Scams

Had a cautionary tale passed back to us in one of the groups.  I’m going to eliminate names, but you’ll get the idea. 

First, let’s be honest about the situation of someone who’s unemployed.  I’m pretty disciplined about avoiding talking about how bad things can be, but we all know it can be very very scary.  That fear is the lever scam artists use.   This is the second real scam I’ve seen in the last couple of years and they have some stuff in common:

·         The hook for both is money fears.

   o   The first one promised to “reduce your debt and your payments”

   o   The second one promised “easy money”

·         Both offered significant (bogus) testimonials

In one case, it was all about refinancing your house and using that as collateral.  When we investigated, what we found were lots of complaints, people losing their homes and no one getting any money from the scam except the artist.  My guess is that this is even illegal, but given how fast the perpetrators move, I doubt anyone is getting their money back and I doubt anyone has gone to jail.

The other case promises to make you a “professional model” and that you will be paid “thousands” within xxx amount of time.  This one is legal, after all they really will take your picture.

Both require you pay them first.  Guess what happens next…. 

Nothing.

At least nothing that will benefit you in any way shape or form.

Without belaboring the point, remember that if it seems too good to be true, it is.

Do what you love and the money will follow

One of my clients recently forwarded an article from a group named “Recourses” about work-life balance and following your passion.

It’s very interesting but actually comes across as a bit of a rant suggesting that following your passion is a great way to starvation…. The article isn’t signed, but my guess is that the company is small enough so that if you are a regular, you pretty much know who the author is.

I think my client sent it to me because I have asked her several times, “What would you do for free?” as we have focused her career search. So here comes someone with a dramatically different point of view, or it sure looks that way to begin with.

The first clue is that he frankly acknowledges that he personally “loves his work”. So how does that fit with the idea that we shouldn’t follow our passions?

I think the part he is actually objecting to isn't that people want "to love what they do", but that many times people don't include market realities. I love music... really really love it, but making a living at it would be more than a stretch.

The challenge isn't so much identifying things that we are passionate about, but things that we are passionate about and that people will pay us to do. He's also ranting about people wanting their job to be all of the good and none of the rest. He's right about this as well, heck even musicians need to practice. The man who invented classical guitar as a legitimate discipline, Andres Segovia would practice a new piece for 2 years before he performed it. When the great Seattle Sonics point guard, Gary Payton entered the NBA, he was amazing at getting to the basket, passing and controlling a game, but he had no outside shot. He spent the next several years shooting 500 shots 4 days a week and 300 on the other 3. He did this on his own time. Was it his favorite part of the day? Probably not, but it was necessary if he was going to be as good as he hoped and it was necessary if he was going to be able to lead his team. I love being a Career Coach, but part of being a coach is writing, which I actually hate,  I also know that I need to continuously research the job market to stay current and to have deep enough pockets to last long enough for it to become a viable business.

The point is that every job has both good and bad. The author uses his own childhood, growing up on a coffee plantation as an example of what it means to work hard at something you don’t care much about. In fact his example of the coffee farming is in many ways apropos, as I do know people who are passionate about coffee and who grow coffee because of this. They know exactly how hard it is and bust their tails doing it. The consequence of this passion is their coffee regularly wins awards, sells for $36 a pound and sells out every year.

Another piece not being acknowledged is what the job market is like right now. Employers have choices. A consequence of this is that they are choosing the very cream at every opportunity and frankly, if you aren’t passionate about what you do, it’s much harder to be part of that cream.

I repeatedly ask my clients “What would you do for free?” The reason is that in today’s market place, if we hope to keep up, then we are studying our profession on our time and our nickel. No one does this when they aren’t passionate.

Going back to the coffee plantation analogy.  My guess that his farm was moderately successful, but the people making more than a simple living are the ones continuously learning and improving their product.

So will the money follow just because you are doing what you love? Maybe…. Will the money follow if you are doing things you don’t like? Probably not. The key in both cases is what you do or don’t do to prepare and doing what you love makes that preparation much much easier.

Stories from NFJS -- Fred’s Story

This one is about Fred (not his real name). He joined NFJS as our Work-Life Data Base™ was maturing and he embraced it. What makes his story interesting is the consequence of this process.

Fred’s profession is software and hardware testing, with a strong element of audio technology thrown in. He joined us at the very bottom of the recession when more than half of the jobs being advertised were bogus and at least half of the rest required that you walk on water without looking for the rocks. One job description asked for a web developer who could answer phones, run purchasing and pick the laundry… and the only part I’m making up is the purchasing. Microsoft had just cut what they would pay contractors 10% across the board and was routinely demanding skills that were a full step above the pay they were willing to provide. I don’t ever remember a time when the economy was worse or when finding a job was tougher.

Fred sounded very realistic about his situation. He said that he was hoping for a new contract where his pay would be at least 80% of the last one. I’m very familiar with the skills he described and with the employment environment in that area having recently left the industry myself. When I reviewed his original resume, it sounded like that was a reasonable hope, but he better be capable of making more than a few house payments with his unemployment.

NFJS was just at the beginning of our resume section at that time. We spend four weeks of meetings going over the “How to”. It starts with the basic fundamentals of resume writing and ends with our Work-Life DB™. This is a tool that allows people to document their success and put it in a format that easily translates into a custom resume.

By far the most important part of all this is the Work-Life DB™. The first thing it does is highlight the most powerful stories in their work history. It helps the writer understand that they are not asking for charity. Great candidates are not asking for handouts, they are offering to help a company solve specific problems.

Back to Fred.

He understood all of this immediately, then he did the work. There are three parts that matter in this story. Number one: documenting your success. Fred went back through his history and wrote down what he was responsible for and what he accomplished at each of his previous positions. Number two: putting this information in structures that communicate effectively what he accomplished. And three: Using the language that companies expect and understand.

The result was dramatic: “Executed weekly test passes of more than 5,000 tests (Tux and Tuxnet) generating more than 100,000 results.” Became “Lead the XXXXX automation test lab for the development of XXXXX, maintaining more than 5,000 tests cases and managing the execution of test passes generating more than 100,000 results.” The first one is ok… the second one is excellent. The second one highlights the context in which his work occurred and claimed all of the responsibility Fred had. The first one names tools that are important to Microsoft, but only Microsoft. If Fred wanted to work somewhere else, then the hiring company would either scramble for Wikipedia or eliminate (this is the kind of thing Fred would have included when applying at Microsoft.)

Fred got the job!

The new resume has energy and it has relevance and it has the language that was being looked for by companies that do the kind of testing Fred does and is responsible for. The result of this work was that he got an interview for an FTE position at another company, then got the job! His new role is leading automated testing for both hardware and software for one of the products this organization produces and he got a 20% raise!!!

Yes, Fred is highly skilled and yes, he is in a role that is always looking for quality people, but when he joined NFJS, that was not clear, especially to Fred. As he dug into his experience, he developed an understanding that allowed him to identify, apply for and win a position he had been preparing for, for most of his professional career…. Even while the “economy” totally tanked.

The Recession is Over!!

Really? Then why do I have so many clients?
This is one of those times when the economists prove how very silly they can be while being technically correct. We’ve all heard the joke about the Dr who comes out of surgery gloating about what a success the operation was and only at the last moment does he acknowledge that the patient also died. That’s kind of what the economists are saying/doing. The economy hit it’s bottom sometime last summer, and given that what they measure isn’t current health, just relative health, what they are really saying is that the Fall of 2009 was better than in the Spring. Talk about damning something with faint praise!!

I’ve actually never heard of a way to measure economic health. We live in a world where what matters is our ability to pay the rent/mortgage and grocery bills, and while economists live in same world, what they study has some very serious disconnects. So while the “Recession” is over, that isn’t the same as saying the economy is healthy and if we include all of the people out of work and underemployed, then the economy is seriously struggling.

So when I read that the “Recession” over, I’m sure it’s true, it’s just not very meaningful.