many students base their direction on what others say they’re good at. Or, a teen may see a career on TV or on YouTube and think it looks interesting. So, they take some classes in that direction. The way I see this uneducated way of deciding on classes is the same as opening the doors to confusion and a waste of money.

What if a student took some time to figure out their strengths, what is ‘play’ to them (not for others!) and what they’re really good at. Also, what if they did a lot of job shadowing and informational interviews with a variety of people to see what it is they are really interested in. There are so many ways to research careers!

Another important part of life is figuring out what one’s identity. Answering who one is and who one wants to be 5, 10, and 20 years from now is a great start.

One other important aspect of figuring out career direction is knowing their personality type. It is an amazingly wonderful aid in accepting oneself and others.

Figuring out and knowing what was talked about in this blog can be extremly helpful in picking out career direction.

If you or a student you know would like to schedule a complimentary 20-minute coaching session, email me at Terri@SummitViewCareerCoaching.com. After the complimentary session, I will ask if the caller would like to consider career coaching. If she or he would prefer not to do so, I’d appreciate knowing since both of our time is valuable.

For more information, see Summit View Career Coaching.

Enjoy Monday morning as much as Friday afternoon!

Peter Weddle, a Recruitment Expert, wrote about his perspective of what hiring managers typically don’t know and what they think they know. I’d agree with Peter that many hiring managers find hiring a very difficult task. I’d love to hear your thoughts after reading his comments.

According to Peter Weddle, hiring managers don’t know:

• What it takes to write a reasonable and responsible description of the requirements and responsibilities of their open positions.

• When they’re asking for too much in a candidate or offering too little in compensation for the talent they need.

• What it takes to get that description translated into a recruitment ad that will engage the best talent.

• How to communicate the organization’s value proposition as an employer or how to articulate the opportunity their opening represents.

• Where to promote that message so that the best talent will actually see it. They don’t know where their target demographic hangs out online or off and in what specific venues or formats (e.g., email, networking, print) that they are most likely to be reached.

Peter Weddle goes on to say typically hiring managers they think they know…

• How to interview, but just about everyone else knows they don’t. In fact, there’s a University of Michigan study which proves that hiring managers are only 4% better than flipping a coin-they get it right 54% of the time-when it comes to selecting the best interviewee for a job.

• What it takes to attract and sell top talent, but more often than not, they are way, way out of touch. Motivating factors shift from generation to generation, and most hiring managers know their peers well, but are dumb as dirt about the younger professionals who work for them.

• What their unit must do to succeed so they focus on doing-on activity-rather than on recruiting and retaining the resources they must have (and effectively lead) in order to accomplish that activity. Most of them don’t realize that talent must be sold and resold over and over again.

Preparation for the interview is critical. How does a person prepare? That answer is for another blog. You can look up Interview tips on the left for other blogs I have written on this subject.

I’m passionate about people enjoying Monday morning as much as Friday afternoon. Packages are offered on strengths identification, career exploration, job search strategy, effective communication, career branding, networking, résumé & cover letter expertise, confidence-building interview preparation and jump-starting a new position.

Write Terri@SummitViewCareerCoaching for more information or for a 20-minute complimentary coaching session. Also, you can find out more about my services at Summit View Career Coaching.

Enjoy Monday morning as much as Friday afternoon!

William Bridges, in his book, Job Shift: How to Prosper in a Workplace Without Jobs, states that the lack of job security in today’s workplace means that we are all temporary workers and that “all jobs in today’s economy are temporary.”

Employment in our culture has changed dramatically over the past 50 years! Used to be a person would be hired young and stay with the company till retiring. The pendulum has shifted to companies using progressively more outsourcing. As a result, a trend of managing a portfolio career started in the early 1990’s and is increasing.

A portfolio career according to David B. Bohl 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.”

In the early 1990’s, guru Charles Handy predicted that workers will be more actively in control of their careers by working lots of small jobs instead of one big one, practicing the concept of managing portfolio careers.

Randall S. Hansen, Ph.D. wrote “Portfolio careers are usually built around a collection of skills and interests, though the only consistent theme is one of career self-management. With a portfolio career you no longer have one job, one employer, but multiple jobs and employers within one or more professions.”

Managing a portfolio career may fit well with your strengths, interests, core values, life purpose, identity, and personality trait.

Packages are offered on career exploration, job search strategy, effective communication, strengths identification, career branding, networking, résumé & cover letter expertise, interview preparation and jump-starting a new position.

Complimentary 20-minute complimentary coaching session are available with no pressure to sign up (I would ask to discuss after the complimentary session for about 5 minutes how coaching works. If you’d prefer not to receive coaching, let me know. No pressure given to sign up!) Email me at Terri@SummitViewCareerCoaching to schedule a meeting (via the phone).

Enjoy Monday morning as much as Friday morning!

“If you want to have a better performance than the crowd, you must do things differently from the crowd.” John Templeten

John Templeten , who died yesterday at age 95, knew his own passion and the legacy he wanted to leave behind. It was a legacy that stood through several tests and storms of time.

According to the Wall Street Journal, on the eve of World War II, John Templeton bought stock in 104 companies selling at $1 a share or less. Only a few turned out to be worthless, while in time the rest turned large profits. Templeton went on to become one of the world’s great fund managers by investing at what he called “points of maximum pessimism.”

Yet Templeton was never himself a pessimist. As an investor, he always had confidence his picks would improve over the long term. Appropriately, the same “enthusiasm for progress,” as he put it, also made him one of the world’s great philanthropists.

Life’s spiritual dimensions were John’s passion and foundation. To that end, he established the Templeton Foundation, which supports academic research in fields like cognitive science and evolutionary biology, as well as work related to the origin and nature of spirituality. Templeton also knew that many such modern philanthropies tend to begin with good intentions and then slide away from donor intent, so he established multiple checks to ensure that his financial legacy will stay true to his vision long after he was gone.

The Templeton Foundation now has a $1.5 billion endowment and awards some $70 million every year. He was indeed an optimistic investor for the long term.

At 92, John said in an interview with NewsMax and Financial Intelligence Report, “At age 27, I formed my own investment firm, working with just five wealthy people. Eventually, when I sold out, we were helping over a million people with some part of their investments. And I felt that was a ministry, that I was doing a useful job, that I was not wasting the life God gave me. But all during that time, over 50 years, I felt that my benefit to people was not as great as if I were trying to help them get spiritual wealth.”

What is the legacy you want to leave behind? What is it you want to be remembered for? In career coaching, the legacy one wants to leave behind is a critical piece in career management and discovering career direction.

A coaching session is offered to focus in on your legacy and passions, to move these forward to benefit not only you, but others for years to come.

I work with professionals and mid-level managers who on Sunday night dread Monday morning…and would love to enjoy Monday morning as much as Friday afternoon! Email me at Terri@SummitViewCareerCoaching.com or see my website for further information.

Enjoy Monday morning as much as Friday afternoon!