7 Steps For Dealing With Crisis On The Job

The freak October snow storm has left 86% of my town without power. The temperature in my house when I woke up this morning was 54.8 degrees. Outside it was 26. Halloween has been cancelled. There are trees and power lines down everywhere. To say the least, this week is going to be filled with a fair amount of adversity for me, my family and my neighbors as we try to get through this crisis. Seems like an opportune time to think about how adversity and crisis relate to our careers if you ask me...

How do you respond to adversity? When it gets tough on the job, do you step up? Do you adopt a "Do whatever it takes" attitude to get the job done? Or do you find yourself struggling to cope with the pressure? My coworker referred to in this post did not deal well when things didn't go right and her reputation reflected as much.

Granted, no one likes it when things go wrong. We don't go looking for trouble at work. By nature, we actually plan in ways that avoid disaster and crisis rather than invite them.  But at the same time it's bound to happen eventually and how we deal with it makes all the difference in the world. A few simple steps may help you get through the storm and its aftermath while also helping you build a reputation as someone who can be counted on to rise to the occasion when things don't go right.

Control Your Emotions
Allowing your emotions to take over, especially in the early stages of a crisis, can be detrimental. Be prepared at all times. Know that as problems arise your emotional response may be to overact or panic and get out in front of that so you can...

Maintain a Clear Head at All Times
Being able to think clearly is imperative and you won't be able to do that if your emotions have gotten the best of you. You don't want to say something you will regret later. So step back, take a breath and...

Fully Assess the Situation
Gather the facts and listen carefully to people even if they are upset to the point that they are yelling at you. Many a time in the theatre was I confronted by an artist who had allowed his/her emotions to take over to the point of yelling. Sometimes we get yelled at even when the problems aren't our fault. If you get upset and start yelling at people too, then there are two upset yelling people, which will never allow a solution to be reached because you won't be able to stop and...

Listen
If people, no matter how upset they are, know that you are listening to them you are going to build credibility. Listening allows the upset people to vent their frustrations and allows you to hear what they believe the problems to be. It might also help to repeat what you are hearing just to make sure you understand the situation and prove that you hear what is being said. So instead of responding when emotions are high, listen and...

Gather the Facts
In order for any solution to be reached we must first get all of the available information so that a course of action can be reached. In some cases, it may be a good idea to...

Ask for Help
Getting through a crisis situation as a team or at least with one other person is much better than doing it by yourself.  Even if they aren't involved, bending the ear of someone you trust can help. The other people will help think of things you might miss. They can also lend their experience to the situation and help you be sure that everything is being thought of.  After all, isn't the ultimate goal to...

Decide On the Best Course of Action
You need to do the best you can with the resources and knowledge you have available to you at the time. In the end, your course of action may prove to be the wrong one but you will at least know that you did everything you could to make the right choices.

Avoiding Social Media Errors

I went an entire day without linking to Careerealism.com!...and then they posted this, which is worthy of sharing.

If you still don't know that you need to remove or hide certain content from your Facebook page then I have very little sympathy for you. The tips for LinkedIn and Twitter are valuable so have a look and let me know what you think.

Social Media Errors

Failure and Risk

If you don't fail now and again, it's a sign you're playing it safe.

Woody Allen

I've enjoyed contemplating failure and risk over the last 48 hours. Not my favorite subjects for sure. But they happen to fit nicely into my life right now so why not reflect on them to really understand their influence on what we do. Life certainly would be a lot easier if we never had to take risks or risk failure. With one comes the possibility of the other but to not risk is to never succeed. So really what choice do we have right?

I'd love to hear from you regarding failure and risk. Maybe I will drum up a tale or two from my past where I've taken risks. Have you taken recent risks? Was it hard to do? Did you not take a risk because you were afraid of failing? Is anyone out there contemplating a career risk right now?

It's easy to focus on the failure part of the equation isn't it? I've been doing it for two days now. But guess what...you might actually succeed (GASP! BLASPHEMY!)...In fact, you probably will. A lot of the fear we have is actually fear of the unknown outcome more than it is fear of the actual repercussions of the failure itself. The failure probably won't be that bad anyway. What, you don't get the job? The client chooses another company? The lime green in the kitchen looks terrible and you have to paint over it? So why not? Take the risk. Embrace it. Live it. In the end, as the few quotes I've posted suggest along with the thousands out there I haven't posted, you'll be a better person for it regardless of your success or failure.

Yesterday Failure...Today Risk

Felt like I should follow up yesterday's thoughts on Failure with some on Risk. Their link is undeniable: Being afraid of one will certainly prevent you from ever reaping the rewards of the other.

He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.
Muhammad Ali

The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing, and becomes nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn and feel and change and grow and love and live.
Leo F. Buscaglia 

Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.
Ray Bradbury

The dangers of life are infinite, and among them is safety.
Goethe

Every day, you'll have opportunities to take chances and to work outside your safety net. Sure, it's a lot easier to stay in your comfort zone...in my case, business suits and real estate...but sometimes you have to take risks. When the risks pay off, that's when you reap the biggest rewards.
Donald Trump
(Posting this one for @advantagrelo)

 Risk -- If one has to jump a stream and knows how wide it is, he will not jump. If he doesn't know how wide it is, he'll jump and six times out of ten he'll make it.
Proverb

Failure

Today's a good day to reflect on failure. It's Wednesday. Half the week is behind us and half is ahead. It's what we're going to do inbetween that matters.
 
Here are some quotes:

"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take."
Wayne Gretzky

“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.”  Colin Powell

“I didn't fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong”  Benjamin Franklin

“Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up.” Chinese Proverbs

"You never make a putt by leaving it short"
My friend Rob says this to me on the golf course.

When Your Responsibilities Conflict

How can you tell when the synergy between your two career management responsibilities (referred to here: Responsibility to Yourself and Your Employer) are in conflict with each other? (Hey wait a second! Did you see how I did that? I linked to myself!)

Right out of grad school I worked for a theatre company in the Midwest.  My closest colleague was a woman who was by any measure old. Not just at-the-end-of-her-career old, but actually elderly, much closer to being an octogenarian than anyone else I will ever work with. She had spent more than 30 years working a desk job for a major airline, retired, started drawing her pension, and then for reasons I don't think I will ever understand she went back to work fulltime in an environment fraught with temperamental artists and last minute scrambling to get the job done. Our desks actually touched. Our phones were inches apart. She wore a heap of makeup the likes of which clowns don't even know.

It was like working with my grandmother every day and was every bit the struggle you would imagine working with someone who was born before the Great Depression would be. Her status quo was complaining about everything. The job was fast paced, entailed a lot of night and weekend hours, and had a fair amount of crisis management involved. We'd go 2-3 weeks straight with no days off and were often on call at all hours. (Theatre sounds great doesn't it?!) By nature this person was cranky and when things got tough she was downright unbearable. 

The problem was her unbearableness was a secret to nobody. Actors, directors, stage managers, and other staff members all could see it plain as day. People would often pull me aside privately to talk about what could be done. The only one who didn't realize this, besides her that is, was our boss who was obviously the one who kept her around. It made no sense.

There was a conflict somewhere between her responsibility to herself and to the company. In some way she was not getting what she needed on a personal level from the job and she took it out on everyone from the company to her coworkers. Mind you, this is someone who had retired before and could do so again but she chose to work and thus chose to be seemingly miserable.

To answer the question above, you should be able to tell when there's a conflict between your responsibilities. You can probably look at some of your coworkers and see this happening, although hopefully it isn't as bad as I experienced. If you have to, ask someone how they and others perceive you. Ask yourself if you dread going to work every day, doing certain parts of your job or seeing and interacting with certain coworkers. If you do find a conflict then for the sake of your own happiness and the happpiness of those around you, seriously consider making a change.

It's Been a Week

I've been involved in social media for a week now. It started with this blog last Wednesday and then went to Twitter a few days ago. I've actually been on LinkedIn for about 4 years now. I thought it'd be interesting to check in to see how I am doing and what I have learned.

Blog Page Views: 351
Page Views Today: 102 thus far (have't quite figured out what I did today to get it that high)
Page Views Yesterday: 13
Blog Posts: 14 including this one
Blog Comments: 3 (come on people! talk to me over here...)
Blog Followers: 9 (ahem...looking over at you, you-know-who)
Twitter Followers: 11 (for the uninitiated that's people following me)
Following on Twitter: 48 (people I follow)
Tweets: 14

What have I learned this far?...

• The higher these numbers the better but for one week, not too shabby.
• It takes a lot of time, effort and energy to manage your social media. I think this might actually be why I had never done it before. The scary thing is that it's not like I've all of the sudden found myself with extra free time.
• I've read a few times that you need to schedule social meeting into your day like a meeting. I'll be doing this.
• Learning the game of social media is complicated, especially Twitter. That was like a different universe. All of them have a different language: supporters, followers, friends, pages, posts, connections, tweeting, retweeting, backlinking...and on and on...
• Not a lot of my friends and coworkers are on Twitter, that I've found anyway. (Hey, where you at?)
• There are some serious social media users out there. They mean business. It seems that for a lot of them social media is their business.
• Writing something and having no idea who, if anyone, is reading it is a little strange...at first. Clearly I've gotten over it.
• Thus far, there has been no measurable change in value to my personal or professional life based on the social media with which I have partaken. Hopefully that changes.
• Blogging is infinitely easier for me than Tweeting. I could go one forever in this blog.

Thinking about stepping into the social media arena?  So far is has been fun. More fun than overwhelming. Connecting to people and knowing they are out there listening is exhilarating. Go for it. I'll follow, connect, friend, retweet and backlink you...kinds sounds creepy though doesn't it?

Motivational Quote for Today

"Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives."

William James, 1842 - 1910

Felt particularly poignant for the kind of day I've been having.

Responsibility to Yourself and Your Employer

We pause this blog for a public service announcement regarding on the job, day to day career management.

If I have struck a nerve with you and drawn you back to keep reading I suspect it may be because you are thinking about making a career change or changing jobs. That or it's my striking good looks and incredible wit. Probably a fair mix of both now that I think about it.

For a second, instead of thinking about what's next, think about what's now. Whether you realize it or not, you've got duel responsibilities when it comes to managing your career. Obviously, you are responsible to yourself and your family to make sure your career is pointed in the right direction, to make sure you are happy, and to make sure you are being true to your needs, both emotional and financial. If you find that this responsibility is in anyway not being met, you and only you have to take steps to change it. No one will do it for you. Ask the tough questions. Figure it out and steer yourself in the right direction.

At the same time, you're responsible for the management of yourself on a day to day basis on the job, the one you are actually doing now. You need to make sure that you continue to add value to the company by doing the job you were hired to do and doing it well.

Sometimes, these responsibilities come in conflict with each other. You find your personal needs are not being met. You become unhappy. Disillusionment sets in. Discontent takes over. Resentment creeps up. If you feel any or all of these about your current job and find that your career isn't headed in the right direction and that you aren't being true to yourself and your needs, it is easy to let the second responsibility to your company slip. But it's crucial that you not let this happen. Even if you have your eye elsewhere. Remember, it's not your current job's or employer's fault that you've reassessed your needs and now feel that you must make a change. So don't take it out on them. They are paying you good money, which they can easily decide not to pay you if you become a malcontent. Don't let that happen.

Again, I turn to http://www.careerealism.com/ for some advice: How to Be More Likeable: 10 Things to Do Today. In case you can't tell I like this site a lot. Haven't found one better than it yet. They have a wealth of daily resources that can give you the kick start you need.

Follow me on Twitter!

@ScaranoAdam

I'll say this, it is MUCH easier to write a 400-500 word blog post than it is to write a 140 character tweet!

Hitting the Wall

Regarding the ability to stay motivated during a career change and how important it is to have the proper support network in place, I am reminded of hitting the wall during the 2003 NYC Marathon.

There is nothing, and I mean nothing, about my physique that suggests marathon runner. I had heard a lot about athletes hitting the wall but had never hit it myself and I certainly wasn't prepared for it. It was miles 18-22. Jeff Galloway suggested putting your first name on your shirt so that the spectators could shout your name. I must have heard my name 1,000 times or more that day, which helped a lot. But it wasn't any of those people that actually made the biggest impact. Turns out, it was one person way up First Ave., standing alone on a corner, holding a white poster board with "You Can Do It" written in black marker. If I heard my name 1,000 times, I saw 10,000 signs many of which were very well done. Yet, the one sign that meant the  most couldn't have taken more than 60 seconds to make.

I had seen my family and friends on First Ave. at about mile 16 and I was doing OK. Within 2 miles, however, it all fell apart. My body started to ache, knees especially, my emotions sunk, and I was in a lot of pain. The wall came upon me very suddenly. I didn't realize what was happening. All I knew was that I could barely take another step. Thanks again to Jeff Galloway's book I had $20 for a cab in my pocket in case I needed it and boy did I ever. I almost quit.

And then...as I started to reach for the money, deciding that I couldn't possibly continue, I saw this person and that sign. "You Can Do It". 4 words. I don't even think they were capitalized!  I said it to myself. I took the next step. And the next one. Moments after that I looked to the sidewalk and saw my bother-in-law and sister-in-law who I didn't even know were going to be there. Somehow they had found me in the back of a sea of 33,000 people. I think I may have broken down and cried and for a few minutes they ran with me, again providing the support I needed at the right time just like the sign. I was still in pain but I knew I could continue.

As much as you train, plan and prepare by getting yourself ready and putting your support network in place, sometimes you just can't predict from where that one key thing will come. Just get started and put your faith in yourself, and others will be there when you need them. There's a picture of me at mile 23 and I am smiling. Somehow I had made it over the wall and was running again and smiling. If the person holding that sign is out there, thanks so much. You have no idea how important your presence was that day. Had I not seen you I wouldn't have made it to see my bother-in-law and sister-in-law and I wouldn't have finished. Crazy the way things happen isn't it?

To Be or Not To Be...Motivated During a Career Change

(Wow! Was that a cliche title or what??!?) Make no mistake about it, the career change I went through when I left the theatre was an incredibly hard and humbling process: admitting that I needed to make the change was excruciating, figuring out if and how my skills were transferrable, being intimidated by the wide expanse of the unknown, hiring the career counselor and then ultimately putting myself out there. Today's Careerealism.com post How To Know When a Career Shift is in Your Future by Lisa Lambert Snodgrass does a terrific job of succinctly distilling the nuts and bolts of determining if such a change is right for you.

There's a lot in there to digest. Each one of those bullets might take you hours to address so don't think this is a made for TV reality show makeover kind of process because it's not. It's going to take a lot of time, courage and perseverance.  Part of you is going to have to embrace the unknown because you never know if, when or how your next break is going to materialize.

Speaking from experience, the most important point Ms. Snodgrass makes comes in the second to last paragraph: you shouldn't go at it alone. Luckily I didn't have to. The most instrumental person involved in my career change was not me, the career counselor nor the knight in shining armor Associate Director of Human Resources who ended up finding me my next job. It was my wife. She kept me from getting down and picked me up when I was. This is particularly true of her in general but even more so during this process.  She held me accountable and made me focus. She made sure I stayed on task and redirected me when I wasn't. She used to leave little slips of paper around our house with inspirational notes, quotes and sayings. I'd open my underwear drawer be greeted by a quote from Shakespeare, open a cabinet and find words from Martin Luther King Jr., reach under my pillow and find a note reminding me that she believes in me.  These little notes kept me going. All of the other things about this process were under my control from the decision making to the question answering to the hand shaking to the email writing and interviewing, but the will and drive to persevere and stay motivated when times got tough was not. (cue Joe Cocker..."Love Lifts Up Where We Belong"...) Thanks to her though, I always had the support to keep my head up and my focus on the ultimate goal. (..."Where eagles cry, on a mountain high"...)

The best advice I can give to you is to of course seek out the necessary "How To" career change resources and get started. But even more important than that is to make sure you are not even contemplate going through this process alone. Use your friends, use your network, use your family or heck you can even use me (!) to pick you up and keep you there because even though you may not know it you are going to need it.

What Do I Want To Be When I Grow Up?

My Grandfather was a barber.

My other Grandfather was a doctor.

My Father took the bar exam in the 1960's, spent many years working as a lawyer with his own practice, as the town attorney and in the DA's office (all at the same time!) and was eventually elected County Court Judge, a post he's held for roughly 16 years.

My Father-in-Law spent about 35 or so years working for UPS, from package handler to all the way up to an executive.

My Mother was a teacher and then worked in the hotel industry for just about the remainder of her career.

My Mother-in-Law sold real estate, was a teacher before that and eventually became a guidance counselor for the rest of her career.

My Brother-in-Law and Sister-in-Law are Physical Therapists.

My Wife is currently staying home with our two sons and before that she was a teacher.

I asked my 5 year old last night what he wants to be when he grows up. His answer: a chef in an Italian restaurant.

I also asked my 2 year old what he wants to be when he grows up. His answer: a cow (FYI, he's going to be a cow for Halloween so I think he may have been a little confused by my question!).

What do all of these people have in common? A clearly defined notion of what they want(ed) to be when they grow up. Much to my wife's chagrin I unfortunately do not possess such a notion. At least I don't right now. For a while, during my theatre career, I definitely did. But since leaving the theatre industry it's been very hard to pin down and articulate. She and I both agree our lives would be a lot easier if I did.

Make no mistake, this can be a serious handicap to success and I know it. Knowing exactly what you are, what you have to offer and being able to clearly articulate those things is a significant key to successful career management and no one is going to do it for us. It's your brand and for some of us it comes easily and for some of us it doesn't (oh if I could just grow up to be a cow there'd be nothing to worry about!). If you are like me, it's not too late to brand yourself. If you aren't happy with your current brand, it's not too late to change it.

Everywhere you turn for career management you'll be confronted with this notion so you might as well address it now. Finding and defining your niche, what you have to offer that others don't is imperative. CareerRealism.com posted about it today:  Relevance: A Branding Essential to Finding a Job. As this post says, it is important to remember that it's not 1965, 1985, 1995, or even 2005 any more. The rules are changing and it's up to us to change with them or we will risk losing out.

My Left Brain vs. My Right Brain: An Epic Battle

In 2003 I completed the NYC Marathon in an epic 5:13, yes hours! At one point I am pretty sure a grandmother with a walker passed me followed shortly thereafter by a turtle. But I finished and that's truly all that matters. I was living and working in Kansas City at the time and had the luxury of not having to be at work until 9:00am.  I would train in the morning before work with shorter runs and then do longer ones on the weekend. Even then, I still didn't get up as early as I do now.

I utilized Jeff Galloway's training model and it was during this time that I first realized there was a battle going on inside my head between the left and right sides of my brain. The left side would hijack my workouts and suggest every possible logical reason I could think of for why I should not train that day, why I could slow down, or heck even just stop running altogether. And that assumes my left brain even let me get out of bed to begin with. Had Jeff's book not warned me about this I probably never would have completed the race (if you can even call it that, I was going so slow).

Since then, I've rekindled the left vs. right battle mostly when training for sprint triathlons but I've also realized it actually creeps into other parts of my life and especially into my career. I constantly hear me telling myself things like "You don't have the skills for that job," "Don't put yourself out there," "It's a waste of  time to try and network," "You'll never get that job." There's a battle of logical negativity rattling around my head and all the while my right brain is seemily wandering around with thoughts about any number of inconsequential topics. It takes a concerted effort to rise up above the logical left side of your brain and without that effort you run the risk of letting the left win.

Luckily the solution is actually very simple. At least the one I use is simple. I can't even remember how I came up with it. I've created a catch phrase, a catch word actually, that I repeat to myself over and over when I feel the left rising up. It's simply: "Yes." I say it over and over, sometimes adding things like "Yes I can" or "You can do it". I use it heading into interviews, preparing for presentations, even sitting alone at my desk. You would be shocked at the sheer power this positive suggestion has to overcome my logical left brain negativity.

If you don't already, start paying attention to the messages your left side is sending. If you find that those messages are counterproductive, start a war and stop them. It will help you get things done and get you closer to reaching your goals.

Trust me.

You can do it.

A Roadmap for Career Managment

I want to give you a sense of where I am headed in this blog. I plan to focus largely on the tough career management lessons I've learned these last few years in hopes that it will make your life a little easier moving forward.

For some time now I haven't been able to shake the notion that my time in the theatre was wasted time, wasted resources and wasted energy. I feel like it set me back 6-7 years in my career and I've struggled to catch up with my peers who headed out of college with a purpose and direction on which they are still focused. If I can help just one person avoid the pitfalls I've encountered, I will consider my efforts a glorious success.

To that end, future topics will include:

• Networking
• Interviewing
• Negotiating Your Salary (and other things in life)
• Managing Up
• The Power of Staying Positive
• Branding Yourself (this will be talked about down the road as I still have a lot to learn)
• Facebook: Yeah or Nay
• Surviving Your Performance Evaluation

Get In The Game

Perhaps some background will help. In general I plan to keep my posts short and sweet because I am well aware that no one reading this has copious amounts of free time to be reading my loquacious musings. But in this case, I figure it's best to expound on a few detail so you know who you are talking to.

At the end of 2007 and beginning of 2008 I went through a difficult career change thus beginning my relationship with this subject matter. I had worked in professional theatre for 7 year after I earned my Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree, the last three of which were marked by a serious and depressing level of burnout. The problem is that I was much too young for burnout. Perhaps I'll get into my theatre career later but for now let's just leave it at the notion that low pay, terrible benefits, working nights, weekends, holidays and the transient nature of the industry had all driven me down to the point that I was desperate to escape. It was evident that my career path was headed in the right directions had I wanted to stay, but there was no way I could.

With nowhere else to turn I hired a (very expensive) career counselor who worked with me for a few months and pointed me in the right direction. Having come from the theatre I had absolutely no clue how to get a job outside the industry. My resume, my network (a term I didn't even know at the time) and my life were theatre focused and it was overwhelming to think about how I was going to find my next job.

The experience working with this career counselor was both good and bad. First the bad, in the end after assessing my background and skills through various conversations and exercises she recommended that I pursue a career in marketing. Um, marketing? Huh? I didn't know a single thing about marketing nor did I want to pursue that as a career. Unfortunately, this process did not yield any answers regarding what I would do next but it did teach me how to find whatever it was and that is where counselor earned her money.

Onto the good. The career counselor taught me how to play the game, the job searching game that is. It is this game that I plan to expound upon in this blog. She worked with me to prepare my materials and outlined the exact process I would need to take in order to use these materials to make the move, where ever that was going to be. This as you may or may not know begins and ends with one thing and one thing only: (cue the bells and whistles, ding, ring, dong, ding, ding, ding) NETWORKING. If there's a golden rule in the game of job searching and career management, that is it. Everything you read and everywhere you turn will lead you right back to Networking. In order to Network you have to do a fair amount of research and leg work, so that's part of the process too but it will all lead you back to who you know and who they know. Can you find a job without Networking? Yes, of course. But it has been proven over and again that it'll be a lot harder and take a lot longer. We'll get into the nitty gritty of Networking later.

In my case, what the career counselor told me to do was spot on. She recommended starting with my alumni networks from my college and graduate school. I received an email invitation for the local chapter of my college alumni association to attend a networking event and I went. At that event, I met the then-president of the alumni association who was also the Associate Director of Human Resources at a place I was very interested in working. Following the instructions of the counselor virtually to the letter, I sought him out after the event, introduced myself, gave him my elevator speech and told him I would follow up in a few days, which of course I did. A few weeks later I got a call to interview for a job for which I had never applied and frankly hadn't even heard of and a few weeks after that I was hired.

It feels like I got lucky. But really, I didn't. I played the game, a game I had no idea existed, and it worked.

Career Obstacles

So as to be sure I deliver on my promise to make this solely career focused I thought it made sense to start with some thoughts about career obstacles. This link to a Salary.com article seems like a good places to start:

7 Career Obstacles and How to Overcome Them

5:15 Is The Crack Of Dawn

1,000,000 years. That's how long it will take me to get used to waking up at 5:15am. When I tell people that I wake up at that hour without fail the first response I hear falls somewhere within the spectrum of "Ouch", "Oh", "Ugh" and "That sucks!" Why, you ask, do I get up that early? Getting up that early on the front end of my day allows me to get to work early and get home early so that I can have a couple hours with my two young sons before they head off to bed at 7:00pm. It's pretty simple really.

My first thoughts this morning when the alarm went off were how trapped I felt in my workweek to be waking up so incredibly early day after day and how completely exhausted it leaves me to attack each day and accomplish everything I need to get done. It's like I am starting my day with 2 strikes against me. It feels like a relentless handicap to success and it reaffirmed that I need to make a change and break this cycle.

So the change I decided to make today was to create this forum in which I will go on the offensive. Attack by speaking out about all things career, networking and job related because starting my day behind in the count leaves me with barely enough internal resources to be successful in my current job much less gives me what I need to do what it takes to find the next one. It occurred to me at 5:18am this morning that there are others out there who may feel the same way I do about this and other parts of their career.

So welcome to my blog! If you're interested like I am in participating in a career based forum, whether it be to learn or teach or just stay current in the dialogue that is out there, then you've found the right place because there's a lot to talk about.