This is the time of year it starts for me.

Several times a week, I receive email requests from students from all over the world who are graduating in the Spring. They are looking for work placements, internships and full time jobs.

The emails take on all forms, and unfortunately, most of them are bound for the Trash file. It’s not because I’m mean. It’s not because I’m not supportive of students looking for work. My company has hired many new grads in the past and we actively promote up and coming talent. We firmly believe that giving opportunities to new grads is essential and beneficial not only to those looking to gain experience, but to our company, as our new grads always come with a fresh perspective and new ideas.

Most of the mass-emailed resumes I get are poorly written, hard to read, and provide no motivation for me to contact the person. When my inbox fills up with a bunch of faceless bullet points, it is of little or no value to me. I’m sure that many other folks that hire people feel the same way. The approach of sending out resumes this way is out dated and the rate of success is very low (i.e. I have NEVER hired someone via a resume sent blindly to me in an email).

What concerns me is, it seems that many post-secondary institutions are still not teaching students the basic skills required to get a job in our digitally connected world. The days of the email job application are fading fast, being replaced by what my pals Chris and Julien call the Trust Economy. Finding a job these days is not about firing off a resume to anyone who comes up in a Google Search for “Graphic Design companies”. It’s about seeking out the types of companies one wants to be involved with, and building a relationship with them.

Somehow, even in the Facebook generation, our students are not getting this message. If they were, I’d have fewer people reaching blasting me with their resumes via email and more people starting conversations with me on Twitter.

So what’s the solution? It begins with us teachers. The problem is, some of us haven’t had to look for a job in years. We remember the days when we would type our or CV and cover letter on a typewriter, then ask our Dad to make photocopies for us at his office, then put them in envelopes, address and mail them out, and hope for the best. Landing a job interview was like winning the lottery.

We need to get with the times, and start teaching our students the right way to find a job in the 21st century.

Is it really easier now?
It sure is. Back in the old days, we used to mail our resumes to “Hiring Manager” or “HR Manager” – a nameless, faceless cubicle dweller who may or may not read past the first paragraph. Following up was futile, since “Only those candidates granted an interview will be contacted”. That was the process and you had to follow it, lest you be cast to the bottom of the application pile.

These days, hiring managers have names. CEO’s and Presidents and Directors of Marketing have names. One only needs to do a bit of searching on Google BlogSearch or Twitter Search to find these people and start following them. Companies are run by human beings. And what better way to find out what makes a company tick than to follow the human beings that run it?

Now, I’m not advocating that students start bombarding everyone with CEO in their Twitter profile with job applications. What I am suggesting is that job seekers start to follow the leaders of companies that they find appealing. Read their blogs. Follow the links they post on Twitter. Learn about their philosophies, work ethic, and goals. Find a way to get involved in the conversations they are having – be it a reply to or re-tweet of an interesting post, or a comment on their blog. Open the door. Don’t ask for a job right off the bat. See where the conversation goes. Inject value, and be solution oriented in the approach.

The smart business owners and leaders are watching. They are scoping out the marketplace for new talent as much as they are scoping for new customers. Teach your students to hop onto the radar of company leaders, and in time, those leaders will be requesting your students’ portfolios.

Speaking of portfolios….
So, let’s say I do receive a resume from a student or new grad that catches my attention. The first thing I do (before even reading the CV) is click on the link to their online portfolio, which turns out to be a mish-mash of static HTML pages with a bunch of barely illegible thumbnails, no contact information, and that looks like it hasn’t been updated since they graduated.

And I promptly dump the whole thing into File 13.

Many college programs now encourage the building of an online portfolio, as a tool for students to promote their work to prospective employers. It’s a great idea, but sadly, the implementation is, in many cases, very poor. We’re teaching our students to design static web pages in a Web 2.0 world – a world where anyone can post a nice looking web site in mere minutes, with little or no web design or development expertise.

This is what a student portfolio web site should include:

• A blog that is updated on at least a weekly basis that discusses their work, or their analysis and opinion on industry news and trends
• Sidebar links to project work (updated every time a new project is added)
• A link to their LinkedIN page, and a LinkedIN page that includes recommendations from previous employers, clients (even for school project work) or teachers
• If the student has other interests, such as photography or video, a link to their Flickr or YouTube gallery
• Links to other social networking profiles (Twitter, Delicious, Digg, etc.)
• A Bio/About Me page
• A Contact Me page

This is what I, as an employer, want to see when I hit someone’s portfolio. I want to see their take on their industry and work. I want to see what else they are interested in. I want to see how they interact with other people. And if I’m impressed, I want to be able to click a button and connect with them.

The times they are a changin’.
As an employer, I’m thrilled because it’s much simpler for me to find good people to hire these days. I can get to know someone pretty well through online interaction alone. I can build a relationship with that person, and when the time comes to hire, I rarely have to promote my intentions – I have a whole pool of candidates to draw from, and I get to pick and choose who I approach.

For students, this means they have to find ways to be in the conversation – by both getting on the radar of the companies they want to work for, and by adding their own voice to the mix.

Students need to start spending less time bulk emailing resumes and links to static portfolios and far more time talking to real people. And as teachers, we need to set them up with the tools to do that.

The job search has changed, and we have a responsibility to ensure that our students’ habits change, too.

[photo credit: kafka4prez]

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We’re such creatures of habit.

When I think of the 9 to 5, the corporate rat race, I think of the Fifties. You know, the classic scene where it’s 5 o’clock, Mom’s got her hair and makeup tidied, is getting the table set, the kids are playing quietly on the floor, and Dad comes in the door, with his briefcase, suit and hat. He looks a little worn out from the workaday world, but he’s proud to be providing for his family. Tomorrow morning, he’ll head out the door, commute to the office, and do it all over again.

Sure, a lot of things about this scene have changed. “The Wife” isn’t necessarily a professional homemaker anymore. The kids are likely playing XBOX. A lot of Dads don’t wear suits to work anymore. But it’s funny that the one thing we’re still hung up on is the whole “Workaday World” thing.

Many people still get up every Monday to Friday morning, grab their lunch bag out of the fridge, commute into the city, and sit in a stuffy office or grey cubicle for 8 hours. They take their lunch to the lunch room and eat ham sandwiches while discussing last night’s hockey game. They shuffle back to their desks, until 3pm when it will be “Jack’s Birthday” in the boardroom. They will stand around eating too-sweet cake off paper plates with plastic forks, and pat Jack on the back before heading back to their cube to finish the day. They will get up at 5pm, grab their empty lunch bag, and commute home. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with the type of work being done. I know plenty of people that work in offices who truly enjoy the work they do. They are involved in interesting projects, with good people, and dynamic teams. But I am wondering if there are better ways to accomplish the same thing?

8 days hours a week day. I had an interesting conversation with my friend Pam yesterday. We’re both self employed consultants, and we spent some time musing about how life of a consultant is VERY different from the life of the average nine to fiver. It really got me thinking.

People in the workaday world are required to show up at a certain time of the morning, get right to work, and keep working for 8 hours. Then they can go home. The expectation is that, aside from a few short breaks and lunch, they will keep working throughout the duration of their time there. However, it’s common knowledge that a certain percentage of those 8 working hours are made up with personal calls and email, chatting with coworkers, cake in the boardroom, and yes, Farmville. So, of those 8 hours, how many are being spent head-down in work? 6? 5? Less? The corporate culture equates sitting at a desk to being productive, but to me, the last place people are productive is sitting at their desks. I got hours worth of work done in just 1 hour yesterday, sitting on a park bench with my iPhone. No birthday parties. No co-workers wanting to chat. No boss bugging me every 10 minutes.

Those of us who work for ourselves (or who work at home) have a very different model. My actual sitting at the desk working time each day is somewhere in the neighbourhood of 4-5 hours. Makes me seem like kind of a slacker, eh? But consider that the average nine to fiver is probably putting in only about 6 hours of an 8 hour day on actual work, and suddenly I’m at about par. Throw into the mix that many consultants and workshifters spend a large percentage of the rest of their days working via mobile device – responding to emails, taking and making calls, or networking while in line at the grocery store, or while waiting for a friend at dinner. Just because people are not at the computer doesn’t mean things aren’t getting done. In fact, it’s possible that even more things are getting done in the average day spent outside of the cubicle walls.

If I can’t see you, you’re not there. Cats have this funny thing where if they can’t see you, they think you can’t see them. From under blanket, or in a box, as far as a cat is concerned, you can’t see them, so they are not actually there. Imagine their surprise when you suddenly lift the blanket or open the box! Managers in the workaday world are like cats that way. They think that if they can’t physically see their staff sitting in their cubicles, then they aren’t there. And if they aren’t there, then obviously, no work is getting done.

I worked in the corporate rate race for many years before striking out on my own. It was in my job description to show up at a certain time, leave at a certain time, and do specific things while I was in the office. If I had to leave to run to the store or something, I had to let people know where I was. Then, I had to make sure that I stayed an extra 20 minutes at the end of the day to make up the time. If I wanted to go have coffee with a friend, it was best to wait till after hours – coffee with friends during the “work day” was frowned upon. After all, I was supposed to be working between 9am and 5pm. Socializing and networking was for after business hours only.

As is the case with many small businesses these days, our team at Jester Creative is entirely remotely based. They don’t have to show up to an office every day. We meet in person, discuss the work to be done, then they go off and do it. We don’t care if they do the work at 4am on a Sunday or 2pm on a Thursday, as long as it gets done, they meet their deadlines, and contact us if they have issues.

In fact, I have much lower expectations than the average workaday world manager. I don’t expect my team to show up at 9 and leave at 5, stick around for birthday parties and eat ham sandwiches in the lunchroom. I just expect them to get the work done. I don’t care if they go for coffee in the middle of the day, and I don’t care if they take Tuesday off. The irony is, because my expectations of their physical presence are so much lower, the work that is put out is of much higher quality, gets done much faster, and in fewer hours than if they were sitting in a cubicle 8 hours a day.

I feel as if I could write forever on this topic. What it comes down to is, I think that some corporate culture shifts need to start happening. We see countless reports on how much wasted time, and lost productivity there is in the corporate environment and particularly in government. Don’t you think that finding ways for workers to escape the 9 to 5 culture could improve that? I want to hear your thoughts.

[photo credit: herval on Flickr]

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I didn’t know what I was going to blog about this morning, then I saw this on Lucretia Pruitt’s Facebook page. I want you to watch it all. Trust me, it’s so entertaining you won’t even notice it’s a bit long.

Impersonations by Kevin Spacey (Inside the Actor’s Studio)

It’s no secret that Kevin Spacey is one of the best actors of our time. Not convinced? Well, if you haven’t seen The Usual Suspects, The Shipping News, American Beauty, or any of the other 60-some-odd films he’s been in, then you need to. Then come back and tell me he’s not one of the greats. Not only that, but as you’ve seen above (you did watch the video, right?), Mr. Spacey is also extraordinarily talented at impersonations. But don’t get too hung up on his ability to change his voice to match Clint Eastwood, Marlon Brando, and yes, Katharine Hepburn, because there’s so, so much more to it than that. What makes Kevin Spacey such a great actor is his absolute attention to detail.

Don’t just do. Be. Go back and watch a bit of the video again if you need to. You’ll notice something interesting. You see Kevin just being Kevin, smiling, laughing, and blushing Then suddenly, host James Lipton asks Jimmy Stewart a question and there is a sudden shift. Kevin isn’t just preparing to talk like Jimmy Stewart – he becomes Jimmy Stewart. His body position changes. He starts to move his hands a certain way. He somehow shape-shifts parts of his face to be more “Jimmy”. He’s Jimmy, before a word even comes out of his mouth. Then, when he does speak, he answers the question, not as “Kevin Spacey doing Jimmy Stewart”, but as Jimmy Stewart would have answered the question.

It’s this fine attention to detail that is so impressive. There’s no doubt that Mr. Spacey has spent countless hours watching his fellow actors, studying, in detail, the precise habits, mannerisms, intonations, and expressions they use. Then, he probably spent countless more hours in front of a mirror, perfecting his impersonation. Sure, talent has some to do with it – the guy’s most certainly got an aptitude for this whole acting thing. But attention to detail is what wins him the fans. He’s not just “doing” acting. He’s “becoming” his characters. Big difference.

Are you doing, or being? As you go through your days, are you just floating from one task to the next, doing this, finishing that, so that at the end of the day you look back and can’t really see what you’ve accomplished? Or are you being your work? Are you getting into the finer details of the things you’re doing, and really studying? If you start to pay attention to the fine details of what is in front of you, something amazing will happen. You’ll notice different things. You’ll see how all the little pieces fit together to make the whole. You’ll be able to read between the lines, and your end result will be much, much better quality. Be present with your work, and focus on the detail of it, until you get it right.

Make it look easy. Kevin Spacey makes acting look easy. In that video, he shifts seamlessly from Kevin to character and back again. He brings all the pieces together – body language, humour, expressions, tone of voice – and the complete package is presented flawlessly. But at the end of the video, you see Kevin do something, even though it’s sort of in a joking way. He fans himself, says “whew”, pretends to look worn out by this ordeal of having to play so many characters at once.

It is not easy to do what he did in that clip. It takes crazy amounts of concentration, confidence, experience, and wit – more than most people have. I can bet that it would take a lot out of a performer to have to perform on the spot like that. But Kevin’s a details man, and he’s not about to let the minutiae slide, that’s for sure. He’s practiced, prepared, and paid attention to detail, and he makes it look easy.

Are you a teacher? A public speaker? A musician? A consultant? Your goal should be to make what you do look easy, even though people know it’s hard. And that takes an absolute dedication to detail. It takes practice and knowledge and comfort with your subject matter. When you make things look easy, you’re not trying to show people that things ARE easy. You’re showing that you’ve mastered something, and if you’re a master, people will want to see more. Maybe they will even want to hire you for what you know how to do.

Making something look easy is hard, and it takes lots of practice and a bit of talent and oodles of time. But focus your energies on working hard at making it look easy, and people will start to respond. Remember, most people just see the easy. Details people see what it takes to get there.

How much are you paying attention to the fine details of things? Are you reading between the lines? Studying, re-reading, preparing, practicing? Or are you just going with the flow and stopping when something is “good enough”? I know I’d rather see Kevin Spacey do a remarkable impersonation of Johnny Carson than one that’s just “good enough”. Wouldn’t you? Then why would we ever expect just “good enough” out of ourselves?

Perhaps we should all try to be a little more Kevin Spacey.

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Do you have a zillion things going on? Yeah, me too. Work, school, side projects a-plenty, friends, family, house stuff…I’m swamped. And I don’t even have kids – so I have no idea how you parents do all this stuff AND manage little ones. Kudos to you on that!

I’m often asked how I manage it all, and I’m telling you, it’s not easy. But I’ve learned over the years, especially after suffering stress-related health issues in the past, that having control in the midst of chaos is critical to not only my success but is directly linked to my sanity.

We are all extraordinarily busy. We all want to have the time to focus on what’s important in our lives. We don’t want to be slaves to our inbox, or our telephone. But when information is being hammered at us every hour of every day, how do we keep from losing control altogether?

You are what you eat. Oh, my Mom’s been telling me this for YEARS. My biggest downfall (and the biggest contributor to my waistline) is that when I get too busy, I don’t eat properly. I work and work and work, and put off eating until I’m famished, then because I’m starving I make poor choices (i.e. PB and J or boxed mac and cheese for supper instead of something green). Day after day I continue to eat poorly, and then suddenly I start having trouble. I feel tired all the time. I lose concentration. My tummy troubles flare up. I get anxious for no reason. Then I realize that I haven’t eaten a vegetable in 5 days, and it all becomes clear.

It’s hard to prepare food and eat well when you barely have enough time to get a shower in the morning. But I’m getting better, and it starts with planning meals for me and my husband. I like to cook, but I hate cooking when I don’t know what to make. By laying it all out at the beginning of the week, then grocery shopping based on the list, I’m able to actually enjoy preparing meals again. The tools are simple (and it’s not about the tools). I use my desktop calendar (iCal) to write in the meal for each day. Then I use ShopShop on my iPhone to poke in the grocery list based on what I need to make the meals. Meals that we like get put into a list in Evernote, so when I make my weekly meal plan, I can refer to that list for ideas. My parents have done a low-tech version of this for years. And you know what – it totally works. We’re eating less takeout because we’re not stuck at 4pm trying to decide what’s for dinner.

Live and die by your calendar. I’m a spontaneous person, and that’s a good thing, but sometimes it causes havoc in my schedule. I double book, or end up with six 15 hour days in a row without a break. Mostly, that happens when I fail to write stuff down. So, I’ve started a system of incessant scheduling. I write something in the calendar as soon as it has a date associated with it, even if it’s tentative. I even schedule exercise. (e.g. 4pm walk the dog, 6am do yoga). It’s the only way that important stuff gets done around here. It also helps me to balance my weeks – I work from home a lot of the time, so booking “meeting days” helps me to balance my ‘office’ time with my ‘out and about’ time, so I’m not always racing back and forth to things.
Get your calendar in shape – it doesn’t matter whether you use a paper daytimer or an electronic calendar, but what is most important is that you have a calendar you can carry with you all the time. Because if it doesn’t get in the calendar the minute you think of it, chances are you’ll forget and double book. And, once it’s in the calendar, you can forget about it. One less thing on your already busy mind.

Write it down. I think one of the major causes of stress is that we have so many things we need to remember to do on a daily basis. And if those things are all fluttering around inside our head, we’re having to revisit them mentally over and over again until they are done. Have you ever had a bunch of daily errands, one of which was to take your pants to the dry cleaners? And while you’re out running around, all you can think is “I’ve got to get these pants to the dry cleaners”. Then, when you finally arrive back home, you hop out of the car, look in the back seat, and there are your pants? Ironic, eh? The very thing you obsessed about doing is the very thing that didn’t get done.

The solution to getting more accomplished is to write it down on a list. The secret to succeeding with lists is to be specific. Don’t just write “Go to dry cleaners”, or “Work on marketing plan”. That’s not detailed enough. If you just write “work on marketing plan”, then your mind will still be occupied with “I’ve got to first get the strategy down, then decide my vehicles, then the timeline etc.”, before you even get started! Be specific. Write down EXACTLY what you need to do. “Take pants to dry cleaners”, “Write the strategy and timeline for my marketing plan”. Not only will the task actually get accomplished once you set out to do it, you’ll be able to forget it entirely until it’s time to do it. Your mind will be clear for other things. You’ll be more focused. Try it!

Keep it clean. I like things to be tidy, but sometimes it gets away on me. My desk starts to resemble a tornado zone, with papers and books piled up so high they are tipping over. When I feel closed in physically, I’m way less productive. You may think you can work amidst clutter, but that’s not really the case. If your desk is cluttered, you’ll be more distracted, either by those books you haven’t had time to read, or the business cards you’ve yet to file. So, schedule time to clean up your desk once in a while. It’s liberating – you’ll throw out a bunch of stuff you don’t need, file the things you need to keep, and clear a space physically so your mind can be cleared as well. Schedule it in your calendar now, and set a recurring appointment to clean your workspace once every couple of weeks (or days, if you’re really messy). It’s important.

Down time = sanity. Last, but definitely not least, rest. The #1 way to put my sanity over the edge is to not get enough rest. When I was younger, I used to think that pulling all-nighters or working 18 hours a day, 7 days a week was some sort of badge of honour…until I ended up spending the better part of 1994 either in the hospital or home sick in bed. It took months of bad health for me to realize that working hard and working all the time were two different things.

Today, my philosophy is this: when you’re working, work your butt off. When you’re resting, rest your butt off. But most importantly, define what it is that you do for rest. It doesn’t have to be flaking out on the sofa all weekend (unless it is). For me, rest is spending time having coffee or dinner with my friends and family, traveling to crazy conventions in the Midwest with my husband, socializing online (yes, Twitter isn’t ALWAYS about work for me!), reading, writing, being outdoors – all active things. It’s about getting your brain out of your day to day and into something different. Whether you’re being a couch potato or going for a run, down time is as much about resting the brain as taking care of your body.

Having trouble finding the time for down time? Go back to point #2 – and schedule it in. Not only will it be more likely to get done, you’ll have something to look forward to.

There you have it – that’s how I keep control. But what about you? Please share your tips in the comments!

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How are those New Year’s resolutions coming along?

We set such high expectations of ourselves, don’t we? We want to do more, see more, experience more, save more, and yet…3 weeks into it we’re already feeling the pressure creeping back in. We just don’t seem to have enough hours in the day to meet all of those goals we set last month.

I’ve been thinking a lot about time the last few weeks. Perhaps it’s a side effect of watching too many back-to-back episodes of Doctor Who over the holidays, but at any rate, time is one of those elusive beasts that none of us ever seems to have a handle on. The title of this post, “How to Control Time” is probably somewhat of a misnomer. None of us really has control over time itself, after all. We’ve all got 24 hours in a day. What we do have control over, is how we use those 24 hours.

In the past few days, a couple of people close to me have asked if I’m “spreading myself too thin”. I’ve got a lot going on, it’s true. A few years ago, I don’t think I’d have been able to handle this much stuff at one time. But I’m learning what it takes to make the most of every 24 hour period that I’m given. I am hoping it might be useful to you if I share some of what what I’m learning.

Stop separating. I used to think that in order to achieve the perfect work/life balance, I had to have a distinct line drawn between what was “work” and what was “life”. Since I’ve been self employed, that line has blurred significantly…and I’ve realized that’s not such a bad thing.

I’m not talking about being a workaholic (though I’m often accused of being that). Certainly we all need to have down time (more on that in a minute). I’ve got a lot going on, as do you…if I add it all up, between my company, teaching, freelance work, blogging, community projects, musical endeavours, and networking/socializing with friends and colleagues, my “work” week probably totals somewhere around 80-90 hours. But see what I did there? I lumped in things like “blogging”, “community projects”, “music” and “networking” to that mix. Why? Because all of that stuff, even the stuff I don’t get paid for, the stuff many people consider “life”, is all part of my “work”. But, it’s also all part of my “life”. That’s how the line gets fuzzy.

Once I stopped defining my activities as either “work” or “life”, and started to mesh them all together, a really strange thing happened. Suddenly I had more hours in the day. I wasn’t waiting till my “work” day was done to think about community projects or networking activities or music. I was incorporating them into my day, and as a result, accomplishing more.

I realize this is not always as feasible depending on the type of job you have (i.e. you can’t spend time when you’re supposed to be working doing personal emails and calls and networking or practicing your guitar). But..there’s no rule against thinking about stuff while you work, right? AND, you are allowed to take breaks? Maybe, instead of spending your lunch breaks or coffee breaks hanging out at the water cooler, try planning that web project you’ve been meaning to get to, writing a new blog post or connecting with your network.

Listen to your body and mind. The only downside of this new way of looking at “life” and “work” is that it’s easy to get caught up in it, and spend all those 24 hours thinking, planning, networking, and doing. It happens to me all the time – I get so excited about everything that I can’t stop thinking about it. I become enamoured with possibilities. It becomes difficult to shut down.

As much as getting control of how you use your time is beneficial, sometimes it can be difficult to slow down. The most important thing you can do in this case is force the issue. Make sure you plan your down time just as much as you plan your other time. If you have a day off coming up on the weekend, do everything you can to protect that. You almost ALWAYS have a choice. Even if you have kids, remember that down time with family is still down time! I often look at my week in advance and keep one day open for doing things I want to do. Sometimes that’s sleeping. Sometimes it’s hanging out with my family. Sometimes it’s Doctor Who marathons. Sometimes it’s even working at things I enjoy. But nothing gets in the way of that day. It’s sacred space.

I’ve burnt out more times than I can count, so I’m well aware of the limitations of my mind and my body. I was a bit sick this weekend. Not a full-fledged illness, but I was pretty tired and achy and stuffy. I knew it was my body trying to tell me to cool my jets for a bit. It was saying, “Sit down, take a breather. Rest.” I listened. Didn’t go out much. Stayed in, drank tea. Ate well. Spent time with my husband. If I’d pushed it, I’d probably still be a bit sick (or a lot sicker). But I’m not.

It’s okay to be busy, on the go, doing lots of different things. That’s the point of this life, to DO things. But balance that with the limits of your body and your mind. We all have a different limit. Find your balance. Listen to it. The result? Your productive time will be more productive. Your rest time will be more restful.

You know…we might not be able to control time (yet). That’s probably a good thing. But we can ultimately control our use of time. Use every minute of every day as well as you can (even if you’re doing something that sucks). And before you know it…good things will start to happen. That’s just the way time works.

No time like the present to get started, eh?

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