May 5, 2008
04:47 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
Daniel Pink's The Adventures of Johnny Bunko - The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need is anything but a simple comic book, even if it closely resembles one.
Aimed primarily at recent (and impending) college grads, Bunko is a graphical story told in illustrated panels. Pink says it is the first US business book rendered in the Japanese "Manga" style - an entertaining, fanciful yet unintimidating way to assimilate information.
Pink's hero is stuck in a dead-end job. One night, as if in a fairytale, a hot looking (give or take her pointy ears) career adviser named Diana shows up at his office offering to show him the way to a better life. Bunko summons his mentor by rubbing chopsticks. (Don't over-think that one.)
Diana badgers him a bit, but Bunko needs both a push and encouragement.
Pink, who authored A Whole New Mind and Free-Agent Nation, is a gifted writer and perceptive thinker (well known to FC readers). Unlike old-school business gurus, Pink doesn't do all of the thinking for you - he leaves some room for you to flesh out his ideas. The corporation isn't the center of gravity in his writing - it's what's best for the reader.
Along the way, our everyman hero discovers key lessons of a successful career:
- There is no plan
- Think strengths, not weaknesses
- Persistence trumps talent
- It's not about you
- Make excellent mistakes
- Leave an imprint
One of the most perceptive observations in the book is that where you work is almost more important than what you do there - at least to begin with.
"The most successful people ... take a job or join a company because it will let them do interesting work in a cool place - even if they don't know exactly where it will lead," advises Diana.
Pink draws a distinction between taking a job for "instrumental" reasons - "because you think it's going to lead to something else", versus "fundamental" reasons - "because you think it's inherently valuable, regardless of what it may or may not lead to."
And he adds (through Diana's voice) that, "The Dirty Little Secret is that instrumental reasons usually don't work. You never know what's going to happen so you end up stuck."
Less clear is how Bunko or the rest of us will "leave an imprint" in this world. I hope that blogging qualifies as an imprint. Rob Ten Pas' Manga story illustrations in "Johnny Bunko" are hip and fun.
Rusty Weston, My Global Career • San Francisco, Ca • http://www.myglobalcareer.com/ • rusty@myglobalcareer.com
April 4, 2008
12:23 am | 1 recommendation | Be the first to comment
When was the last time you learned something useful from someone a couple of decades younger than you? Overcoming age bias is all in a day's work for Peter Sheahan, a consultant and author of a book about Generation Y.
Sheahan, a 28-year-old expert on workforce trends and generational change, says that he has consulted for Google, Apple, Coca Cola, Harley Davidson and News Corp. among others.
His latest tome is called Flip - How to Turn Everything You Know On Its Head - and Succeed Beyond Your Wildest Imaginings. The over-the-top title is typical of non-fiction books these days. Unlike Sheahan, I'm not trying to exceed my wildest imaginings - I'm angling for meeting my goals.
At first blush, Sheahan, an Australian, reminds me more than a little bit of Timothy Ferriss (Four Hour Work Week), except that he seems more interested in branding others than himself. Writing about Generation Y led him to consult about workforce trends for corporate clients, even sitting on boards in his early 20s.
He skipped college, but learned on his own and from others. "I'm not formally educated," he says. "I would read maybe 100 books a year and speak at maybe 150 conferences a year."
Sheahan speaks knowledgeably about the tightening of global labor markets and advises corporations how to attract and retain Gen Y workers. "It's the global market that drives talent," he says. "In Shanghai they need 75,000 qualified managers but there's only a local supply of 5000. Think how competitive it's going to be for that talent."
Sheahan is a proponent of "rational choice theory," which he says drives us to "make decisions based on incentives and disincentives, pain and pleasure. Today new research says all decisions are made emotionally but we use cognitive abilities to rationalize emotionally. Getting a job is no different. Career decisions are made on brand truth."
In Flip, Sheahan highlights successful examples of counter-intuitive business strategy, companies he calls "Flipstars," such as Nintendo. In the face of increasingly more sophisticated technology applied to gaming systems, Nintendo responded to its rivals Microsoft and Sony by simplifying its gaming platform - the Wii.
There's a lot of useful advice in Flip, but I found these points his most illustratrative:
- Style is substance
- Fashion is function
- Feelings are the most important facts
- The soft stuff is the hardest stuff, and the hardest to get right
I wonder whether Sheahan will become as popular on the Net as Ferriss - guru du jour on work/life balance and (what used to be called) self-actualization. I'm intrigued by Sheahan's take on global workforce trends, generations, leadership and business innovation. Will his ideas turn you into a flipstar?
Rusty Weston, My Global Career • San Francisco, Ca • http://www.myglobalcareer.com/ • rusty@myglobalcareer.com
March 3, 2008
06:18 pm | 1 recommendation | Be the first to comment
There are endless reasons to build a strong network of professional contacts. But perhaps none is more compelling in 2008 than the goal of establishing a career safety net.
In a recession jobs are last to get hit, yet are the slowest part of business spending to recover. This is the time to develop or revise an escape plan to insulate you from possible downturns or unforeseen changes at work.
"I don't know if I would go so far as to call social networking a safety net," says Kelly Krebs, Senior Account Executive at Horn Group, "but it can help if you if you are looking to move into a new career or if you are looking to expand your customer or partner base."
Even though the economy is slumping that doesn't mean you should stop expanding your web of contacts. While ultimately you will find & add contacts one at a time, the truth is you can better leverage your resources by joining social network-based communities.
Most social networks are the sum of many groups, specialized around regions, companies, alumni networks, plus personal and professional interests. How do you tap into these communities? It's fairly easy on Facebook and LinkedIn (and now FastCompany.com too) - you can search by topic area; see network "newsfeeds" listing which groups your contacts have joined; often groups are listed in your contacts' profiles too.
While identifying and joining a community is fairly easy, the reality is that one generally needs to invest a bit of time and energy building a community presence. In other words, before you tap a community (unless yours is a particularly touching story) the best strategy is to "pay it forward" - help others first.
We're not talking about Karma - in the sense of what comes around goes around. Rather we're talking about building your presence (also called your brand) in an online community. This requires an investment of time, usually two or three months, before your comments in discussion boards become familiar and respected by the group.
"For the network to be of value it needs to be cultivated through selfless acts of service and mutual benefit," says Alan Farhi, Staffing Manager at Epiq Systems, whom I met on LinkedIn. "Trying to cultivate a network in order to find a career opportunity when you're desperate or have lost your job is generally a little too late and a little too transparent."
How will you know? Other members of the group will want to connect with you, even if you have never met offline and wouldn't recognize them at the corner store.
"I often see new salespeople attend one or two networking events and say 'networking doesn't work', says Cathy Jo Morris, Regional Sales Manager at AAA Washington. "Of course it doesn't work after one or two handshakes - you need to give something to the group first before you can expect anything back. Networking is a marathon, not a sprint."
Farhi agrees. "Social and Professional Networks work best when you don't really need them," he says. "A safety net seems like a last-resort measure." In other words, don't wait until you need your social network, start deepening it now.
Rusty Weston, My Global Career • San Francisco, Ca • http://www.myglobalcareer.com/ • rusty@myglobalcareer.com
11:22 am | 0 recommendations | 2 comments
Do you ever get the feeling that you're writing graffiti in cyberspace?
I get this disconnected feeling when I post a status update on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. There's certainly an art to writing a one sentence blurb that expresses something about your life, perspective or the world around you. But is there a point to status updates? Is it merely a social convenience or could it advance your career?
The basic idea of a status update is to say something of interest about your life, or about the world around you to your social network contacts. Sure, it's easy to write, "Headed to lunch in the city." But that's not going to interest your "followers," who prefer to read witty or insightful comments, links to compelling articles or hot new websites.
Is anyone getting ahead in the social media world by offering status updates? I asked several savvy social networkers why they update their contacts more than once or twice a day. What's the ROI on status updates?
Fast Company TV's star vlogger, Robert Scoble, the ultimate one-man new media band, has amassed a whopping 13,650 followers on Twitter - an impressive posse. But what's even more intriguing is his 'best practice' of following nearly everyone who follows him - he's following 13,667 Twitter-ers.
Clearly if you want to engage in a conversation with your audience it helps to make it a two-way street. Of course, it's symbolic; Scoble is adept but can't possibly keep up with 300 people, much less 13,650.
My former colleague Steve Rubel is renowned as a social media expert. Rubel has a terrific blog called Micro Persuasion and 4,209 followers on Twitter. I asked him his philosophy regarding status updates. Rubel updates: "When I want to share a link or an idea or I am simply enthusiastic about something - usually business or sports related," he says. "Sometimes this is once a day. Other times it's dozens. It's also when I want to ask questions and get back answers."
What does he achieve from these frequent updates? "I look to Twitter for more general goals - community, ideas, problem-solving and knowledge sharing, all related to helping me in my job as Director of Insights for Edelman Digital," says Rubel. "I never set out to build followers or to use it as a traffic driver for my blog. However, that has happened."
Sean Ammirati started updating Twitter at the 2007 South by Southwest (SxSW) festival in Austin. Ammirati, a blogger and VP, Business Development at mSpoke, says the updates provide "an interesting way to stay up to date with friends & business contacts."
Ammirati believes that the "conversation" taking place on Twitter, mostly through updates, has "exposed me to a lot of thinking that I otherwise would not have been exposed to. I actually call this my MBA 2.0."
Ammirati, like Rubel, is in communications. "Part of that communication is internally to motivate partners and employees and part of that is to sell a vision externally," he adds.
Although status updates can be sort of compulsive, Rubel believes you should use them wisely. "Key to all is making sure you add value," he says. "This is why, for the most part, I use it to talk about topics that I believe the community (and I) care about and not what I had for lunch."
For many people status updates are perhaps more of a challenge than an opportunity. Those of us who are status impaired should feel free to borrow this line: "Fretting about my next status update."
Rusty Weston, My Global Career • San Francisco, Ca • http://www.myglobalcareer.com/ • rusty@myglobalcareer.com
February 2, 2008
05:28 pm | 5 recommendations | 1 comment
Employers know the problem with great job candidates is that they usually have jobs and aren't actively seeking another one. And why should they? It's a hassle to send out resumes, shake the trees on a social network or chat-up recruiters.
Typically it's unhappy employees that seek new opportunities. Apart from these active job seekers, most employed workers are considered "passive" job candidates who may leave if the right opportunity finds them. Frankly, the grass is often greener elsewhere.
To help nudge talented, yet passive job candidates to test the waters, a Silicon Valley startup has identified sponsors willing to pay top candidates up to $500 or more for an interview. NotchUp, as it is known, hopes that this incentive will entice talented workers to forsake job boards and recruiters.
For employers, paying $500 for an interview is a relative bargain compared to the cost of job board ads and recruiters.
The radical part of the business model is the disintermediation (which is to say eliminating) of middlemen in the talent supply chain -job boards and recruiters.
I asked several recruiters I met on LinkedIn to share their views about NotchUp vs. a recruiter.
"I'm looking at building a relationship with a candidate," says Heather Gardner, a recruiter at Volt Services Group. "And that's more important than a job posting. Sometimes the best candidates have a crappy resume. And when I talk to them I discover hidden jewels. Plus a resume doesn't tell you what their ultimate goals are. I think in my job I'm sort of a professional matchmaker too."
Krista Bradford, Principal, The Good Search, is a bit skeptical about the concept. "I doubt mid or senior level executives and technologists will be motivated to interview at a company purely for the amount of coin that is being thrown to them," says Bradford. "Also, this reminds me of a rule we had in my former career as an investigative journalist: never to pay for interviews. The reason? You couldn't tell whether someone was saying something because you paid them or because it was the truth. The same could possibly apply to NotchUp. Is someone interviewing because they're genuinely interested or because they're motivated by the ka-ching? "
Bradford suggests that employers should "take a different route, which, from my perspective, is far more direct. Identify the best people. Recruit them to the best opportunities. Done."
But money talks and if NotchUp produces results, it may well catch on. On NotchUp, like Priceline, job candidates get to name their price and most choose $200 to $500 per interview. Of course, naming your price doesn't guarantee you an interview.
If a job candidate receives an interview, they earn money regardless of whether they receive a job offer. In a viral-style move aimed at building the site's traffic, members can earn a 10 percent referral fee if a job candidate they invite to join is interviewed.
The fine print of the NotchUp terms of service includes this yellow flag: "You agree to hold NotchUp harmless for any failure by the Company to pay the Interview Fee. The Interview Fee is the sole responsibility of the Company. Your sole recourse for non-payment of the Interview Fee is to contact the Company."
If you give this a try, let us know how it turns out for you.
Rusty Weston, My Global Career • San Francisco, Ca • http://www.myglobalcareer.com/ • rusty@myglobalcareer.com
