Social Networking Tip

It's a small thing really but it happens quite a bit. If you would like to be invited to join someone's LinkedIn or Facebook or another site, don't just use the template given. State how you know the person. For example, "Hello Nancy, I was in your class last night. I was the person with the question about resume templates. I'd like to join your LinkedIn Network."
I am surprised how many of those anonymous notes I see. I don't respond to them because I don't know the person. Just a quick note is all that is needed.
Happy Halloween all

Career Change Tactics

As I was putting together a job search session on Career Change, I found a quote by Stephen Warren. He said, “Getting what you want means you must first decide what it is that you want.” At face value, that sounds so obvious but when you really think about in the perspective of job change, it is overwhelming.

Once you decide that changing your career direction is something you want to do or might consider doing, let’s look at the steps to get you started.
I have found that there are five steps in the career change process. They are:
• Assessment
• Research
• Action Planning
• Update your Skill Set
• Network

Assessment: Reflect. There are a number of valuable tools in Google that will help you assess your skills, personality, likes and dislikes and attitudes toward work. I recommend one from the US Department of Labor. It can be found at http://www.careeronestop.org/. Here you will find a free self- assessment tool called the Skills Profiler. Once you enter your skills, it will automatically provide a listing of professions that match your skill set. Another site is called The Riley Guide, http://www.rileyguide.com/. They list a number of free or for fee assessments. They also provide links to a world of other job search activities.
Research: Once you figure out what you want to do, you need to learn about that area. Searching for information is easy if you Google the position, attend a professional meeting or go to the Bureau of Labor statistics at http://www.bls.gov/oco/. Here you will find every job description A to Z along with job trends, salary information, and educational requirements. You also need to research your own personal information and ask yourself if you can afford to pursue this career, or if you need more education or training for it. The Career One Stop and Riley Guide are also good.
Action Planning: If you are serious about career change and have decided after assessment and research that this is the direction that you want to take, you MUST complete an action plan. List your career choice(s) along with goals, dates and action steps. Review this form daily and revise it as necessary. If you don’t have a plan, it will be harder to focus.
Update your Skill Set: Talk to financial counselors at local community colleges or universities. Find out if there are any grants available. Is the career you are interested in targeted by the government as new and necessary? If so, there may be free or low cost training available. If you are an older career changer, some colleges offer “senior discounts”. Go to LinkedIn and join a group in the profession and write to people about needed skills. Ask questions. Don’t forget to look to your local libraries for free or low cost training options. Do you have a friend who is in the field you are interested in? Talk to him or her, ask about mentoring possibilities.
Network: Talk to people in your area of interest, research and participate in “informational interviews”, join local professional groups, talk to college alumni associations, talk to friends, family, neighbors and Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn friends.

“Getting what you want means you must first decide what it is that you want.” After going through some of these steps you may find that you are perfectly suited for your current field and that is fine. Changing careers can be scary, exciting, gut wrenching, anxiety producing and exhilarating. Whatever your decision, just do what you feel is right for you. Good luck!

Funny Training Stories Part 1

Since the unemployment rate in NJ inched up to 9.8% today, I thought it might be nice to step away from job search stories and lighten it up a bit. I have been in the Learning & Development business for a long time and have absolutely loved it. Throughout my career I have experienced the good and the bad and the funny.

A few months ago I asked some of my LinkedIn training group members for funny instructor stories. I got quite a few and none of them were the “you had to be there” type. Here they are, along with some of my own. Thank you to all who contributed.

My Stories
I had braces when I was in my twenties. My first embarrassing/funny training story happened when the rubber band attached to my orthodontics shot out of my mouth and hit a participant on his cheek, leaving a mark.

Things improved but struck again a couple of years later. I was late wrapping up a management development class and missed my flight home. After calling the office, they suggested I take a helicopter back to the airport, something I had never done before. While standing on the tarmac listening to the pilot explain where I was to sit, the propeller draft caused the skirt of my dress to fly over my head and I honestly couldn’t get it back down. I don’t know how I got into the helicopter but the hem of the dress was around my neck as I was seated and I had to listen to the snickers of the three other (male) passengers for the trip back to NJ.

Some Technology Funnies from Other Trainers
"I was supervising a group of secretaries who were producing a manual in differential equations using WordPerfect. One of them was searching for a specific symbol in the WP symbol menus using CTRL + W, and couldn't find it. "Did you try the ASCII for that character?" I asked.
"There's no ASCII on my keyboard," she replied. She thought I said "ass key"! I still chuckle at the mental picture of a key with a little butt on it!"

"When training Word, I explain that the quick way to get to the very top of your document is CTRL+Home and the quick way to get to the very bottom of your document is CTRL+END. After having several people press CTRL+N (because of the way I say it), I decided I would start spelling out the word “end.” During one class, I said, “Press CTRL and the END keys, that would be the CTRL key plus the E – N – D key.” Well, one participant thought I meant that he should press the CTRL, the E, the N, and the D keys – all four at the same time."

"Maybe 14 years ago, I was teaching a database programming course and everyone had to connect to my instructor machine to run queries and execute the programs. Students were complaining that they couldn't connect, so I spent a lot of time that morning walking around to the student workstations, troubleshooting the client software, pinging other machines, etc. One of the other trainers came in, and when I asked him what might be wrong, he walked over, looked at my instructor machine, and handed me the unconnected network cable with a wry smile. OOOOF! What could I do? Meekly I just shrugged my shoulders and said "By the way, the most important thing you can do when troubleshooting your network is to check that you are, indeed, connected to it."

"Early in my career, when PCs had just become more mainstream, a bunch of mainframe programmers were sent to our company to learn PC programming. One of the students actually held the mouse in his hand and talked into it. He said "double click" and other commands but was getting nowhere."

"At the instruction to place his mouse over a particular button, a student picked up the computer mouse and literally placed it over the button on the computer screen. Thankfully, my trainer maintained his composure and calmly explained to the gentleman that he should move his mouse along the desk to place the cursor on the screen in particular places."

Next time we’ll hear from the leadership development and soft skills trainers. If you have any stories about the funny things that happened to you while you were training, I'd love to hear from you.