Career Insights

in

Picked up a couple career insights that I thought were worth posting here:

The first comes from a study from the Gamut News via Penelope Trunk's blog.

The study looks at what they call "Career Limiting Habits" or (CLHs) -- habits that prevent professionals from being successful. They surveyed 972 people and found that these CLHs were the most common:

  1. Unreliability
  2. “It’s not my job”
  3. Procrastination
  4. Resistance to change
  5. Negative attitude

I think this list is spot on.  And it's especially true for startups.  It's almost the exact opposite of a list of habits required to work at a startup.  A top 5 list of positive work habits required to work at a startup would look a lot like this:

  1. Accountable for individual and company results
  2. Willing to do anything to get the job done; gets hands dirty
  3. Starts fast, iterates like crazy
  4. Embraces change
  5. Positive, must-win attitude

Even at a larger, more established company, if you're practicing any of these CLHs you're making your manager's job harder and if you're making your manager's job harder, you're not going to go very far.  

The second couple of insights involve working with headhunters and come from a guest post on Dan Schawbel's blog about personal branding. Dan is a fellow Bentley alum.

Two pretty straightforward insights that might be useful to know:

  1. A headhunter will not find you a job if you are not currently employed
  2. A headhunter will not find you a job if you're not working in their area of focus; e.g. if you work in pharmaceutical sales and the headhunter is looking for a candidate for an advertising sales job, the headhunter will not work with you

This isn't to say you can't get a job in ad sales if you're working in pharma sales.  But a company isn't going to pay a headhunter 30% of a first year salary for a candidate that isn't currently employed and working in their defined area of expertise.  They don't need a headhunter to land that person. 

If you find yourself looking to make a career change, your best bet is to work through a more traditional staffing agency, go to companies through your network, or reach out directly.

What We Don't Know

in , ,

Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense, said this back in 2002 when responding a to a reporter’s question about links between Saddam Hussein and terrorists seeking weapons of mass destruction.  It came up again Monday in a column in the Wall Street Journal. “As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns: the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult one."

I’ve always loved this quote; it’s very humbling and so true in business and life (and of course politics and war).

In short, there are things we don’t know that we don’t know we don’t know.

Ignore Everybody

in , , ,
I ordered Hugh Macleod's new book Ignore Everybody from Amazon and read it cover to cover in one sitting after getting home from work tonight.  Great book.  There were a lot of really cool ideas and observations that I felt I could really relate to.  Some of his lines about New York were right on. ..

Anyway, here are the lines I liked the most and I hope I don't forget.

  • ...most team members are far more concerned with the power relationships going on inside their immediate professional circle than with what may be actually interesting and useful to the customer.
  • Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.  You may never reach the summit; for that you will be forgiven.  But if you don’t make at least one serious attempt to get above the snow line, years later you will find yourself lying on your deathbed and all you will feel is emptiness.
  • Meeting a person who wrote a masterpiece on the back of a deli menu would not surprise me.  Meeting a person who wrote a masterpiece with a silver Cartier fountain pen on a antique writing table in an airy SoHo loft would seriously surprise me.
  • Art suffers the moment people start paying for it.
  • Never try to sell a meteor to a Dinosaur.  It wastes your time and annoys the Dinosaur.
  • Quality isn’t Job One.  Being totally f***ing amazing is Job One.
  • It’s hard to sell if nobody has bought in.
  • Stay ahead of the culture by creating the culture.
  • Nobody moves to Ne w York in order to survive.  Of course that’s what most of them end up doing.
  • A lot of people in business say they have twenty years experience, when in fact they only have one year’s experience, repeated twenty times.
  • The biggest mistake young people make is underestimating how competitive the world is out there.
  • "I don’t need a lot to be happy," said Eric.  "Just enough to pay the rent and enjoy a beer with my friends.  I don't think that’s asking for too much."  Eric was obviously a deranged lunatic.
  • Work hard.  Keep at it.  Live simply and quietly.  Remain humble.  Stay positive.  Create your own luck.  Be nice.  Be polite.

Overpaid or Underpaid

in ,

Something to think about... Are you overpaid or underpaid for the work that you do?

If you're overpaid, be careful. It's likely a matter of time before your employer and/or clients make an adjustment. How can you prevent this from happening?

If you're underpaid, how are you going to get more for the work that you do?

If you think your pay is just right, think again. And see above.

Hard Work...

in

...isn't enough anymore. I've worked really hard this year.  Probably harder than I have ever worked in one year.  But as I look back on 2008, I realize that very little that I did this year will matter all that much for my career next year. I've made a ton of progress for myself, my team and my company in 2008 but I've gotta do it all over again in 2009.

The fact is that it's always only a matter of time before what we're doing today is outsourced, automated or assigned to someone who'll do it for less money than we're being paid now. That's progress.  And the global economy only speeds up the process of progress. In the 50's, we could think about this reality once a decade. Now we have to think about it once a quarter. To stay ahead and grow, a knowledge worker has to continuously innovate and add irreplaceable value.

This reminds me of an African proverb I read somewhere; just found it online:

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up.

It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed.

Every morning a lion wakes up.

It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.

It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle. When the sun comes up, you better start running.