How to Network When You’re Not Networking
From a University of Washington Professional and Continuing Education webinar: It can be useful to think of networking in terms of the classic journalistic Who, What, Where, When, Why and How, although I’m going to mix up the order and start with Why. Why do you need to even bother with this networking thing? We’re going to talk about something I call the “career lifecycle” – which sounds awful, doesn’t it? I think you’ll find it reassuring, actually.
The wisdom of jealousy
I was jealous of my son and it changed my life. That sounds worrying, but let me explain. As a career coach, I often ask my clients whom they’re jealous of. Jealousy can be a useful emotion: It can be a signpost pointing toward what you actually want, cutting through the noise of what you’ve […]
Don’t wing it
Jack Reacher has some good career advice. He’s the formidable, former military police investigator who wanders around causing — and solving — all kinds of trouble in a reassuringly formulaic fiction series by Lee Child. In the latest book, “Blue Moon,” Reacher starts a turf war between rival gangs, among other plot complexities. “Suppose what you […]
Words matter
“Words matter,” I tell my career coaching clients. Case in point: the networking conversation. Ideally, you want to transform that nice, friendly chat into a career opportunity. “You need two things from the person you’re networking with,” I tell my clients. “You need ideas, and you need introductions to people you don’t know.” (I wrote […]
The leaky roof
A job search is a lot like a leaky roof. Let me explain. A couple of years ago, we noticed a small water stain in our living room. “Huh,” we thought, worried about it a bit, and put it out of our minds. That water stain is a bit like that nagging feeling that your […]
Quitting gymnastics
My daughter’s friend just quit gymnastics. This 13-year-old girl has been a gymnast most of her life, practicing five days a week, multiple hours a day. It’s what she’s always done. Being a gymnast is her identity. “How did you decide to quit?” I asked her, fascinated by the enormity of her decision. She shrugged. […]
Lucky break
My friend is an architect who works for herself out of her home office. She chooses projects she’s interested in and is home when the kids get off school. “I get to use my skills on my terms,” she told me one day over iced tea. That’s a pretty good definition of success, I said. “It’s […]
How to talk about weaknesses
“You have a Hermione complex,” I told my career coaching client. She was preparing for an interview, and we were talking through the dreaded “What are your weaknesses?” question. Yes, that question still gets asked all the time, and yes, you have to prepare for it beforehand. It’s actually an interesting question. If you dig […]
Networking: How to ask for help
Sometimes the hardest part of looking for a new job is asking for help. A coaching client was describing a networking coffee that went nowhere. “I wouldn’t want the manager to say, ‘Oh, I know you, so I’m giving you an interview,” he said. “I’m not looking for a handout.” He wasn’t actually my coaching client. […]
A meaningful life
“I have discovered my purpose in life,” I wrote on my social media. “Fostering puppies!” I was joking, of course. Well, mostly. I began my puppy fostering career just a week before sitting down to write this column. The two small, shivering little creatures arrived from Texas and my house — and heart — will […]