Don't Turn Your Back on Love

Anyone who knows me well enough to be invited into my house will tell you I have a lot of (I mean, too much, of) several things: towering stacks of aging New York Times that seem to share in my delusion that I really will get around to reading them all, magazines that have bought into the same lie (Coastal Livings get read, Harvard Business Reviews never see the outside of their poly-bags, I’m sorry to say), and books. (There are some who might say that I have too many cats, but I don’t let those people in.)

Some of the books are cynical (like Working, by Studs Terkel). Some are silly (like Your Cat’s Just Not That Into You, by Richard Smith and David Sipress). Some are cherished, like Airman's Odyssey by Antoine de Saint Exupery (you know, of Little Prince fame?).

But the one that brings today’s post to mind is Marsha Sinetar’s book, Do What You Live and the Money Will Follow. I’m so glad to see that just one week short of its 20th birthday, it’s still going strong. Especially these days.

My worry for “these days” is that people are going to be tempted to give up on pursuing their passions, turning a deaf ear to that still small voice, in favor of pursuing some kind of career alternative that is “smart.” Smart or quixotic, we have all been leveled by the same economic scythe. And there will be some of us who might be tempted to put aside our yearning, burning passions to go after retraining in some field that the business magazines have identified as the top careers of the next decade (give, take).

Well, given the state of the journalism career path these days, my question is this: If it’s so smart to go after those jobs, how come the business journalists themselves haven’t dropped their press creds like poisoned pen letters and gone chasing after those gigs themselves? Answer: When your calling is in your blood, there’s just no ignoring it.

You still have to find work that you can love. It has to do more than paying the bills. In fact, if you have found a life’s work that falls just short of paying all the bills, don’t change the job, reduce the bills. Here’s why:

You will like what you see in the mirror. We are not our jobs. And we certainly are not our income. But we are definitely made up of how we spend our working hours. Are you proud of what you do and who you do it for? I sure hope so. That kind of pride is cheap to acquire and excruciatingly expensive to lose. Either way, it’s precious.

You will like whom you work with and for. When you are doing what you love, people who choose to enter into a transaction with you already have something in common with you. There’s a parallel universe of mutual respect that you two immediately engage on. And that just gets any conversation off on the right foot – especially a business one.

You become a much more valuable (read: indispensable) employee. Passion-driven projects ignite your imagination. And when your imagination is sparked, so is your capacity for innovation. And when that happens, boy-howdy! Companies see you as the ticket to their market dominance (at least the smart ones do, and you only want to work for the companies that get it). Which isn’t to say that you won’t ever get laid off again. But if it happens to you under those circumstances, you will rightly recognize it as a loss of a job, not of your livelihood. Big difference.

You’ll love your life 10 years later. Yesterday I reconnected with a friend I had met through work a little over 10 years ago. We haven’t seen each other in a decade but we threw our arms around each other and hugged long and hard (the kind of hug that you get when you’re not thinking to yourself, “okay, was this long enough?”).

I met Evelyn about the same time I discovered my own life’s calling and passion – which is, oddly enough, to study joy in the American workplace. The minute I discovered the kind of work I would love forever, I discovered a new part of myself to love. And when that happened, I discovered a whole new way to reach out to the world and connect with people I will love for the rest of my life. It’s quite a satisfying sequence, let me tell you.

So good times/bad times will come and go. And the jury is out as to how long this particular spate of bad times will persist. So while we’re sitting this one out (to whatever extent we’re sitting it out), let’s learn about love and how we can express it through the work we do and the people we meet along the way.

Not a bad gig, if you ask me.

Special free offer (really, no catch): If you would like a free PDF copy of my first book, Find Your Calling, Love Your Life, email me at martha@reboundyourcareer.com and I'll send it to you right away.

Make Up Your Mind to Change Your Life in 2009: Part 2

Much to everyone’s surprise, it gets really cold here in New Mexico in the winter – frozen-solid-birdbath-water cold. Consequently I’m never in a hurry to slipper-shuffle down the long drive to the newspaper box – not when the flannel and down on my bed are so warm. And so my first news fix happens even before my first cup of coffee. Courtesy of CNN and my remote control.

This morning there was a segment about how seasoned executives are competing with 14-year-olds for summer jobs with theme parks. One former executive/current job candidate is quoted as saying how this is her chance to do what she’s always wanted to do, which is work with animals and people. To which I thought: Yeah right.

And then I thought: Uh oh. Here comes a whole new Recession-era story line: It’s gotten so bad out there that seasoned executives are competing head to head (in a manner of speaking) with youngsters who can barely be trusted to upsell by simply saying, “You want fries with that?” And then quickly on the heels of that dread scenario will be the executive applicants’ frustrated conclusion that “I am such a loser, I can’t even compete with a pimply pre-pube.”

What recruiter in his or her right mind would even consider a seasoned, middle-career executive for a job that a teenager can – and, by the way, should – do? There’s the over-qualified issue, of course. But even more to the point, these people are totally non-applicable. If we’re going to see more of this kind of behavior, we should add a third category to the problems of being qualified. You’ve got over-qualified (which is often code for being, well, you know). You’ve got under-qualified. And you’ve got N/A qualified. That’s where these people land.

Recruiters know that as much as these people might want the gig now, if they are handed a six-figure job offer in July, they’re going to ditch their summer job in a twinkling. They also know that the supervisors are going to be barely post-pubescents themselves. And who wants that kind of power issue going on? And, perhaps most compelling of all, if you’re talking customer service, just think of all those parents taking their kids to these parks for a jolly holiday and, perhaps, an escape from their own woes. Do they really want to hand their money over to someone just like them? Do they want to be reminded on their day of escape, “Don’t judge, you could be me before too long”? I’m thinking probably not.

N/A stands for non-applicable. It also stands for non-appropriate. And it just isn’t appropriate to crawl down your career ladder just for the sake of a job – even if you need one so badly that first paycheck is all that stands between you and Snidely Whiplash. Plus it’s insulting to everyone involved: you, the hiring company, all those kids who really deserve to take their spot on the first rung of their own career ladder. Entry-level does not mean easy-entry.

Which brings me to Step Two of my conversation with certified executive and life coach, and licensed mental health counselor Meredith Kaplan. (Click here for Step One: Acknowledge Your Feelings) Merry (that's her pretty picture at the top of this blog posting) says that if you want to change your life in 2009, Know Your Core Genius is the essential second step. If it’s counting correct change, filling bags of popcorn, and filing customers onto whirl-and-hurl rides, great! Knock yourself out. But I’m thinking you’re capable of more than that. It’s largely a matter of remembering what those things are and holding on to them for dear life.

“You owe it to yourself to figure out what your core genius is,” she says. “If you do it by yourself, brainstorm the answers to such questions as:

‘Where have I had peak experiences?’
‘What have I done that no one else can do quite like I can?’
‘What is it that attracts people to me in terms of my work-related skills?’
‘What is it that attracts people to me in terms of who I am as a person?’
‘What is it that I have or can do that is unique from other people?’

“These are the traits, skills and passions that can take you further in your career,” she says.

If you come up with a big, fat, “nuthin” when you ask yourself those questions, it could be that your self-esteem has been so hammered by your rough patch that you can’t see yourself as clearly as your friends can. So, says Merry, go to your friends for the feedback you need to get that clear picture of who you really are and what you can really do.

“Seek out people who really know you, people you can really be yourself with, and ask them straightforwardly, ‘What do you think my strengths are?’” she says. Those are the things you want to expand on and use to position yourself in the career marketplace.

Keep in mind all the elements that make up your core genius and you won’t be so tempted to give into the siren song of “gimme a job, any job will do.” First of all, you won’t get it. Secondly, be glad. Just imagine how silly you would feel if you encountered on Saturday the guy who interviewed you for an executive job on Friday. Only now you’re wearing a silly hat and counting change.

(To contact Merry directly, email her at meredithkaplan@bellsouth.net)

The Children Are Watching

Looking back on my own career of 30 some-odd years, I would say that the single most important event in my professional life didn’t even happen to me. It happened to my dad. He got laid off just five months before I graduated from college.

I’ve mentioned him before in this column, but in case you’re new here, let me give you a little detail. Well, as much detail as I know myself, which isn’t much. See, he was a covert case officer for the CIA. In street lingo, that means he was a spy. But technically speaking he wasn’t. His job was to recruit spies. We were stationed in places, oh, like Miami, Berlin, Mexico City, Madrid, Munich, Vienna, and, of course, he was in Saigon for a while where he wore a flak jacket over his nerdy 1968 business suit. Students of the Cold War would see this list of cities and go, “check, check, check.” And then rightly conclude: “Wasn’t home much, was he?” Nope. He went on a lot of “business trips.”

Anyway, I’m telling you all this not to brag (well, maybe just a little bit) but to set the stage for why I’m so passionate about the topic of children and work. I learned two things by watching my father through the years. It’s completely unacceptable to do anything you’re not totally passionate about. And, then finally, there is no security in job security. I think the only reason why I’ve never been laid off myself is because I laid my own self off the moment I heard that my dad lost his job – via a callous pink slip that was handed to him while he was on assignment in Mexico City, right in front of a classroom full of baby spies he was teaching that day.

Children of divorced parents, who then see their standard of living plummet when the parents split, learn very early that poverty is just one decision away. And children of laid-off parents learn the same thing. No matter how passionate, brilliant and dedicated you are to your profession, unemployment is one decision away.

And just as children of divorced parents grow up reluctant to throw heart, body and soul into an intimate, romantic relationship, children of laid-off parents get very early that you can’t really trust what your employer says about job security.

In my heart of hearts, I’ve always been “self-employed” because of that hard understanding that there’s no such thing as job security. And while this might be a moderately healthy attitude for an individual to take, it’s really too bad for employers who might have benefited from my talents, skills and dedication to their organization’s mission.

During this time of laying people off, we’re almost in an anorexic thrall. The compulsion to trim and slim seems to have taken on a life of its own – or at least a momentum that is going to be extremely hard to stop. But it will stop one of these days, and you’re going to need to start hiring again.

Where will you get your talent? If this current economic situation lasts as long as the doomsayers predict, you may be drawing your most new hires from the generation that is today’s kids – those kids who are right at this very moment finding out that mom and/or dad are suddenly – and through no fault of their own – without a job.

Assuming you’re still in HR when that time comes, you may look back on this time and think, “Oo, maybe we should have given more thought to the kids.” Remember, it was only 10 months ago or so when we were obsessing about the impending hiring crisis as Baby Boomers retire and their replacements fall short of both numbers and knowledge. That crisis is still coming toward us (even though maybe some of the Baby Boomers won’t be retiring quite so soon).

So how can HR keep the faith with future generations of workers when so many companies (not yours certainly) are breaking faith with their current employees? Here are some ideas, and I sure would welcome more as they occur to you:

Assume the leadership that is rightfully HR’s to govern the lay-off process in your organization. Make your process absolutely top-notch, humane and as generous as you can and drive it from the top. Don’t passively allow individual departments, divisions, businesses, leaders decide who they’ll run it as independent fiefdoms. That’s when stupid management tricks begin to take over.

Make humane the guiding principle of all your lay-off procedures and practices. Tell people what to expect as soon as you know. Maybe some essential talent will ditch the ship before you want them to, but you’re also going to see that the bulk of your people will stick around and help you turn off the lights – if that is indeed your new mission.

Give your people every reason to go home and say good things about your company. Offer them lavish advance notice that their jobs will be eliminated; give them the flexibility they need to search for new jobs while on their current job; pay for training that they need; offer them developmental assignments that will give them essential experience that they can talk about in upcoming interviews. If you have to furlough them only temporarily and you really want them to still be available to you, pay them a reduced salary if they dedicate their free time to community volunteer work. If you have to lay them off completely, remember that you still need to get their work done. So implement new contract-worker programs to keep them onboard as freelancers.

Make sure that coaches and child/family therapists are available to your employees as a resource. Your people may be so thrown by the shock of losing their jobs that they don’t realize how what they say at home will affect the motivation and dreams their children will have about the future. Families in the throes of this stress, shock and even despair shouldn’t be surprised to see school performance suffer and grades plummet during this time. No parent wants to see their children fail, either now in school or later in life. So this is a crucial time in their own children’s development. Help them out with this.

There are all sorts of basic, human decency reasons why employers should support the entire family through a lay-off crisis. But this is business, right? So here’s the business reason to remember that children are watching: One of these days you’re going to want to turn the lights back on again. There’s a whole generation out there who you’re going to count on to throw the switch. Whether they will or won’t tomorrow depends completely on how you treat their parents today.

Do You Know Anyone Who Needs Hope and Encouragement After Being Laid Off?

My new book, Rebound: A Proven Plan for Starting Over After Job Loss, hits the bookstores this week! Get it online by clicking the link (which sends you to Amazon) or visit your local bookstore. Barnes & Noble has been a special friend to Rebound, so I bet you'll be able to find plenty of copies there!

Do You Know Anyone Who Needs Hope and Encouragement After Being Laid Off?

REBOUND IS OUT NOW!

Hi everyone:

Sorry for the commercial, but I'm so excited to see that Rebound is now available online and in bookstores! I just had to tell you!

For those of you who have been following me over the last couple of years, and then wondered why I disappeared in November, this is the reason why! I was busy writing the book I hope will give a lot of comfort and perspective to people who are facing the prospect of being laid off.

I write about career, legal, financial, family, personal emotional issues. And there are three aspects I'm especially proud of in this book:

1. I interviewed the top experts in their fields to bring the absolute best possible advice together in one volume.

2. Rebound features a collection of first-person stories of people who have been laid off, the lessons they learned along the way, and how they landed happily in their new careers.

3. Each chapter concludes with three quick action items: The best thing you can do; the worst thing you can do; and the first thing you should do.

I hope you and the people you love aren't facing this crisis right now. But who doesn't know someone who is going through a layoff? Here's hoping that Rebound will give them what they need to come out the other side stronger than before!

(By the way, at the moment Amazon is temporarily sold out -- they sold out within an hour of the book being available! But Barnes & Noble's online store has copies still. And Amazon will get a fresh supply any day now!)

Do you know anyone who has been laid off?

Hi Everyone:

The media has already designated yesterday as "Black Monday." 68,000 jobs were lost in US companies. And the job loss doesn't look like it's going to stop any time soon.

You might already know that the reason I was so quiet on this blog during the November/December/early January time frame was that I was busy writing a new book, specifically for people who have been laid off. It's called Rebound: A Proven Plan For Starting Over After Job Loss. And it's coming out Feb 9! Just a couple of weeks away!

If you want to learn more, visit www.reboundyourcareer.com

But I also wanted you to know that I'm carrying on the conversation I started in Rebound with a new blog: www.reboundyourcareer.blogspot.com


Since most of the HR Journeys followers are in the people side of business, I thought that you would want to know that I've created this source of advice, hope, inspiration, even a laugh or two on my other blog! I hope you enjoy it. And I hope you'll pass it on to the people who need it most!

Let's hope this year is over soon and we can return to the business of building dreams.

Do you know anyone who has been laid off?

Hi everyone:

If you know anyone who has been laid off, they might like to know about a new blog I launched just yesterday. Please help me spread the word:

www.reboundyourcareer.blogspot.com


This blog will be a destination for people who are between jobs, and who need to feel less alone and more in control of their careers and destinies. I'll be adding lots of practical advice, as well as interviews with experts on career management, professional development, finding work, what to do in the meantime, and how to get their proverbial foot in the door. I will also include lots of stories of people who were laid off and who landed happily in their next jobs.

Please help me spread the word about this blog! And I'll do the rest!!

Happy New Year to everyone who follows HR Journeys!

Rebound: Your Most Important New Year Resolution If You're Laid Off

(This is the first posting in a series based on everything I’ve been learning since I wrote Rebound: A Proven Plan for Starting Over After Job Loss, which will be published in February. But you can order it now on Amazon and get a special pre-pub price.)

If you’re one of the roughly bajillion people who have seen, read, bought The Secret, you know about the Law of Attraction. Personally I’ve got mixed feelings about the Law of Attraction (even though it did seem to work pretty well for Oprah…she made out okay). Apply just a little bit of pressure on me (like, say, a gun to my head, my hand on the Bible or my face on TV), and I just can’t step forward and say “thoughts become things.” Matching vibrational intention with the universe strikes me as being a healthy helping of what I uncharitably refer to as “oogy boogy,” an attitude that makes me pretty unpopular here in New Age Santa Fe. (My neighbor, just for an instance, buried a crystal in our dirt road to ward off the evil spirits emanating from the south – which is basically where you will find Albuquerque.)

All this being said, I have to cop to a confession: When I first saw The Secret, I immediately bought at least 10 copies and sent them to all my friends (well, most of them; there was one absolutely absurd segment about a woman laughing her way through breast cancer, and I just couldn’t send the dvd to my friend who survived breast cancer with the help of a knowledgeable oncologist, a scalpel and massive doses of radiation). Why? Because the film made me happy just to look at it. And I wanted to share that feel-good with the people I love. And on top of that, there’s a fantastic five-minute video available for free through their website that is designed specifically to help you start your day with a song in your heart and wings on your spirit. I watch it as often as I can – without wearing down its inspiring effects – and it gets me every time. Makes me so glad to be a human being on this wacky, rocky, wonderful, nerve-wracked planet.

And my starting the morning with an upbeat frame of mind just stacks the odds in my favor that I’m going to have a productive, creative, innovative day with at least one or two happy surprises by the time I turn off the light at night. It’s not a metaphysical thing. It takes no leap of faith or suspension of belief. It’s just the way things are.

It’s an actual scientific fact that people who are of a positive frame of mind are most likely to find creative solutions to thorny problems, bounce back from setbacks, appeal to other positive people who actually work for great companies that treat them well and that are hiring. This isn’t about the Law of Attraction, it’s about the fact that people who are happy are generally fun to be with. And people who are fun to be with attract other people who are fun and happy. You know, it’s a birds-of-a-feather kind of thing.

When you are happy, you’re more receptive to the idea of having fun (not to mention to fact that you’re more likely to be invited to do fun stuff with other fun people). And, a Harvard study actually proved that nose-to-the-grindstone types had more difficulty finding creative solutions to a work problem than people who reported having fun the day before.

So what’s the most essential resolution for you in 2009 if you were laid off in 2008 (or if you think that you might see the dreaded pink slip in 2009)? I will build my happiness muscle and protect it at all costs.

Ugh. How can anyone expect to be happy in these times, especially when they’re out of work? Reasonable question. But by giving into the assumption that happiness is more easily had in an environment of employment stability and financial security, you’re depriving yourself of what could be your most valuable tool for resilience, possibility and success that will see you toward a brighter, more fulfilling future.

In case you find yourself giving over to the dark side, here are a few notes on happiness that might help you stay committed to the brighter side:

Happiness is free. Yeah, yeah, I know. Cliché. But you know how clichés become clichés? Because they’re true.

Happy people attract happy people. And, as I’ve said before, lots of happy people have jobs and they’re happy to share inside info on what openings there might be. Happy people are more likely to share just about everything they’ve got – even if it’s their last packet of ramen noodles – because they’re pretty sure that a very cool surprise, or lucky break, is on its way to them. Any day now.

Happy people notice those lucky breaks and then take advantage of them. A few years ago Richard Wiseman wrote the book The Luck Factor, in which he outlines four “essential principles” for being lucky. Principle Three is “Expect Good Fortune.” Just knowing that it’s on its way can’t help but lift your spirits. And when it finally comes, guess what. You’ll notice it. And it will make you happy.

Hiring managers don’t offer jobs to people who bum them out. I was a very lucky girl the day I happened to turn on Oprah and she had Randy Pausch as her main guest. (If you know The Secret, you probably also know The Last Lecture. I vote for The Last Lecture.) In their interview he said that we have a choice in life: We can be the mopey, grumpy Eyore. Or we can be Tigger, who revels in all things and finds joy everywhere. (A friend of mine has a sign on her fridge, featuring Tigger, with the words, “no bouncing before breakfast.” Makes me smile every time I think about it.)

The thing is, said Pausch, people love to hang out with Tiggers. And that includes employers. If you insist on being an Eyore and you find someone to hire you because he or she just so relates to your many melancholy moods, run as fast as you can in the other direction. Better yet, bounce.

Happy people have great stories to tell. Have you ever noticed how unhappy people tell bummer stories? I noticed that about myself a few years ago when I was indulging in a bummer litany during my daily emails with my oldest friend across the country. I was complaining about this and that, thinking that each anecdote was riveting. After all, Nora Ephron’s mother said that anything bad that happens to a writer is just material. I discovered that I was really boring myself with this brand of material. And I resolved to stop gathering that brand of material. So the minute I realize that a relationship or circumstance is about to give me material, I get out of that situation pronto. (Except for customer-service horror stories; my friend and I still love to trade those hurts-so-good tales from our cross-country lives. Actually we love to wallow in them, like long hot baths, until we get all pruny.)

The resolution to sustain a happy outlook comes bundled with a whole new set of stories that will be made available to you. Your radar is adjusted, and you start picking up signals that you might otherwise be missing. Examples, for instance, of kind people doing good things for each other. Or great deus ex machina stories of people landing amazing jobs that are perfect for them. And, back to the attraction thing, as you start telling those stories more and more, a happier breed of person will be joining your audience – while the sad sacks slink out of your life.

You’ll be setting a good example to all those who take their clues about life by watching you. If you have kids, you’re teaching them how to relate to uncertainty. Uncertainty is part of their destiny – that’s one of the few things I can tell you right now with any certainty. Handling uncertainty with confidence and optimism is a skill set that they’re going to need more than any generation before them. It’s up to you to show them how it’s done. Do you tell the dread stories of woe, horror and outrage? Or do you focus on what’s good, hopeful, positive and happy-making? To borrow from David Bowie: Let’s bounce.

If you have to wait a while for your next job or lucky break to catch up with you, you might as well have fun doing it. Punishing yourself isn’t going to shorten your sentence of languishing between jobs. You don’t earn your chance at good luck by beating yourself up or denying yourself the pleasures of each day. The days are really all we have, as Pausch, I’m sure would tell you…if he could. So love each one and love your life within those hours.

Happy New Year. By which I mean, happy New Year.