Lessons Learned from Charlie Sheen

First, I have to say thank you to Christopher Poreda for a great post by the same name.  I’ll also steal his lessons:

"1) Be an original. Copies can be replicated and as such are cheaper the more you make.

"2) Be honest, regardless of the ramifications. You'll sleep better and be more respected.

"3) Having the best product will always supersede having the best service. Think Soup Nazi!

"4) The squeaky wheel gets the grease. These sayings were made up for a reason.

"5) Any press is good press. See #4

"6) Focus on "Winning".  It appears that CBS is courting Charlie to bring him back." 

Make no mistake, Charlie has some issues as well, but he does have these six things right.  When thinking about job search, let’s see how they apply.

“Be an original”  Your combination of strengths and skills and talents are unique.  If someone hires you for these, you have an amazingly good chance of success and for that success to be ongoing.  If you are trying to copy someone or be the person you imagine some person or company wants,  sooner or later, you’ll falter.  It won’t be pretty.

“Be honest”  The ability to deliver what you promise is very closely related to how honest you are.  If you tell people honestly what you have done and what can do, doing it again will be easy; heck, exceeding expectations will be easy.

“Having the best product will always supersede the having the best service”  See item 1.  If you are the best “you” there simply isn’t any competition.

“The squeaky wheel gets the grease”.  You won’t get a job if no one knows you’re looking.  Your friends, neighbors etc. need to know you're looking.  When you identify something you want, you need to make absolutely certain the hiring influence knows who you are and that you want this job and you will be the best answer.

“Any press is good press”  All is fair in love, war and job search!

“Focus on winning”  When you find a job you want, focus, focus, focus. 

Seattle Times Article

Looks like an article that has been worked on for the last several months will finally appear this weekend!  Check out Sunday's Pacific Magazine in the Seattle Times.  It's sad in a lot of ways, because there is a human toll and the author documents that.  The reality is that NFJS is in the business of selling hope, no matter the environment, so we're a lot more positive than the article, but being featured is very flattering.

Featured in Seattle Weekly!

We are featured in this weeks copy of Seattle Weekly!!  :)

A better link is here: Seattle Weekly Article

Linkedin and "key words"

Every now and then someone passes something on to me that I really think is worth sharing and one of those was sent to me yesterday. I've been coaching folks for years to make sure the keywords that matter are repeated early and often (provided that all of the information is true) in their resume. One of my contacts, Selena Rushton, sent me a link for a 15-minute overview on how to optimize LinkedIn with keywords. I had thought about doing this, but hadn't quite gotten around to it.  My profile had been based on what I set up when I was still looking for work as an IT Manager/Director.


Well I decided to put it to the test. First I did a search of "People" in LinkedIn for "career coach" and got 51,115 results. I got bored trying to find me after about the 40th page. Then I spent most of an hour reworking my profile to reflect what I'm doing now and optimizing my experience to reflect my real experience as a coach. Then I searched for career coach again and boom—I was entry number 10—last entry on the first page. This occurred by changing a very few things. I just replaced words like mentoring with coaching. On my summary I led with the fact that I'm a career coach and did the same with my profile. And I expanded my profile to focus more on how I have coached folks for years.

Worth noting, when I searched for "career coach" two hours later, I had already slipped to 12th, so lots of people are optimizing along with me, but I only invested an hour and I became visible. This is something that I will continue.

So here's the link again:

http://www.linkedstrategies.com/linkedin-keyword-optimization.htm