970-224-4042
Articles
Using Rock Star Success Stories To Land Your Next Job!
Lucky you, you’ve been selected to interview for what may be your dream job. But then you discover you’ll be up against nine other hopefuls, and you ask yourself, “How can I be the chosen one?” My favorite strategy for standing out to is arm yourself with a handful of rock-star success stories relevant to the position you’re targeting, and be ready to share them in the interview. For example, talking with a machinist on the hunt for a new job, I asked him to describe a time when he’d demonstrated his expertise in that specialty. Soon he was...
read moreShifting to something new. The pain and the reward is worth it.
After ten years working in high tech as a marketing manager, I made a change and retrained to become a career counselor. That involved getting a masters degree–an effort that took 18 months full time–before I was qualified to dive into my first job working for a career management company. Getting the masters was mostly fun, but my first paid career counseling gig was harder. Many times in the initial two years on that job I asked myself, “Are you really capable of doing this?”, to which I typically answered, “It doesn’t feel like...
read moreSupporting adult children with their career development. How to help but not hover.
I occasionally get calls from parents of adult children who want advice on how to support their offspring toward better career success. Most calls are from parents with kids between the ages of 22 – 30. I have two children, both of them adults, so I can relate to this desire to help. Our daughter, age 29, is launched in a career; the other, 21, is finishing college. I’ll admit I’ve been a helicopter parent at times, which is the practice of hovering above (similar to a helicopter) our kids to keep an eye on their progress. When my daughter...
read moreIn a Slump? Tips for getting back in the game!
Brandon McManus (also known as B-Mac), kicker for the Denver Broncos, has been in a bit of a slump lately. After a perfect pre-season record, B-Mac has missed more than a few of this year’s regular season attempts. Chances are, you can relate to being in a work slump… making more errors, goofing up on decisions, and generally being off your game. Working full time from age 20 to 65, you will have put in close to 100,000 hours on the job, so experiencing some low spots along the way is to be expected. Still, they can be frustrating and...
read moreFranchise. An alternative for your next career.
A close friend is considering ditching her job to become a business owner. She’s played the corporate game for a few decades, and now wants more control over her professional destiny. Starting a business can be risky. According to a Washington Post report, fifty percent will fail within five years. Yet there is a strategy that can bump the success rate up to a more comfortable level, and that’s by going the franchise route, rather than starting from scratch. According to alternative career coach Steve Miller with The Entrepreneur’s Source,...
read moreHow to deal with major change.
I received a high emotion email from a client, one who is considering retiring from her career of over 25 years. She expressed feeling very anxious about what her future would look like. This was my reply: “You are thinking about leaving a life routine you’ve been used to for more than three decades, without having yet put together a possible plan for what your new life routine might look like. Change is very uncomfortable. Human beings are, for the most part, drawn to certainty in our lives. We want to know where our food will come...
read moreThe power of hashtags and how to use them.
Ten years after they were first introduced, I finally get the professional value of hashtags, or, in the world of social media, #. I have my son JP, a fourth year computer science student, to thank for this. Last summer he worked an internship to gain a better understanding of how to connect to target audiences via technology. Also this past summer, I attended the national salt and pepper shakers club convention, not as a collector, but to support my mother, who owns close to 1,000 sets. However, I’m a marketer at heart, so when the...
read moreWhy you need to take a vacation.
The harder we work, the faster we climb, right? Not so. A Harvard Business Review article reports that people who use all of their vacation time have a 6.5% higher chance of getting promoted than those who don’t. This, says Nan Russell, author of “It’s Not About Time”, is just one of many myths that exist regarding filling our days with busy-ness and getting what we want out of life. She’ll be talking on this topic in an upcoming free session in Fort Collins, debunking misconceptions such as these: Myth: the busier we are, the more important...
read moreThe challenge of underemployment
A career coaching colleague and I were discussing the ongoing challenge of underemployment. “Why can’t there be an easier way for people with talent to get connected to opportunities that match their strengths?” he asked. I’ve been in this line of work for 25 years, and I’ll confess I’ve become more of a realist than I was at the start of my starry-eyed career. Since then I’ve drawn these conclusions: The world of work is a teeming pool of evolving, inefficient activity. Businesses are continually growing, shrinking, and changing, as do their...
read morePerception shifts. Turning negative to positive.
“I’m really stressed out about this, but I’m also kind of excited about it, too!” This came from a friend as he described a big project he’s working on. His eyes were shining and he was noticeably happy. I was happy, too, because just weeks before he’d been complaining about this same project, but had been clearly discouraged about it. He was stressed both times, but once negatively, and the other time, positively. That’s the difference between distress and eustress, and according to performance coach Samantha Attard, Ph.D., we have the power...
read more
