Opportunities

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” or so wrote Charles Dickens 150 years ago, although I’ve certainly heard people quoting one half or the other recently. There was an article in the Seattle Times recently about how tough the market is and how current job descriptions include everything and then throw in “personal assistant tasks” whatever the heck that means. If we include “discouraged” workers along with people still looking for work, unemployment pencils out as 15% or more. We’ve all been impacted by an economy that is the worst since the Great Depression. At the same time, people are going to work. Some of the folks working with NFJS are getting their dream jobs. Some are looking at their careers and saying, “I need to do what I love!”

One woman who has been a participant started out completely desperate for work. While coming to NFJS we helped her articulate what her dream job was and how to accomplish it: Creating an Art School. Eventually her desperation won out (or so we thought) and she took an admin job for the Feds. Within one month, she quit, rented some space and started her school. It’s been about a month since I’ve heard from her, but at that point, she had four classes going and was paying herself enough to stay afloat. It took her about four months to create her dream job at a level that supports her minimum requirements. She won’t buy a BMW this year, but then she doesn’t want one. What she wants is to teach art, and what she’s doing is teaching art. For her this is the “best of times”.

Another member of NFJS came to us looking for manual testing contract at Microsoft, testing hardware or software and complaining about how Microsoft has cut the compensation for contractors. This man did his homework while with us and developed a much better understanding of his own experience, his capabilities and his passions. What he got was an FTE position for AT&T at about 1/5th more than he thought he would be able to ask for as a contractor and doing precisely what he wanted: Leading a team doing automated hardware and software testing of devices.

The point of these two stories is to recognize that we have opportunities in spite of what we might read or hear. It always requires work to become what we want to become, but if we can articulate it and the steps necessary completely, if we can imagine it and the steps to get there completely, then we can do it. For most purposes, we get to choose if this is “the best of times” or “the worst of times”. Creating “the best of times” is hard work, but so is creating “the worst of times”.

Amazingly, the Green Bean Coffee house has been resurrected! Wayward Coffee House has been a great answer for the last month, Thank you, thank you Wayward Coffee House!
The Green Bean is now housed in the “Sip N Ship” on Greenwood Ave. 8560 Greenwood Ave N. Being back at the Bean will be great.

Internet risk

The new Consumer Reports is out and has several pages on the risks posed by the internet, including what can happen when your resume is posted on one of the job boards (Monster, Dice, Craigslist, etc). Some of the numbers are pretty scary: 13% of the Facebook users have been “abused”, 25% of job board users have been subject to phishing attacks, etc. When I read about this stuff, it seems so scary! My 84 year old Aunt is sure that someone is going to come through her computer and steal her credit cards. It’s also easy to think that we’re powerless to stop it.

Most of the fear is hype. We personally need to be prudent and we need to be skeptical, but we do not need to be especially frightened by this. We live in a capitalist country and world, and one of the first rules of capitalism is “Caveat emptor”…. Let the buyer beware. If it seems to be too good to be true, then it is. Many of the scams floating around the net are just about as old as the net. We have all been offered opportunities by “African Generals” to make lots of money if we just send them quite a bit of money now. I first saw this scam in the early 90’s and while it’s changed from country to country and I recall it as an Asian prince and a South American family, it’s always been the same offer, send X dollars now and it will allow us to withdraw our fortune from some bank and we will pay you 10X dollars back in 6 months. What I have never heard of is someone actually getting 10X dollars, or even X dollars returned. Then of course there are offers to refinance your mortgage and jobs that will pay you 6 figures for 3 hours a day at home and….

The key to all of these is that we need to respond. Don’t respond and you are not at risk. Phishing is a bit more subtle, but has the same defense: Your “bank” asks you to “confirm” your credit card number or social security number or something else, just so they can verify their records. Don’t respond. Companies you have a relationship with (your bank, your credit card company, etc ) already have the information they need. They do not now, never have and never will send you an email asking you to “confirm”.

Years ago, I was IT Director at a company and there was a virus being sent out in a picture of a popular tennis star. One of the Department heads in this company opened it and it took roughly 200 staff hours to un-infect all of the computers that it impacted. This “picture” came to him from an unknown email address, to his business email. If it wasn’t infected, it would have been inappropriate, and clearly unsafe. In fact he knew better. He was very publicly humiliated and he put his company and job at risk because his fingers moved faster than his brain. He wasn’t safe because he didn’t apply “let the buyer beware”. This is a man that would never buy a used car without having it checked out first, he just didn’t think it applied on the internet. It does.

Of course there are still risks, so keep your anti-virus software current, use the firewall(s) that you have. When you set up Facebook, set your privacy settings to only allow established “friends & family” to have full view, same thing with Linkedin. On Monster you can set it up similarly, although I’ve forgotten what they call these settings. Think of all of these services as parts of your house. We are all more than happy to allow others to see the outside of our house, we are very selective about who we invite in.