Karl Edwards presents Working Matters

Tag: job hunting

  • Interview Tips: 100 Ways to Prepare, Participate and Be Present

    As if looking for work wasn’t stressful enough.

    Interviews can be nerve-wracking affairs. No matter how mutual you try to make the exchange, there is no getting away from the fact that the hiring person has the job and you don’t.

    As a result of this power differential, we can easily feel that we are the only one on trial, the only one being evaluated, the only one with much at stake.

    Mike King is someone I keep my eye on. He has put together an almost overwhelming list of 100 interview tips. You can find it at: “100 Ways to Ace an Interview” on his web site Learn This.

    Suggestion for benefiting from King’s list
    Read quickly through the list paying special attention to your initial responses as you do so.

    1. Which three tips seem most immediately helpful to you?
      Decide how you will incorporate these three ideas into your next interview.
    2. Which three tips were brand new or surprising thoughts for you?
      Reflect on what you might be able to learn from these three tips.
    3. With which three tips do you disagree most?
      Disagreement is often a clue to an important value of your own. What underlying values of yours do these three tips violate?

    We want to be playing at the top of our game when interviewing. Playing at the top of one’s game, though, does not mean play-acting. It means showing up fully yourself and comfortably yourself.

    Click here for Mike King’s “100 Ways to Ace an Interview.”

    On your side,

    – Karl Edwards

  • Loving Monday: Remembering The Truth About You

    loving_mondayFor too many people these days, Monday morning does not begin a new week at work. Monday begins a new week of looking for work.

    Having a bad job can wear one down, but having no job can wear one out.

    The experience of repeated rejections is difficult not to make personal and internalize.

    We lose confidence. We lose energy. We begin to think that we might be the problem and not the economy.

    It is in this situation that Monday becomes a weekly opportunity to pause and remind ourselves of the truth. The truth about ourselves, our skills, our capabilities and our character. The truth about the job market. 12% unemployment is unparalleled in our working lives. This is no ordinary cyclical recession that we can wait out.

    The title of the column, “Loving Monday,” almost sounds like someone is mocking our pain. How can we love beginning another week of hustling ourselves to a working world that has curled up into a fetal position in the corner until some undisclosed future time when it feels safe to make commitments again?

    The truth, though, is that you are a valuable professional. You bring a marvelous set of skills, perspectives, experiences, personality, attitude, and competencies.

    Regardless of the economic reality by which so many businesses find themselves constrained, you have value. Enormous value.

    This fact is the truth that needs to be reengaged each Monday morning as you launch another strenuous week of telephone calls, letters, emails, coffees, lunches, networking efforts, and interviews.

    While always tiring, while sometimes discouraging, while occasionally depressing, our continued job hunting efforts nonetheless give credence to the larger truth. The truth that we have value.

    If you need a more personal reminder of the deeper truth of your value, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

    On your side,

    – Karl Edwards

    Loving Monday is a weekly column designed to encourage us to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and choose to make it a good week for ourselves. Explore past columns here.

  • Listen In -> Job Hunting in a Difficult Market #4: Your Job Hunting Strategy

    You’ve made a decision.

    You are not going to let the climate of fear in the economy discourage your job hunt.

    When our ideal dream job is not available, what are our alternatives? Disappointment or devastation are not very helpful ways forward, even if they describe how we feel at the moment.

    This week Claudia and I discuss how to decide what to do “in the mean time.” Not just waiting out the recession in a lousy job, but using our transferable skills as building blocks on the way to a better position.

    What about an imperfect position where you can learn new skills? What about a less than ideal role where you can establish helpful connections?

    Listen in.

  • Listen In -> Job Hunting in a Difficult Market #3: Who Can Help Me Get There?

    Asking for help is awkward.

    It can feel like an imposition to ask our busy working friends, family and associates for help with our job hunt.

    Believe it or not, though, help is exactly what these people are glad to do. The people who know you are naturally disposed to want to help you.

    The key is making it as open and flexible as possible how people can help you. We need more ways to let people know what we’re looking for without limiting the form that help takes.

    In this week’s show, Claudia and I discuss networking and interviews. Join the discussion as we figure out how to show up authentically and communicate to a variety of people what we’re looking for.

    Listen in.

  • Listen In -> Job Hunting in a Difficult Market #2: What Do I Bring To The Table?

    If one more person asks me what kind of position I’m looking for, I’ll scream. There’s no position on the organizational chart that’s a good fit for me.

    Do you find yourself in a similar predicament? The vocabulary of job descriptions, roles, functions, and career paths isn’t flexible enough for multi-faceted changing, developing people like you and me.

    So what do we bring to the professional table? In this week’s show, Claudia and I discuss how we can describe the unique set of skills, values, working styles, approaches to problem solving, etc. that distinguish us on the job.

    We have a lot to offer, but we need vocabulary and means for communicating that value to prospective employers.

    Listen in.

  • Listen In -> Job Hunting in a Difficult Market #1: Tackling Discouragement

    Just when it seems the economy couldn’t get worse, another set of precautionary lay-offs is announced on the evening news.

    Though fear fills the air and all panic around you, you show up calm, collected, and quietly confident.

    We begin a new series this week… Job Hunting in a Diffcult Market.

    How do you become that one who feels confident when discouragement lurks just behind the next job rejection?

    How do you keep your energy levels up when the job market feels overwhelming before you’ve even started?

    It’s not an easy environment to be in a job search. To pretend otherwise would be naive. But neither can we afford to be intimidated into inaction by what feels like long odds. What can we do? Where can we turn?

    Job Hunting in a Difficult Market

    Week 1: Tackling Discouragement
    Week 2: Resume Makeover
    Week 3: Networking Confidence
    Week 4: Your Job Hunting Strategy

    Listen in. You’ll both feel better about yourself and find yourself taking concrete steps toward your next job.